Settlement Date: February 26th: Shares lost ground yesterday, despite a pick-up in overseas markets, in a lacklustre session where Bank of Ireland was the only stock to record volumes of more than one million shares traded.
"It's all very quiet. There have been no special features. There may be more investor interest next week when a number of companies release results," one dealer said.
Among those set to publish figures next week are Kerry Group, Paddy Power and Readymix, all of which release results on Tuesday, followed by Trintech on Wednesday. Fyffes and Norish publish on Thursday, and McInerney on Friday.
However, there was little activity in any of these shares ahead of the results with Kerry closing just one cent higher at €11.50, Fyffes off a cent to €1.27 and Paddy Power two cents lower at €5.15.
Among the banking stocks, AIB was unchanged at €12.50 as less than 700,000 shares traded, Bank of Ireland shed 15 cents to €10.20 and Anglo Irish Bank lost eight cents to €6.22. Irish Life & Permanent was also weaker, closing 13 cents lower at €9.62 while First Active gave up Thursday's 20-cent gain to close at €5.50.
Industrial stocks turned in a mixed performance as CRH lost 10 cents to €11.85 but Ryanair added eight cents to €6.65.
DCC continued to suffer, losing a further 12 cents to €9.48 as dealers said it was hit by weakness in UK stocks involved in the information technology sector.
Kingspan, which boasted the second-highest volume on the Irish market with more than 800,000 shares traded, added four cents to €1.70. Arnotts shares fell back by 25 cents to €12.50 while the absence of a rival offer for Riverdeep had limited impact as the stock lost two cents to €1.36.
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