Bellway, BPI and CloudTag

“Equities were down in lunchtime trading with a fall in the UK trade deficit outweighed by warnings over the European economy by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi and billionaire hedge-fund founder George Soros and retreating oil prices,” says AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.

“House-builder Bellway is on track for a record year and has seen no impact from EU referendum jitters but its shares slipped back following a survey which suggests there could be temporary fall in house prices.

“While the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ report does not signal a fundamental shift in sentiment, it does herald the first cooling in the sector since November 2012 and it was enough to make investors sit up and take note. It will be interesting to see whether there is a lasting effect when Bellway’s fellow house-builders Berkeley and Crest Nicholson report their results next week. Bellway’s shares fell by more than 2% before recovering ground and were down 0.65% in lunchtime trading.

“British Polythene Industries’ shares surged on a recommended offer from RPC Group. The cash and shares offer values BPI at around £261m and represents a premium of about 32% to last night’s closing price. BPI has a strong product portfolio with attractive market positions in its core markets in Europe and a combination with RPC is an excellent strategic fit, broadening its range of polymer conversion technologies in line with global peers. BPI’s shares rose by more than 33%.

“Health and wellbeing monitoring specialist CloudTag’s shares jumped as it prepares to roll-out its products through a number of high street and online retailers. It is also holding talks with Amazon. CloudTag stopped short of identifying the outlets but dropped some heavy hints by confirming that they include the largest employee-owned UK department store, the UK's largest mobile network operator and internet service provider and one of Germany's largest department chains. The initial sales focus will be on the UK and Germany. CloudTag was up by over 28% in lunchtime trading.”

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