CRH drags Dublin market lower

Despite a rare good day for the main banks CRH has dragged the market into negative territory today after saying it expected a “high single digit percentage decline” in pretax profits.

At 12.39pm the Iseq index of Irish shares was 1.5 per cent lower at 5,001.

CRH shares have fallen over 10 per cent to €15.53, bringing its fall this year to date to 35 per cent, almost all of which has occurred in the last month.

CRH said today it expects pre-tax profits of €600 billion for the first half of 2008, down from the figure of €670 million for the first half of 2007. This includes a loss of around €20 million due to the weak dollar.

With reassuring noises coming from Deutsche Bank and UBS with regard to their liquidity requirements, European banking stocks were broadly higher today and Irish banks rose with them.

After a torrid couple of days most of the main banks were ahead, with Bank of Ireland up over 4 per cent at €5.62; AIB rising 2 per cent to €9.70 while Irish Life & Permanent added just over 1 per cent to €6.29.

The exception was Anglo Irish Bank which saw its stock ease down 0.5 per cent by midday to €5.79.

With weak data dominating the UK construction sector Irish building stocks were lower today. Abbey was down 12 per cent to €3.45, Grafton off 7 per cent to €3.29 and McInerney down over 24 per cent at €0.37. 

There was more selling of Greencore today sending its shares down 4.6 per cent to €1.85 and Independent News and Media stock was down over 5.5 per cent at €1.42 on fears over the robustness of the UK advertising market.

With grim Exchequer data expected later today, the European Central Bank almost certain to raise rates tomorrow and jobs data from the US and Ireland on Friday, dealers said the market mood was "grim".

"It is a cliché, but there are just far more sellers than buyers at the moment", said one.