RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO
MORNING REPORT 1 February 2011
Overnight gains on Wall Street and a positive session in the Far East sent London's
blue chip index past 5,900 in early trading.
Concern over the situation in Egypt eased a little yesterday, though tensions still
remain very high and the oil price spiked higher.
Miner, Centamin Egypt said "Recent political events in Egypt have not affected the
safety of the company's employees or its day to day operations at its flagship project,
Sukari. The company looks forward however to a speedy resolution to the current uncertainty
and remains confident that such resolution will not negatively impact on the company's
investment." Other miners are going well with Kazakhmys and Antofagasta the top risers.
In expected company news, BP has resumed dividend payments, as expected, with a fourth
quarter pay-out of 7c. But it also sprang a small surprise with the announcement of a
decision to sell half of its US refining capacity including the troubled Texas City refinery.
Booming demand for mobile phones, tablet computers and other low- powered devices meant 2010
saw the highest ever annual revenues, profits and cash generation for chip designer ARM
Holdings. Underlying fourth quarter profits jumped 47% to £47.6m from £32.3m, helping to lift
the full year total by 73% to £167.4m.
Finally, mining giant Xstrata produced more coking coal, semi-soft coking coal, mined nickel
and refined nickel in 2010 than ever before, while copper, lead and ferrochrome were all up
on the year before.The Anglo-Swiss firm ramped up output of Australian coking coal to 7.7m
tonnes from 6.4m in 2009.
THE FTSE 100 AT 9.30 IS UP 14 @ 5877
THE DOW JONES CLOSED UP 68 @ 11,891
THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 13 @ 2700
Exchange Rates
GBP – USD 1.60
GBP - EURO 1.17
Tuesday 1st, February 2011 10:11pm.
