Market report: S4 Capital soared 12% after boss Sir Martin Sorrell said it would finally publish the company’s full-year advertising results
Sir Martin Sorrell Investors have been put on alert after S4 Capital said it would finally publish long-awaited full-year results.
The advertising mogul, 77, was forced to delay publication twice in March — sending the company’s shares into a tailspin.
But S4 said it will finally release the numbers today. Shares rose 12 percent, or 35 pence, to 326 pence.
Advertising guru: Sir Martin Sorrell (pictured) was forced to delay publishing S4 Capital’s full-year results twice in March – sending the company’s shares plummeting
The digital advertising agency has come under increased scrutiny due to the delay in publishing its findings.
The figures were due March 18, but its auditor PwC said it was unable to complete the “necessary work” and delayed publication to the last day of the month.
Then, in an update on March 30, S4 said PwC had refused to sign off on its accounts, delaying its results for a second time.
Sorrell, who is the digital advertising company’s largest shareholder with a stake of nearly 10 percent, launched S4 in 2018 after his acrimonious departure from WPP.
Clients include tech giants Google, Apple, Netflix and German automaker BMW.
The digital advertising agency employs over 7,500 people in 33 countries and reached £1 billion in just one year.
Sorrell previously warned that he was considering moving his digital ad agency from London to Wall Street because it would “get a better valuation”. Shares in WPP fell 0.3 percent, or 3 points, to 1,009.5 pence.
View photo gallery – Helios Towers
Involved in Helios Towers jumped after revenues for the first three months of this year rose by more than a fifth compared to a year earlier.
In its trading update, the telephone mast operator’s sales for the first quarter came to £103m – compared to £84m in the same period in 2021.
FTSE operates 250 masts providing mobile signals in eight African countries and has hailed success in three new markets – Senegal, Madagascar and Malawi.
Shares rose 3.5 percent, or 3.9 pence, to 114 pence.
While Sorrell’s announcement made ripples in the market, today it belonged to the Bank of England.
Threadneedle Street made headlines by raising interest rates to a 13-year high of 1 per cent and warning that Britain was heading towards recession with inflation hovering above 10 per cent.
The update from the bank came after the US central bank – the Federal Reserve – raised interest rates by 0.5 percentage point Thursday night. It was the largest increase in US rates since 2000.
Despite the interest rate hike, the FTSE 100 rose 0.1 percent, or 9.82 points, to 7,503.27, but the FTSE 250 fell 0.6 percent, or 129.52 points, to 20,089.96.
London-listed Canadian Endeavor Mining was among the blue-chip index winners after it beat analyst estimates for the first quarter.
In a trading update for the first three months of the year, the gold miner’s adjusted net profit was £98.32m – from £81.41m a year earlier.
Sebastian de Montesos, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said the company started the year on a “strong footing” and hailed the fact that more than £80.84m was returned to shareholders during the period through dividends and buybacks.
Shares rose 4.2 percent, or 81 pence, to 2,022 pence. Mondi packaging, which said it would abandon its Russian operations in light of the war in Ukraine, also came forward.
The group’s trading update exceeded market expectations and led to its rating being upgraded to “overweight” with shares rising 4.3 percent, or 64.5 points, to 1,566.5 points.
But Barratt Developments’ fortunes have been mixed.
Shares in the FTSE 100 homebuilder rose 0.8 percent, or 3.7 pence, to 488.1 points after the group reiterated its desire to complete between 18,000 and 18,250 homes for the full year.
Despite this, the Barratt Trade Modernization also criticized the “unfair and disproportionate” manner in which the government planned to expand the tax to fund fire safety reforms.
The plans were described as “further punishing home builders who were not responsible for most of the historic buildings or building safety issues being addressed.”
Shares of drug group Hikma fell sharply, down 9 per cent, or 167 pence, to 1,685.5 pence, after it announced that the launch of narcolepsy drug Xyrem had been delayed.
