Online agent claims to be mystified by its 80pc rise

WHAT an incredible two months it has been for Purplebricks, the online estate agent backed by, among others, star fund manager Neil Woodford.

Shares have soared in recent weeks, so much so that the board yesterday felt obliged to comment, with just an hour of trading to go before the stock market closed.

‘Purplebricks notes the recent strong increase in the share price and confirms it is not aware of any reason for the movement,’ it said. ‘Whilst the company has had a good start to the calendar year, the board’s expectations remain unchanged.’

But what triggered the statement? Perhaps it was the rise in the share price from 104p at the start of December and 155.5p at the start of this week to an all-time high of 200p by early afternoon yesterday.

Or perhaps it was a tweet from the company’s official Twitter account on Thursday, stating that January ‘has been a record-breaking month for valuations & instructions’.

Either way, yesterday’s 3.30pm statement was enough to send the shares tumbling, with the stock closing the session down 4.9pc or 9.5p at 183.5p. Not that investors will mind too much given the recent gains. The share price rally of almost 80pc in the last two months has certainly been a boon for brothers Michael and Kenny Bruce who founded the company in 2014.

Michael Bruce, who is chief executive, has seen the value of his stake jump by £34m since early December to £77.4m while his brother’s holding has gained £10.1m to £22.7m.

Away from the shenanigans at Purplebricks, it was a subdued end to the week on stock markets around the world as investors paused for breath following Wall Street’s record breaking feats. The Dow Jones Industrial Aver

age smashed through the 20,000 mark on Wednesday for the first time and closed a nudge above 20,100 on Thursday. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also hit new records.

But Wall Street was treading water in afternoon trading yesterday as the rally ran out of steam.

Back in London, the FTSE 100 index closed up 23 points at 7184.49 while the FTSE 250 was 48.14 points better off at 18,190.

No-frills airline EasyJet suffered a double blow yesterday as it was downgraded by two sets of analysts. Goldman Sachs lowered its rating on the carrier to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’ and cut the target price for its shares to 970p from 1160p.

The bank warned fierce competition in Europe and the fall in the pound – which makes buying fuel more expensive as it is priced in dollars – will put pressure on profits.

EasyJet was also downgraded by analysts at Dublin-based wealth management group Davy, who cut their price target on the shares to 850p from 1100p. ‘We think that EasyJet now has big decisions to make – is it a dividend yield or growth stock?’ the analysts said.

EasyJet shares fell 2.1pc or 21p to 974p, rounding off a difficult week for the airline and its chief

executive Dame Carolyn McCall. Shares fell nearly 9pc on Tuesday after it warned that the weakness of sterling would wipe £105m of its profits in 2017.

Larger rival International Con

solidated Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways and Iberia, fared better, however, after Goldman upgraded it to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ and raised the price target from 490p to 580p.

Goldman reckons IAG is the best placed flag- carrier in Europe to take advantage of trans-Atlantic air travel. In a further boost, Davy raised its price target on IAG to 610p from 460p. The shares rose 1.4pc or 6.7p to 497.9p.

Building services group T Clarke, whose projects include work on the O2 Arena, The Shard and the Olympic Stadium in London, said profits for 2016 ‘are substantially ahead of last year’ – sending its shares up 20.6pc or 12.75p to 74.75p. The rise in profits came despite the firm taking a £2.2m hit after a rogue employee swiped substantial amounts of cash from the company.

‘Legal proceedings to recover the misappropriated funds are ongoing,’ it said.