Sirius Minerals (SXX) has launched an internal investigation after a senior worker was allegedly heard discussing the controversial takeover by Anglo American (AAL) with a hotel barmaid before it was publicly announced. Local resident and Sirius shareholder Andrew Green claims that on January 7 – the day before Sirius told the stock market about the takeover of the struggling potash mine in Yorkshire – he heard an employee loudly talking about a deal with Anglo American that was going to be revealed ‘as soon as tomorrow’. Green’s allegations come as the mining company fields criticism for a spike in its share price on January 7 – the same day he overheard the brazen pub conversation.
Bosses at Dixons Carphone (DC.) were left red-faced yesterday after they were forced to issue a correction to its Christmas sales figures. At 7am the owner of Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse published an upbeat trading statement declaring group revenues had climbed by 2%. Shares rose sharply on the back of the update as booming demand for large televisions, Dyson hairdryers and Shark vacuum cleaners offset a slump in demand for mobile phones. But at 1.40pm, almost seven hours after the initial announcement, Dixons admitted there had been a ‘clerical error’ and sales had in fact fallen 2% in the ten weeks to January 4. It is understood that chief executive Alex Baldock and finance chief Jonny Mason, as well as public relations staff, reviewed the statement before it was published but did not see the error.
The chief financial officer of BP (BP.), Brian Gilvary, has announced he is to retire from the company after eight years in his position. Gilvary will be replaced by the company’s Upstream CFO Murray Auchinloss at the end of June after spending more than three decades at the firm. His departure comes just a fortnight before the retirement of the energy giant’s chief executive officer Bob Dudley. The two men have overseen the recovery of BP from the costly environmentally-damaging Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) is to lay off hundreds more managers as part of a half-billion pound cost-saving drive. The job losses will come on top of cuts made last year which eliminated 20% of the grocer’s senior leadership team. The latest wave of departures comes as a result of the further integration of Sainsbury’s with Argos, the consumer electronics and homeware group that it bought for £1.4billion in 2016. In particular, there will be moves to reduce the payroll by fusing more teams in the commercial, retail, financial, digital, technology and human resources departments. Sainsbury’s declined to put a figure on the number of jobs lost in the original 20% reduction in management headcount, and yesterday would say only that the new cuts would run into the hundreds.
Retail chain Joules Group (JOUL) has blamed a hit to its sales on the timing of Black Friday, less than two weeks after poor Christmas trading saw it warn over annual profits. The group posted a 10% fall in underlying pre-tax profits to £8.4million for the 26 weeks to November 24. It said that, with the Black Friday week included, retail sales actually rose 3.1%. But statutory profits fell a whopping 82% to £1million as they were also affected by the costs of closing stores and its new head office.
TalkTalk Telecom Group (TALK) has sold its fibre networks roll-out business to CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings (CITY) for £200million. The deal for Fibrenation was supposed to be completed last year, but was delayed following Labour’s announcement that it planned to nationalise parts of BT if it won the general election. But it has now been finalised and makes Cityfibre the UK’s third-largest digital infrastructure platform behind Virgin and BT. Greg Mesch, chief executive of Goldman Sachs-backed Cityfibre, said: ‘The UK is a service-based economy, and this runs best on full fibre.’ He continued: ‘Ensuring national coverage is critical and this can only be achieved by driving infrastructure competition at scale. This deal demonstrates the appetite from industry to see it established.’
easyJet (EZJ) said it saw an increase in sales in the later part of last year as it gained business following the collapse of travel agent Thomas Cook. The budget airline has now upped its revenue guidance for the year. Chief executive Johan Lundgren said the low-cost airline believes per-seat revenue grew by 1.5% because of the problems Thomas Cook faced, with overall revenue per seat increasing by 8.8% to £58.63 in the three months to December 31. The company also said that new initiatives to sell more luggage space, and allocated seats, as well as offering car rentals from a partner, helped push up revenues. Easyjet said 22.2 million passengers flew on its planes in the quarter, an increase of 2.8% compared with the same period a year earlier.
Sales of supersize televisions, Shark vacuum cleaners and fitness-related gadgets helped Dixons Carphone (DC.) to record a small growth in its electrical division over the Christmas period. Overall sales at the high street giant remained lackluster however, as it continues to struggle with its mobile phone arm. The retailer initially said sales rose 2% on a like-for-like basis in the ten weeks to January 4 with 8,000 smart speakers being sold each day and record purchases of items including Fitbits and Apple Airpods. Embarrassingly, it had to reissue the Christmas trading figures to say sales went down 2%, not up. Overall revenue growth was held back by the drop in the continuous decline in mobile phone sales at Carphone Warehouse, which slumped 9% in the ten week period. Chief executive Alex Baldock has previously said the mobile phone sector ‘was a ‘challenging’ market.
Bluerock Diamonds (BRD) sparkled after it booked revenue of £4.1million last year, up 190%. In the second half of 2019, the miner also turned a profit for the first time, it said in a trading statement. The success was based on the sale of 12,675 carats from the Kareevlei mine in South Africa, which more than doubled the output of the previous year. Grades and price per carat also improved.
