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Trending: In for a penny, in for a Poundland

Last updated: 10:53 15 Jun 2016 BST, First published: 10:54 15 Jun 2016 BST

Poundland

How quickly the hunter can become the prey.

Cheap and cheerful retailer Poundland Group PLC (LON:PLND) gobbled up its rival, 99p Stores Ltd last year, and its April trading statement suggested it was suffering a bit from indigestion as a result.

The shares, which ended 2015 at 207.7p, had fallen to 158.25p by Tuesday of this week before mysteriously surging yesterday.

This morning that mystery was solved when Steinhoff International Holdings NV, which owns the Bensons Beds chain in the UK, said it was considering making an offer for Poundland.

To quote Humphrey Bogart, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.

Talking of which, we all probably know of couples that split up, only to get back together again.

AVEVA Group PLC (LON:AVV), the engineering software specialist, and Schneider Electric, the French multi-national, are the corporate equivalent of those types of couples.

The two were set to tie the knot last year, but the marriage was called off in December because of “integration challenges”.

Perhaps Aveva wanted to live north of the English Channel and Schneider wanted to live south of La Manche.

Schneider started romancing AVEVA again this month but this morning the UK company said it was no longer talking to its suitor.

Elsewhere in the software sector, Outsourcery plc (LON:OUT) has proved that you need more than a clever name to thrive in the cloud services sector.

Pretty much the whole of its trading subsidiary, Outsourcery Hosting Limited, is being sold to GCI Network Solutions.

In order to complete the sale, it will be necessary to appoint administrators, and the board of Outsourcery, which includes former “Dragons’ Den” business personality Piers Linney, has resolved to appoint partners from EY as administrators for this purpose.

Linney left the BBC show “Dragons Den” in early 2015 to concentrate on building Outsourcery into a US$1bn business.

The current market value of Outsourcery is £2.3mln.

Keras Resources Ltd (LON:KRS), the Australian gold mining company, has been attracting a fair bit of interest with the latest news regarding its Prince of Wales project, located in the Grants Patch lease area.

The company said reverse circulation had returned economic, high-grade results including three metres (m) at 14.64 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au) from 66m and 3m at 7.25g/t Au from 60m. 

The results underpin Keras's plans to deliver high-grade product from the project to the Paddington processing plant in the next six months under the agreement with Norton Gold Fields.

Sector peer Aureus Mining PLC (LON:AUE, TSX:AUE) saw its shares surge by 14% this morning as Turkish conglomerate injected US$30mln into the company in return for a 55% stake.

The money from MNG will allow the New Liberty mine in Liberia to resume production, expected this month, and pay off creditors.

Shore Capital said the proceeds should help alleviate “acute balance sheet distress”.

“Importantly, from our point of view, credit approval has been received from Aureus’s lenders for a 4-month default waiver and standstill agreement. During this time, Aureus and lenders will continue negotiations on rescheduling the debt repayment profile,” the broker noted.

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