FTSE 250 movers: Oil stocks gush ahead while Cranswick loses out

The FTSE 250 index rose 0.13% to 17,457.33 in the late afternoon.

Oil prices continued their steady advance following OPEC’s decision to cut its production by 1.2m barrels a day, propping up shares in Tullow Oil, Vedanta Resources (VR) and Petrofac on Monday. Goldman Sachs maintained its ‘buy’ recommendation for VR and kept its price target at 1,300p. Citibank on the other hand maintained its rating for VR at ‘Neutral/High Risk’ but upped its price target to £9.30 from £6.60.

Copper miner Kaz Minerals enjoyed a boost from a 2.90% jump in copper prices. Separately, analysts at Citi rated the miner at ‘Buy’ with a price target of £4.50. “Following the restructuring in 2014, the group has an entirely new investment proposition for the market with high growth, low cost, long life, cash generating company,” they said.

The yellow metal on the other hand fell by 1.41% sending shares in gold miner Centamin down.

Cranswick was on the back foot as Numis downgraded its stock to ‘hold’ from ‘add’ and cut the target price to 2,311p from 2,536p. While the company last week revealed a strong set of first half results, Numis noted the market's increased wariness of consumer-related stocks.

Inter-dealer money broker Tullett Prebon was also downgraded by HSBC to ‘hold’ from buy’ but raised the target price to 480p from 460p, sending its shares lower.

“While still having above-consensus forecasts, we now see relatively limited upside of 8% for the shares despite several earnings upgrades in the past several months and therefore downgrade shares to Hold,” said HSBC.

G4S gave back some of the gains from last week when it was rated ‘neutral’ by Goldman Sachs with a price target of 258p. On Friday, it announced that it had agreed to sell its Israeli arm G4S Israel to private equity firm FIMI Opportunity Funds for an estimated net consideration of 425 million new Israeli Sheqel (£88m) in cash.

Risers

Vedanta Resources (VED) 884.00p 4.49%
Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 390.90p 4.16%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 325.80p 3.56%
Computacenter (CCC) 753.00p 3.36%
Carillion (CLLN) 253.00p 3.31%
Aldermore Group (ALD) 222.70p 3.29%
Morgan Advanced Materials (MGAM) 290.10p 3.24%
Debenhams (DEB) 58.10p 3.20%
Laird (LRD) 142.50p 3.19%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 809.50p 2.53%

Fallers

Euromoney Institutional Investor (ERM) 1,100.00p -4.26%
G4S (GFS) 233.90p -3.78%
Grafton Group Units (GFTU) 513.00p -3.57%
Fisher (James) & Sons (FSJ) 1,620.00p -3.51%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 125.70p -3.01%
Cranswick (CWK) 2,166.00p -2.91%
Kennedy Wilson Europe Real Estate (KWE) 967.00p -2.57%
Tullett Prebon (TLPR) 436.20p -2.57%
Pennon Group (PNN) 773.50p -2.46%
Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 265.80p -2.42%