Trinity Mirror, Independent Oil and Gas, Bacanora

“The FTSE100 opened in negative territory following weaker turns in the US and Asia on the back of trader concerns about the banking sector. Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland were at the foot of the blue chip board in early trading,” says AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.

“The growing reliance on digital revenues for newspaper groups is underlined by Trinity Mirror’s latest update. The group, which owns the Mirror titles and The People, remains confident that full-year profits will be in line with forecasts but trading has remained challenging during the third quarter. Group revenue on a like for like basis is expected to fall by 9% with print declining by 12% and digital growing by 11%. Classified digital revenues, which are substantially jointly sold with print, remained under pressure but the group delivered strong growth in digital display and transactional revenue of 24% as digital audiences continued to grow.

“Independent Oil and Gas’s shares slumped after initial results from the appraisal well at its Skipper field in the North Sea showed that the oil has a significantly higher viscosity than expected. The measurements do not align with IOG’s pre-drill observations and remaining samples need to be reviewed and tested. The next steps will be reservoir modelling to consider potential development options and determining whether it will be commercially viable may take several months. IOG’s shares were down by more than 35% in early trading.

“Investors endorsed Bacanora’s decision to snub an approach from Rare Earth Minerals which has a 19.8% stake in the company. Bacanora is focused on developing the Sonora project in Mexico into a world class lithium carbonate operation. The board rejected the proposed reverse takeover and claiming that it not only significantly undervalued the company but also jeopardised Sonora's development path to production.  Bacanora’s shares were up by nearly 4%.”
 

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