Liams Last Post : Rally holds,Sir Anthony retires,Denis win

Good Afternoon,

Well Surprise Surprise , this rally has managed to stay in positive territory for four days since the low of the week was hit on Tuesday. The High of the week though came just before the opening on Wall street which is now down 0.8% on the day at the European close and always has the capacity to surprise on Friday.

The surprise event of the day was the news at INM where Sir Anthony O’Reilly announced his retirement with Gavin taking over as CEO , the most important news was the appointment of three directors representing Denis O’Brien to the Board of INM and a letter of support to the chairman supporting the moves.

The press release from INM is worth reading in its own right for the fulsome praise lavished on Sir Anthony and onto Gavin by the Chairman…INM stock rallied sharply on the news. It has been a binary bet for some time and this move signals the intent of Denis O’Brien to step in and help re-finance the group though how this will be done is not clear. INM closed at 17c +66% today.

The Financials continue to survive as independent entities. AIB today + 8.5% at 51c and Bank of Ireland +17.6% at 28c. Irish Life contnnued its somewhat perverse movements and moved down by 7.5%

In the Building Materials sector , there has been some very sold performance s across the sector this week despite the absence of any significant sector news. The CRH rights issue has been well received and the technical weakness that I had expected came to pass and provided a strong buying opportunity for supporters of the stock to get long as some institutions sold shares to take up their rights. CRH gained +3.6% today , the Nil paid gained +8.7% and Grafton jumped +6.5% and even Kingspan kept climbing to hit 2.50 helped by the strong continuing performance of SIG in the UK.

Elan drifted again however down -4% with the ADR down -5.5% , ICON has been doing ok ader the heavy pullback of the last week and today is up +1.8%
United Drug fell out of bed at the close down -9.4%

C&C continues to hold a new level at the 1.10 , Aryzta roadshow is triggering some profit taking and the stock is down today -2%

Ryanair fell another -1.7% , and Aer Lingus remained friendless at 57c.

At the close of European markets today, Europe remained just about in positive territory +0.3% , London was up+1.2% and the ISEQ was up +1.8%

Have a good evening ,

Good to go home after a relatively better week , Ireland face the Scots tomorrow at 5pm … bring it on.

Liam

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Liam Boggan

Merrion Stockbrokers

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