Yesterday saw the FTSE 100 (FTSEINDICES: ^FTSE) end the day 74 points down, though it had dipped lower during the day. But the panic has been partly forgotten today, as the top-tier index has regained 58 points to reach 6,288 by mid-morning. The miners are picking up a little after yesterday’s punishment, but there are still fears concerning Portugal, whose borrowing costs are rising.
But which individual shares are boosting the FTSE indices? Here are three that are off to a good start:
easyJet
June passenger statistics helped push shares in easyJet (LSE: EZJ) even higher this morning, providing a 24p (1.8%) boost to 1,344p — The shares price is now up nearly 150% over the past 12 months, and has more than trebled over two years.
For June itself, passenger numbers grew by 1.9% to 5.54 million, with a consistent load factor of 89.9% — and that comes in spite of 585 flight cancellations during the month, mainly as a result of the French Air Traffic Control strike. Over a rolling 12-month period, the budget airline carried 60.1 million passengers, up 4.9% compared to the same period to June 2012.
Taylor Wimpey
A trading update from Taylor Wimpey (LSE: TW), ahead of first-half results, gave the housebuilder’s share price a boost — and news from the Halifax that house prices are rising at their highest rate for nearly three years didn’t do any harm.
After the company told us that it has “traded at the upper end of our expectations” and said it expects to report an operating profit margin of over 13%, the shares put on 3.25p (3.4%) to 100.2p. As we have been hearing from others in the sector, mortgages are becoming more easily available and confidence appears to be returning.
Taylor Wimpey’s first-half report should be with us on 31 July.
Redrow
Redrow (LSE: RDW) went one better, with a 10.1p (4.5%) rise to 232p, after it also released a trading update — this time ahead of full-year results due on 18 September. With a 15% rise in the number of homes completed to 2,827 and average selling prices up 11% to £227,300, Redrow saw revenue for the year boosted by 26% to £604.8m.
Profit for the year will now be above the top end of the current range of forecasts, which vary between £52m and £61m. So it’s now looking like the shares will be on a P/E of 14 or less, based on those results.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.