Engineer soars as weak pound boosts its profits

THE weak pound helped catapult engineering giant towards the top of the

The British firm more than doubled its profits in the first half of the year, largely due to the favourable exchange rate and strong sales of its security sensors and X-ray detectors.

Profits increased to £346m in the six months to January 31 from £168m a year before.

Sales jumped 18pc to £1.6bn in the same period – though remained flat on an underlying basis, in line with expectations.

Smiths Group has diversified its business from its humble beginnings as a jewellery shop in 1851.

It’s now made up of five divisions: John Crane, which provides energy services to customers, Smiths Medical, which supplies medical products, Smiths Detection, which manufactures and detects weaponry, Smiths Interconnect, a wireless provider, and its engineering arm Flex-Tek.

Analysts have long called for the business to separate due to its varied product portfolio but chief executive Andrew Reynolds Smith, who joined in 2015, has maintained his mandate is to build, rather than break down, the firm. He said yesterday that performance was good, despite flat sales, and the group is now implementing measures that it believes will help it achieve world- class competitiveness.

The board also raised the interim dividend by 2.3pc to 13.55p a share and it was enough to keep investors happy, sending shares up 2.9pc, or 45p, to 1601p.

Shares in BT, however, sunk after Ofcom said it would introduce mandatory compensation charges to telecoms firms for service outages and sloppy customer care. The regulator said the measure would require providers to pay compensation, either in cash or by adding credits to customer accounts, for slow repairs or missed deadlines.

It estimates that as many as 2.6m customers could receive up to a total of £185m in compensation payments each year under the scheme. Shares fell 1.7pc, or 5.75p, to 325.65p as a result, sending the FTSE 100 down 0.05pc, or 3.89 points lower, to 7336.82.

Struggling Restaurant Group also slipped yesterday after analysts at Berenberg downgraded its rating from ‘Hold’ to ‘Sell’.

The group, which owns wellknown brands like Frankie & Benny’s, Garfunkel’s and Chiquito, fell 2.9pc, or 10.1p, to 341.5p.

Berenberg pointed to the group’s weak set of financial results last year, where profits fell 11.2pc to £77.1m and sales across restaurants open for more than a year fell 3.9pc to £710.7m. Gift wrap and greetings card group IG

Design’s shares were up after it forecast record full-year revenues of more than £300m and said profitability is also expected to be ahead of current forecasts.

Not only has the group, formerly known as International Greetings, surpassed historical revenue levels, but it is now significantly derisked, with lower average debt and improved geographic and product diversity. Shares were up 15.3pc, or 40.5p, to 305p.

Low- cost flyer FastJet nudged up after it hired a string of South African airline veterans to bolster its ailing business.

The airline appointed a new nonexecutive chairman, a non-executive director and a new chief financial officer to its board. Shares in the company increased 0.8pc, or 0.1p, to 16.88p.

Philip Byrom, the finance boss of student housing developer

Watkin Jones, cashed in shares for £ 70.4m. It was enough to send the firm down 5.9pc, or 9p, to 144.75p.