Pawnbroking shines as media struggles

Newspaper group Daily Mail and General Trust released trading results yesterday showing that 11 month revenue to August dropped 11% but remained confident about hitting profit forecasts for the year.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Wednesday, September 30, 2009

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Cost savings and increased revenues in their business to business operations helped offset big reductions in advertising revenue. Cost savings of around £150m have been made with 15% (1,500) staff being laid off. Shares rose on the news by nearly 3% in early trading Tuesday.

The recession is always good for pawnbrokers and Albermarle & Bond have proved the point. Pre tax profits for the year ending June rose to £14.6 million – an increase of 50% on the previous year. Revenues rose by 18% to £55.5m. They have benefited from introducing a gold buying service for customers early in the year and a surging value for the commodity. Stricter high street bank lending criteria also helped their pay day loan department to boost sales. Shares fell 5.5p to 227p.

News from the pub group Enterprise Inns that it was seeing fewer business failures lifted share prices. The company has already sold 365 pubs that were not performing, but still boasts a portfolio of around 1,700 premises. Whilst it confirmed that the support it was having to provide was reducing, profitability from within the sector still remains a challenge. The company has resisted a rights issue option and remains confident that it will hit its £210m profit target for the year. In response, the share price rose strongly to 143p - making it one of the leading FTSE 250 stocks on Tuesday.

 

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