ANOTHER little bit of history was made on the stock market when Kerry became only the sixth Irish company to be worth more than a billion pounds. A 10p rise to a new high of 620p pushed Kerry to a market capitalisation of £1.015 billion, and brings it into an elite group, which includes AIB, Bank of Ireland, CRH, Smurfit and Elan.
Otherwise, it was a case of stronger industrials and financials doing nothing of note. Among the industrials, CRH was in demand once again and jumped 3p to 590p while Smurfit added 3p to 170p. Despite the current uncertainty over the impact of milk price on corporate earnings, Avonmore jumped 7 1/2p in late trading to 152 1/2p, while the other dairy stocks were unchanged.
DCC continued the tidying up of its subsidiaries with the buyout of the Fannin minorities for £1.46 million worth of DCC shares. The market has shown its approval of this more concentrated focus by DCC and shoved the shares up 8p to 260p, a new high.
The £30 million rights issue from Green took the market by surprise, but the fund raising and new acquisition in Britain received a vote of confidence. At a closing price of 235p, down 7p on the day, Green is trading above its ex rights price of 231 1/2p.
Greencore dropped 5p to 300p and some of the fizz seems to have gone out of the share, but Kingspan remained in demand and closed up 5p on 315p.
