Sharewatch: Poor Trading Leaves Trinity Alone In Profit
A disappointingly poor day’s trading in media stocks, in addition to ‘selling fever’ sparked by a dip in the Wall Street index, left the FTSE 100 looking bruised and battered yesterday, with the market reaching an new low point for the year.
Fears among city traders of slow growth in US corporate earnings was blamed for the downturn, which left only Trinity Mirror with positive growth amongst the media stocks, rising by 0.24% to 617p.
The company recently announced the departure of Stephen Parker, currently managing director of the Trinity’s regional newspaper division, leaving chief executive Sly Bailey with direct responsibility for the company’s local titles for the foreseeable future (see Trinity Confirms Regional Director To Step Down).
Elsewhere global information group Reuters stumbled, losing 1.68% and 5žp in real terms to close at 335žp. Yesterday saw Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch cut their forecasts for the company ahead of next week’s earnings report.
UBC Media was one of only a handful of companies to remain stable yesterday. This morning the company issued a pre-AGM statement, revealing strong performance in its commercial division, with sales in the first quarter of this year rising 78% year on year.
The FTSE 100’s poor performance yesterday left the market down 1.6% at 4,306.3, while the FTSE 250 finished 1.2% lower at 5,998.2.
The closing prices of media company shares on Thursday were:
