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Let's take a look at some of the stocks on the move today here in Europe. I'm Caroline Hepgar with Lizzie Burdener. We're joined by our reporter Clone Malay. Good morning clothing. Let's start here in the UK with a defense business, Kinetic. They've had results out obviously this is quite important. They're quite closely tied with government.
Yeah, absolutely so, Connecticut Defense Technology Company. So essentially they don't make the missiles themselves. It's more the software rather than the hardware. And this morning they came out with quite strong earnings and so that really lifted the shares
this morning. And the contact that's important to give for this big move today is that last March last year, they had quite a big profit warning with lots of contract delays, a lot of weakness in the US business, and so they embarked on this sort of big restructuring
making the company as smaller. So they got rid of, for example, the US federal IT business that had been quite badly impacted by the government funding cuts in the US, and so today's results, which have been pretty good, they seem to indicate that this big turnaround, this big restructuring has worked and that the foundations are now quite solid for the company. So we've got a record order intake, record order backlog as well, involvement in a lot of
big UK defense projects. As you mentioned, they're very exposed to the UK government projects something like putting laser systems onto Royal Navy ships, for example, which is a partnership they've got with Leonardo, the Italian defense firm, and all of that leading to much better free cash flow and therefore big shareholder returns, extending their buy back, boosting the dividend as well. And so we've seen that really booster
shares this morning. And I spoke with the CEO this morning who told me that the political instability that we're seeing in the UK will have no bearing on the performance going forward either. So we've got a very positive, kind of optimistic tone for Kinetic and that's driving the shares.
Okay, let's also talk about easy Jet because we all want to know if we can go on holiday this summer. We've had Ryanair earnings already.
How does EasyJet weigh up?
Yeah, easy Jet. It's interesting because the shares are a bit unsure of where to go for easy Jet. This morning, they fluctuated quite a bit because the loss for the first half of the year was worse than expected, but it was still within what Alyss had expected and what the company had guided for. And of course the stock was also very weak going into the earnings, given that they had a profit warning about a month ago, so the expectations were already very low, which explains this kind
of fairly muted share price reaction. And of course what EasyJet is dealing with is the same thing that all airlines are dealing with, including Ryan there that we had recently, which is much higher fuel costs, which means that they have to raise ticket prices, which means that people then hold back on buying flights, and so this is kind
of like this visual cycle that then is created. And easy Jet said that summer bookings were behind the levels seen last year and so that people are really waiting and booking later as well, so it really impacts visibility for the company. But they said the schedule would still be going ahead as planned, so we will be able to go on holiday, but people might be booking them those holidays a little bit later.
Yes, long gone are the days of those like three hundred dollars four hundred dollar flights London to New York coming us in the really mirror, isn't it Anyway? Let's think about Jenner rarely turn us. What's driving the moves of the insurance firm?
Yeah, perhaps pretty solid earnings this morning. The CEO had been trying to lift profitability by expanding into areas like a non life insurance and asset management as well, and so that seems to be working pretty well. The CFO has also said that the company was open to reviewing partnerships to accelerate a growth, and that has been in
response to a question about possible partnerships with UniCredit. Generally has been kind of caught in the middle of a lot of M and A activity and dealings in Italy, and there's been a lot of speculation around the future of that insurer, and so this is also what is driving those shares this morning.
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