Countryside Partnerships PLC (LSE:CSP) was one of the biggest fallers on Thursday as it and several others joined the housebuilders signing the government’s cladding and fire-safety pledge, aka DLUCH.
Other new signers were Bellway PLC (LSE:BWY) and Vistry Group PLC, in total making £343mln more provisions.
Set up following the Grenfell Tower disaster, the pledge is to fix cladding safety issues at all buildings over 11m high they have built in the past 30 years.
Bellway's extra provision is £300m is "large, but not far away from what the market had inferred when it reported results last week", says broker Liberum.
Vistry guided to extra provisions in the range of £35-50m, consistent with guidance it gave with full year results in March.
Countryside has not quantified the extent of extra provisions but estimated that it developed around 290 buildings of 11m or more over the last 30 years, many of which will not require remediation.
Shares in Countryside fell 12.4% to 244p as the company put out a wider trading update, where sales and profits for the half year were below last year.
Bellway fell 1.6% and Vistry was down 1.2%.
10.30am: Arden softens on Nomad red light from LSE
Arden Partners PLC (AIM:ARDN) shares fell 20% to 14.4p after its agreed takeover by The Ince Group PLC (AIM:INCE) could be in jeopardy.
The London Stock Exchange has not approved Arden's application to keep its AIM Nominated Adviser (Nomad) status in the event of a takeover by Ince.
A condition of the deal for Ince was that Arden remains eligible to act as a Nomad.
"The board of Arden has entered into discussions with the board of Ince regarding the implications of London Stock Exchange's decision and will provide a further update to shareholders as soon as practicable," it said in a statement.
9.05am: Metaverse university boost for Engage XR
Engage XR Holdings PLC (AIM:EXR) shares went virtually vertical in early trading, jumping 16% to 11.85p after its US partner VictoryXR was given funding by a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) to help roll out 10 ‘digital twin’ university campuses in the metaverse using Engage’s platform.
Each of the 10 colleges will this autumn (or ‘fall’, across the pond) roll out a replica campus for students to attend on campus or remotely, with each student given a virtual reality headset for use during the course they are taking.
“Courses will be synchronous, or multi-student, as if they were attending class on a physical campus,” said VictoryXR.
With the partnership part-funded by Meta Immersive Learning, which will provide Quest 2 headsets during the project on each campus as well as funding for the digital twin buildouts.
Each campus is built by VictoryXR on the EngageVR platform.