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Market movers: AstraZeneca, Mirada, Northern Bear, Ryanair, Shaft Sinkers, Tungsten, Weatherly Intl

Published: 18:11 19 May 2014 AEST

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Footsie has started the week on the retreat, not helped by AstraZeneca (LON:AZN), which is lower after the Astra board rejected the final offer from Pfizer.

The FTSE 100 is down 33 points, or 0.5%, at 6,823, with fallers outnumbering risers among the index’s constituents by around three-to-one.

Astra is off 13.6% at 4,167.5p, after US rival Pfizer’s £55 a share offer did not prove to be high enough to persuade the UK company’s board to recommend a takeover.

Pfizer has said the offer is a final one and that it will not proceed without the recommendation of the Astra board, so that looks like the end of the affair unless a third party enters the fray or Astra has a change of heart.

No-frills airline Ryanair (LON:RYA) is flying high, up 5.5% at 6.70p, despite full-year results showing a fall in profit before tax to €591mln from €651mln the year before.

The company said it expects its traffic in the current financial year (to end-March) to grow by 4% to more than 84.6mln, as load factors increase by a couple of percentage points to 85%.

The bullish outlook boosted rival easyJet (LON:EZJ), making easyJet the best performing blue-chip, up 2.6%.

Among the small caps, Northern Bear (LON:NTBR), up 31%, is the best performing stock after a trading update. Surface coatings firm Hardide (LON:HDD) is the second best performer, up 16.7%, while Ceb Resources (LON:CEB) is third best, up 15.3%, after an investment update.

Lurking just outside the top three is Mirada (LON:MIRA), which is 13.9% higher at 16.375p, after landing its biggest ever contract. It has landed a multi-million dollar contract “with a large established Latin American digital TV operator”.

Weatherly International (LON:WTI) is 10.5% higher at 2.625p, after an updated financial model put a price tag of US$132.7mln on its Tschudi copper project in Namibia.

Electronic invoicing company Tungsten (LON:TUNG) advances 4.3% to 219.75p after it landed a significant new customer. Industrial holding company GE has agreed a multi-year deal to take the AIM-listed group’s electronic invoicing into all its global operations.

On the downside, Shaft Sinkers (LON:SHFT) is going down after it said it is mulling the sale of assets to clients, disposal of surplus property, measures to reduce the recovery cycle of receivables and the deferral of non-essential expenditure.

Shares are down 10% as the company revealed losses widened last year to £2.7mln from £2.0mln.

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