Monday, 29th January: Petra Diamonds seem to be closing the first month of 2018 with disappointing news following a three-week strike which took place at the South Africa operations, after reporting a cut in 2018 production forecasts in addition to a reduction in full-year core earnings of circa 10-15% lower than previously expected. The number of low grade diamonds the company recovered from the Cullinan mine in South Africa have also resulted in the group having to reduce the previously forecasted number of carats produced from 4.8-5.0 million carats to 4.6-4.7 million carats. The series of bad news in the morning sent Petra’s share price down by around 15% in the morning to 66p, placing it fairly far away from the £1.48 they reached at the end of January 2017.
A brave move which coffee group Keurig Green Mountain announced on Monday was their bid to snap up Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc for a colossal amount of approximately $21 billion. The deal is one which will pair up two heavily established household brands. The combined company, Keurig Dr Pepper, would have had combined revenue in 2017 of approximately $11 billion
After a couple of hours of gains at the open through the morning, by around 10:15 (GMT) the FTSE 100 was trading plat at 7666, with Diageo at the bottom end and Smurfit Kappa at the top. It was a light day for result releases, as the market awaited the bulk of updates to come towards the end of the week. The index reached a peak of 7689 near mid-day but struggled to maintain any major gains that were made, which left them trading only slightly higher by the end of the day by 0.08% at 7671. Other indices across Europe, such as the DAX Xetra and CAC 40 were both down 0.14%.