Market report: WPP finds its rival is a good advert for prospects in UK

Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP was boosted by good results from French rival Publicis
REUTERS
Jamie Nimmo20 April 2017

Advertising moguls Sir Martin Sorrell and Maurice Lévy famously don’t see eye to eye, but the WPP boss had his peer at Publicis to thank today for helping his company’s share price rise.

The French firm’s first-quarter results beat analyst expectations, with a particularly strong performance in the UK, which is WPP’s second-biggest market by sales after the US.

Shares in WPP tracked their French rival’s higher, climbing 21p to 1707p, helping it to recover from the losses made on Tuesday when rival Omnicom, whose merger with Publicis fell through in 2014, said business in the US was tough going.

Though not a huge gain, WPP’s increase put it among the biggest risers on the FTSE 100, which spent its fifth session in a row in the red as it retreated 10.77 points to 7103.59.

Energy shares were again on the back foot as investors reacted to yesterday’s oil price slump, caused by the Energy Information Administration reporting a surge in US output.

Today, Brent crude recovered 41 cents to $53.34 a barrel, but the UK’s oil heavyweights Royal Dutch Shell, down 6p at 2061p, and BP, off 3.1p at 44.7p, were still out of favour.

Equipment hire group Ashtead has ridden the wave of Donald Trump’s election as President, with investors eyeing it as the big winner from his proposed $1 trillion infrastructure budget.

But the shares fell 72p, or 4.4%, to 1552p as larger rival United Rentals missed Wall Street forecasts when rentals rates fell with no sign of Trump’s supposed spending spree.

Acacia Mining shed 17.3p to 438.4p as it revealed the Tanzanian ban on exports of gold concentrates hit cashflows by $33 million in the first three months of 2017.

Another director share sale damaged AIM-listed online estate agent Purplebricks, which dipped 3p to 284p after its recent shares surge.

FIH Group was marked down 2.9p to 304.1p after revealing weak trading in the Falklands, which will mean annual profits will be 20%-25% lower than last year.

It comes after the Rowland family’s £37 million bid, spearheaded by executive chairman Edmund, failed to win over shareholders this month, while Argentine tycoon Eduardo Elsztain pulled out of tabling an offer amid local opposition.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in