ARM Telecity lead FTSE amid earnings glut Thomas Cook struggles

A busy of morning of earnings releases from high-profile UK firms has propelled many of these London-listed companies towards the top, and the bottom, of London Stock Exchange’s leader boards.

Telecity Plc., the provider and manager of computer server warehouses is currently leading the entire stock exchange with a 17% gain after its full-year results.

Its numbers themselves have been more or less ignored by the market though, after the firm also unveiled an agreement for an all-share merger with New York-based Interxion, which provides cloud-and carrier-neutral co-location data centres in Europe.

UK house builder Redrow Plc. is the next down on the list of top London Stock Exchange performers after it signalled that rumours of a slowdown following last year’s surge in the residential property sector, may have been exaggerated.

Redrow posted a 54% bump up in revenue to £560.6m and pre-tax profit of £91m together with a “very strong order book” which is leading it to expect a 12% increase in active projects by June, and “another strong year of growth.”

ARM Holdings is leading the UK’s FTSE 100 ‘prestige’ list with a rise of more than 4% as the market takes its comments about a “very encouraging” royalty revenue outlook for the year as a sign that recent momentum, largely fuelled by ARM’s dominance in smartphone chip designs, has been sustained.

10% growth in smartphones will result in 20% growth in royalty revenues, ARM said, as it also reported forecast-beating fourth-quarter results.

We’ve published a separate article on ARM this morning, with more details about its earnings and the outlook for its shares.

Health and personal care giant Reckitt Benckiser Group vied with ARM for the FTSE 100 top spot after the maker of Strepsils, Clearasil, Durex and Dettol said it expected steady progress in 2015 after last year’s sales were hurt by a slowdown in emerging markets.

“We continue to expect tough market conditions,” this year its CEO said this morning, but he added RB would still achieve 4% like-for-like growth and “moderate to nice” operating margin expansion.

Reckitt said full-year adjusted net income rose 4%, with adjusted EPS of 230.5p.

Things aren’t so pretty at the other end of the London Stock Exchange lists, with Thomas Cook Group just a few places from the bottom with a loss of more than 5% after lacklustre quarterly earnings.

The group said its quarterly loss was more than 40% narrower compared to the same period a year ago.

However despite “a significant increase in bookings” for winter and summer seasons, it sounded a clear warning that the market should not expect it to beat some of the strong comparative performances it achieved in Continental and Northern Europe last year.

We’ll be publishing a separate article about Thomas Cook a little later with full details of its earnings and the stock price reaction.

Other laggards include Electrocomponents, whose shares lost 2.5% as the troubled parts supplier admitted its gross margin shrank by a significant 130 basis points in the year-to-date.

ECM blames FX pressure and faster growth of lower-margin products and regions.

To end the round-up on a more positive note, Dunelm Group was third in the mid-cap FTSE 250 index after Telecity and Redrow, following its half-year results showing a 6.2% advance in like-for-like sales of its staple bedding, curtains, furniture and home utilities.

A special dividend of 70p per share is no doubt encouraging buyers of its shares too, on top of the 5.5p ordinary interim pay out.