Today I am looking at four London laggards set for fresh turmoil.
Monitise
Shares in payment specialists Monitise (LSE: MONI) have crashed a whopping 45% during the past four weeks, and I believe investors should be braced for even more pain. The company’s full-year results earlier this month showed revenues dip 6% during the 12 months to June 2015, to £89.7m, causing adjusted losses to widen to £55.3m from £43.7m previously.
Worryingly, the firm advised that revenue growth is not expected in the current year, a perilous situation given the firm’s cash-hungry processes. Huge uncertainty continues to surround Monitise’s decision to depart from developing bespoke systems to designing standardised platforms, while the departure of CEO Elizabeth Buse adds another element of confusion over the tech play’s future.
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With financial giant Visa also cutting its ties with the firm, and a cluster of competitors like Apple and Google upping the pressure, I believe investors should continue to give Monitise the cold shoulder.
Standard Chartered
Fresh concerns over a Chinese economic ‘hard landing’ have kept Standard Chartered (LSE: STAN) under the cosh during the past month, and a 10% slide since the latter stages of August have added to the steady share price slide of recent years. And I cannot envisage market sentiment picking up any time soon as the bank struggles to transform its ailing emerging region businesses.
While StanChart continues to suffer from hefty impairments and falling revenues across its Asian units, it also faces the prospect of crippling fines thanks to previous sanctions breaches. Indeed, the Financial Times reported just today that the bank still courted business from Iran as recent as 2009, two years after the firm agreed to halt such actions. With fears over the balance sheet still fuelling rumours of a capital placing, I believe shares in Standard Chartered have the potential to fall much further.
Petra Diamonds
Precious stones producer Petra Diamonds (LSE: PDL) has seen its share price shuttle still further over the past four weeks — the stock has shed some 33% of its value during the period. And with good reason: smaller quantities of large stones and lower ore quality caused revenues to slip 10% in the year to June 2015.
Even though Petra Diamonds expects production to rise to between 3.3 million and 3.4 million carats in the current period, up from 3.2 million last year, further production problems could result in more sickly sales numbers. On top of this, the business advised that “volatility in the broader rough diamond market” could cause the diamond price projections it made made back in July to come unstuck. Although Petra Diamonds has big expansion plans, I believe the firm’s unenviable record of missing its targets makes it a poor pick for risk-intolerant investors.
Premier Oil
As conditions in the oil market continue to worsen, I believe Premier Oil (LSE: PMO) is likely to endure further share price problems – -the oil explorer has fallen 29% since the corresponding point in August. Even though latest Baker Hughes data showed US rig numbers fall for a third straight time last week, production from the country’s most productive fields still continues to rise. And as we have seen before, any recovery in the Brent price is likely to prompt operators to plug their hardware back into the ground.
With OPEC output also increasing, and the sluggish global economy failing to pick up the slack, I reckon the top line at Premier Oil — not to mention economic appeal of its cost-intensive projects in the North Sea — is likely to come under fresh waves of pressure. With drilling data from the firm this month also disappointing the market, I believe the fossil fuel play lacks the necessary drivers to pull itself up by the bootstraps.
