CRH drop almost cancels gains made elsewhere

Iseq: 2,758.31 (+12.12) Settlement date: May 25th

ON A relatively flat day for global markets, the Iseq index of Irish shares closed up just shy of half a percentage point, as a fall in the share price of building materials group CRH almost cancelled out gains made elsewhere.

CRH yesterday sold €750 million of five-year bonds, which were six times oversubscribed at a yield of 470 basis points above the benchmark mid-swap rate.

Despite positive sentiment in recent days from two of its retail customers, Home Depot and Lowe’s, the company is exposed to the US residential market, which saw lower than expected activity in April, and CRH’s share price ended the session down 2.5 per cent at €18.14.

Bank of Ireland added to Tuesday’s 24 per cent bounce on the back of its annual results by gaining a further 19.8 per cent yesterday. The bank’s share price, which closed at €1.60, was buoyed by upgrades from analysts at Deutsche Bank, which upgraded the stock from “hold” to “buy”, and Nomura, which lifted its guidance from “reduce” to “neutral”.

The other banks were swept along with tide, with AIB finishing up 6.3 per cent at €1.23 and Irish Life Permanent up 3.2 per cent at €3.10. Insurance group FBD also had a good day, rising 6.3 per cent to €6.75.

CC gained 5 per cent to €2.18 after the release of data showing that its Magners cider posted a month-on-month increase in on-trade volumes of 10 per cent in March. This was ahead of the British cider market’s 9.2 per cent month-on-month increase and the 7.2 per cent month-on-month increase recorded by Heineken.

On a day when Air France KLM announced major job losses and said visibility for the second half of 2009 was low, Aer Lingus managed to post a 5 per cent gain, closing at 64 cent. Meanwhile, Ryanair closed up less than 1 per cent at €3.43.