FTSE 250 movers: Petra Diamonds sparkles, while profit-taking continues in Hunting

Shares in Petra Diamonds shined bright at the start of the week as the outfit reported what one analyst described as first quarter results which were "very much in-line" with expectations.

Significantly, the company said it was still on track to turn cash-flow positive in the first half of the 2017 financial year, as its capital expenditures decline. Full-year production guidance was also unchanged at between 4.4m ct and 4.6m ct.

Wizz Air was caught in the updraft from a positive recommendation change from UBS on rival easyJet.

The Swiss broker upped its view on the stock of the budget airline carrier from 'neutral' to 'buy', although it trimmed its target price from 1,070p to 1,050p.

"Shares are pricing in material future value destruction – we don’t think this will be the case," analyst Jarrod Castle said in a research report dated 24 October.

Castle also said the stock now looked "attractive" following its "material" de-rating and the risks to the carrier's 2017 earnings forecasts now looked "balanced".

NCC and Hunting were among the worst performers to the downside on follow-through selling from the previous week.

Stock in cyber security and risk mitigation group NCC continued to slide after warning on 20 October that profit growth would be "more biased towards the second half of the year than initially expected".

On that occassion, management warned that profits growth will be hit by "a number of setbacks" in its core IT assurance division that included the cancellation of three large contracts, the deferral of another and delays with renewals of some contracts in managed services.

Hunting meantime continued to fall back after analysts at UBS called time on share price gains for the European oilfield services sector - after an approximate 30% rise since January - in a note issued on 21 October.

In the previous week, stock in Hunting had reached the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the share price plunge seen since October 2014.