The FTSE 100 (FTSEINDICES: ^FTSE) gained another 6 points to 6,591 this morning after yesterday’s rise on the back of the US Federal Reserve’s decision to cut back its bond-buying. The UK’s top index is now up 151 points since last Friday’s close and looks set for a final winning week before Christmas, following on from six weeks of losses in a row.
Which shares are failing to keep up today? Here are three from the various FTSE indices:
BAE Systems
BAE Systems (LSE: BA) (NASDAQOTH: BAESY.US) shares slumped 21.5p (4.9%) to 420p this morning after the firm told us a deal with the United Arab Emirates is off.
The aerospace and defence engineer had been in talks with the UAE with the hope of securing a defence contract which would have included the sale of Typhoon aircraft, but the UAE has decided not to proceed.
BAE also reminded us that its pricing negotiations with Saudi Arabia over its Salam Typhoon agreement have yet to be finalised, and if an agreement is not reached early in 2014 it will impact this year’s earnings per share by 6-7%. But as a long-term holder for the Fool’s Beginners’ Portfolio, I’m not too bothered about such short-term timing.
Inmarsat
Inmarsat (LSE: ISAT) shares have been up nicely since the successful launch of the firm’s first Global Xpress satellite, and yesterday afternoon we heard news of a further project development — Inmarsat has agreed a strategic distribution partnership with space company Astrium Services, making Global Xpress services available to Astrium’s partners and customers.
Inmarsat shares climbed a little yesterday on the news, but today they’ve dropped back a bit, by 8.5p (1.1%) to 751p — but we’ve still seen a gain of more than 25% over the past 12 months.
British Polythene Industries
For bigger falls today we have to look to smaller companies, and we see British Polythene Industries (LSE: BPI) down 45p (6.6%) to 639p. But that does come after a strong bull run and the shares are still up around 65% over the past 12 months.
The cause of today’s fall was a bit of bad news contained in the firm’s pre-close update this morning. Although full-year results to 31 December should be “broadly in line with current market forecasts“, the company expects to incur about £1m in restructuring costs due to the loss of a contract with a “major UK bakery“, and there will be 90 redundancies.
