Last week brought to an end the immediate panic over the US budget deadlock, and the FTSE 100 (FTSEINDICES: ^FTSE) made a 135-point recovery overall to end the week at 6,623. The index of top UK shares gained a further 21 points in early trading today to reach a one-month high of 6,644, with the miners starting the week in positive territory.
Which of last week’s biggest winners are looking good? Here are three which are surely worth closer attention:
British Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group (LSE: BSY) (NASDAQOTH: BSYBY.US) brushed aside fears of being overtaken by sports-channel upstart BT Group, releasing impressive take-up figures for the quarter to 30 September. The company enjoyed 111,000 net new subscribers to its broadband service, taking the total to over five million. The number of subscribed Sky+HD boxes also grew, by 642,000 to 3.4 million.
Revenue was up 8% to £1.84bn, and though operating profit fell 8%, that was expected due to the investment cost of new services.
The share price? Up 55p (6.3%) on the week to 928p.
Travis Perkins
Shares in building and plumbing merchant Travis Perkins (LSE: TPK) are up more than 60% over the past 12 months, after a rise of 113p (6.7%) last week to 1,791p.
The latest gain was driven by a Q3 update telling us of “encouraging sales momentum in the third quarter“. Total sales were up 8.6%, dropping slightly to 7.1% when the different number of trading days is accounted for, and up 6.3% on a like-for-like basis. By whatever measure, that’s good progress.
The shares are on a forward P/E of about 18 now, but the company did confirm it is on for earnings per share of around 100p, and there’s further growth forecast for 2014 too.
Bellway
The latest moves in the government’s ‘Help to Buy’ mortgage scheme have given all of our housebuilders a boost of late, with Bellway (LSE: BWY) leading the sector last week with a 162p (12%) jump to 1,517p.
Full-year results released on 15 October were good, with revenue up 10.6% and pre-tax profit up 33.8%, after the number of homes sold rose by 8.2% to 5,652 with the average selling price up 3.4% to £193,025.
With earnings per share up 36.3%, the dividend was lifted 50% to 30p per share.