Sharewatch: SMG Tumbles Amid Bad Day Of Trading
A poor day’s trading yesterday left all but four media stocks with negative growth. Scottish Radio made the largest climb, inching up 1.51% to close at 944p and Pearson managed a nominal 0.58% increase to 606p following pre-tax profits of £410 million posted last week (see Losses Widen At FT And The Outlook Remains Uncertain).
Maiden Group and Telewest both remained unchanged, while SMG continued to tumble, falling 5.50% to 116p following the announcement of lower than expected profits earlier this week (see SMG’s Profits Tumble As Advertising Decline Bites).
UBC Media also suffered yesterday, dipping by 5.26% to 36p. Earlier this month the group made significant deals to provide software to digital radio broadcasters in Canada and South Korea, but the benefit these deals had on share price has appeared short-lived.
London markets as a whole were hit yesterday by mass sell-offs. The FTSE 100 struggled against its largest one-day fall since May 2003, closing down 2.2% at 4,445.2 and the more cyclical FTSE 250 made a 1.9% loss to 6,176.9.
The closing prices of media company shares on Thursday were:
