Lloyds, Antofagasta and Armadale

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“The FTSE100 opened in negative territory amid lower oil prices, and after falls on Wall Street and a mixed turn in Asia overnight. Crude oil prices fell after an API report revealed a significant build in US inventories,” says AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.

“Like Banquo’s ghost, the spectre of personal protection insurance claims continues to haunt the Lloyds Banking Group which is setting aside another £1bn to cover mis-selling. Its latest figures also include a £150m hit for other ‘conduct issues’, mostly relating to the sale of packaged bank accounts. But the group’s statutory profits were up by more than 50% at £3.3bn.

Antofagasta was at the foot of the blue-chip index in early trading after warning that full-year copper output would be at the lower end of its original guidance. Production for the first nine months was 9.4% up on a year ago and performance is expected to continue to improve during the final quarter. Antofagasta is making good progress on reducing costs and these should be lower than previous forecasts. Antofagasta’s shares were down by more than 6.6% in early trading.

Armadale Capital ‘s shares were up in early trading following an 85% strike rate of high grade graphite mineralisation from drilling at its Mahenge Liandu project in Tanzania. Global demand for natural graphite is set to increase substantially over the next few years and as all the mineralisation intersected is near the surface, this implies relatively low extraction costs. Armadale’s shares were up 4%.”

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