LONDON -- The FTSE 100 (INDEX: ^FTSE) is having a quiet day following yesterday's Italian election fears, regaining a nominal six points to reach 6,276 by 8:25 a.m. EST. Comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defending U.S. economic-stimulus policy helped halt the slide.
The FTSE is a little off its recent highs, but individual shares are reaching new records every day. Here are three on the up today.
Amlin (LSE: AML)
Amlin shares reached a new 52-week high of 427.5 pence in early trading today before falling back a little to 424 pence. The price is now up 35% from its low of about 310 pence set in June last year.
After recording a loss in 2011, the reinsurance-underwriting specialist is expected to report earnings of 46 pence per share for the year to December 2012, putting the shares on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of a modest nine. There's also a dividend yield of 5.7% penciled in, and it should be nearly twice covered by earnings.
Enterprise Inns (EIG)
Enterprise Inns shares have almost doubled in price over the past 12 months, with a 52-week peak of 107 pence reached this morning. At the time of writing, the price is a couple of pennies off that at 105 pence.
The year to September 2012 brought in a pre-tax profit of just 34 million pounds, but that was better than 2011's pre-tax loss. And January's interim update told us of a poor first 17 weeks of the year, with like-for-like net income down 4.4%. But that should pick up, and the firm told us it is on track to raise 150 million pounds from disposals this year. The shares are on a forward P/E of only about five -- but there is more than 2.5 billion pounds in net debt on the books.
Elementis (ELM -0.85%)
Speciality chemicals manufacturer Elementis saw its shares open on a new high of 246.6 pence this morning before dropping to 242 pence after the company released final results yesterday. That's a nice rise of more than 50% over the past year.
Pre-tax profit was up 5% to $141.2 million, with diluted earnings per share up 12% to $0.23, and the full-year dividend was raised 11% to about $0.08 per share with an additional special dividend of about $0.05 thrown in.
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