Sticky second quarter for listed firms

THE region’s listed companies suffered a second quarter slump, and collectively lost more than £1bn of their collective market capitalisation.

Research from Deloitte’s North West Share Index shows that most companies in the region struggled in the three months to the end of June, declining on average by 4.25%.

As a result, the total market value of North West companies dipped to £24bn, with each company losing an average of £13.6m. In contrast, the FTSE overall saw growth of 0.44%.
 
Some fared well though. AIM-listed tiddler Bglobal, was the best perfomer as its shares rose 88% after selling Utiligroup to private equity firm NorthEdge.

Trafford Park-based Grafenia, the business previously known as Printing.com,  green energy plant developer TEG Group and industrial services provider to the engineering, agriculture and food sectors, Carr’s Milling, all saw growth of between 25 and 45%.
 
The region’s largest listed companies, those on the FTSE350, were the major under-performers, with six of the nine experiencing market cap decline. Despite these six losing a combined total of over £1.1bn, the United Utilities – one the the biggest listed firms in the region, was up 12%.

The three poorest performing stocks according to Deloitte’s research in the period were: Outsourcey (-77.99%), Clean Air Power (-55.42%), and Tertiary Minerals (-53.6%)

Chris Robertson, partner in charge of PLC activity at Deloitte in the North West, said: “It has been an exciting time in the public markets, with some high profile national and regional floats and huge attention being paid to what’s happening by the media.

“Much has been written about the performance of newly quoted companies in the period post-flotation. At an individual company level, share price experience has inevitably been mixed, however contrary to much of what has been written, in aggregate, share price performance of recently quoted companies has outperformed the FTSE100 over the equivalent periods.
 
“We now enter the traditionally more quiet summer months. It will be interesting to see whether activity levels return after the summer break to the same levels witnessed in the last few months. We continue to see a strong pipeline of businesses looking very seriously at capital markets, with potential activity later this year provided market sentiment remains high.”