The Morning Call - Tullow oil climbs on the back of favourable ruling regarding promising assets.

Highlights of the Day

Asian Markets

Asian shares were mixed as investors turned their attention to global politics and evaluated weekend election results from Germany and New Zealand.

U.S. Markets

U.S. stocks ended with slight moves, as the market’s recent upward momentum remained intact, although geopolitical uncertainty limited buying appetite with major indexes near records.

Today's News

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she faces tough talks before she can forge a new coalition to govern the country, after an election result which saw her conservative bloc achieve its worst result since 1949. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU) allies gained just 33.0% of the vote according to provisional final election results posted early. The country’s Social Democrats (SPD) – currently part of a grand coalition with Merkel – dropped to a record low of 20.5%, while the populist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party earned 12.6% of the vote to become the country’s third-strongest power and enter parliament for the first time.

Pennon, the water and waste group, said half year results remained “on track to deliver in line” for both businesses and it felt well placed for the rest of the year. After agreeing initial terms over the cancellation of the Greater Manchester waste disposal PFI contract, Pennon said “progress is being made on the final agreements”.

Essentra confirmed that its health and personal care packaging sites at Manati and Guaynabo in Puerto Rico had been disrupted as a result of Hurricane Maria, although both sites remained “fundamentally intact”. The firm said despite that, there remained “significant impediments” to the resumption of manufacturing, including staff and client circumstances, power availability, and infrastructure damage. It said the financial impact of the two facilities being out of operation was estimated to be between £0.5m and £0.7m per week.

Tullow Oil will begin drilling at its TEN fields offshore Ghana following a favourable ruling by the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea at the weekend. On 23 September, the international arbitrator of maritime disputes handed down a ruling on the ocean boundary between Ghana and Ivory Coast, which Tullow said did not impact the TEN fields. Hence, management said it would restart drilling towards the end of the year, targeting production from the fields of 80,000 barrels of oil per day, as per the design capacity of its floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

Hurricane Energy has received development and production consent for the early production system phase for the Lancaster field development plan. It said that with funding and regulatory approvals in hand, it could now fully focus on delivering the project within the target timeline of first oil in 1H 2019. Chief executive Dr Robert Trice said: ‘The Lancaster EPS is not only an essential step in planning for the full field development of the company’s Rona Ridge assets, but also represents a substantial development in its own right, with planned production of 17,000 barrels of oil per day.

Amur Minerals Corporation expects to report a material increase in the mineral resource estimate following successful drilling along the exploration anomaly linking Ikenskoye/ Sobolevsky and Kubuk deposits. It said results so far identified a minimum 2,200 metres of new mineralisation along ISK, the three kilometre exploration anomaly. And it said the newly acquired drill results were expected to materially increase the current February 2017 mineral resource estimate which presently stood at 770,000 tonnes of nickel and 207,000 tonnes of copper.

Imagination Technologies Group late said it has agreed a recommended takeover by US fund Canyon Bridge Capital Partners LLC, valuing it at around £550m, alongside the sale of its chip business MIPS CPU. Imagination will sell MIPS to Tallword MIPS Inc, a company indirectly owned by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, for a total of $65m. $40m will be payable in cash on completion, and $25m in cash six months after completion, with the proceeds to be put towards reducing Imagination Technologies’ debt and for general corporate purposes.

Thomas Cook Group were staging a 24-hour strike in a dispute over pay, with further walkouts planned. Members of the British Airline Pilots’ Association took industrial action earlier this month in what was the first UK pilots’ strike in over 40 years. The strike is going ahead after several days of talks under the auspices of the conciliation service Acas failed to break the deadlock.

Oil prices came under pressure from a strong dollar, but kept most of their gains from the previous session as major producers meeting in Vienna said the market was well on its way towards rebalancing.

Gold dropped, and hovered around one-month lows hit last week, weighed down by a firm U.S. dollar and as concerns over the Korean peninsula eased over the weekend.

Companies Reporting this week

Day	Companies
Today:	MJ Gleeson * Pennon Group
Tomorrow:	Mysale Group * Transense Technologies * Close Brothers Group * United Utilities Group * Thomas Cook Group
Wednesday:	Hotel Chocolat Group * Avingtrans * Crawshaw Group * Redt Energy * Strix Group * Summit Germany Limited * Grainger
Thursday:	Allergy Therapeutics * Clinigen Group * Hansard Global * Inland Homes Produce Investments * 3i Infrastructure * TUI AG Reg Shs (DI) * RPC Group
Friday:	CVS Group * Purplebricks Group

Early Market Movements

Market	Index	Change	% Change
UK 100	7,275.5	-35.2	-0.5%
UK 250	19,494.1	-23.3	-0.1%
GER 30	12,570.8	-21.6	-0.2%
FRA 40	5,269.5	-11.8	-0.2%
U.S. 30	22,349.59	-9.64	-0.0%
U.S. 500	2,502.2	+1.6	+0.1%
OIL (BRENT)	56.77	-0.09	-0.2%
GOLD	1,291.96	-5.34	-0.4%

UK Risers & Fallers (8:15am)

Company	Price	Change	% Change
Tullow Oil	190.35	+12.05	+6.8%
Smiths Group	1530	+13	+0.9%
Centrica	189.6	+1.5	+0.8%
Stobart Group	277.55	-7.05	-2.5%
Mediclinic	665	-15.5	-2.3%
Anglo American	1311.5	-21.5	-1.6%

Latest Broker Views

Company	Broker	Recommendation	Price	Target
Centrica	Investec	Hold	189.8	180
Smiths Group	Bernstein	Overweight	1530	1800
Spire Healthcare	JPMorgan	Hold	229.8	259
Easyjet	RBC Capital	Sector Perform	1180	1300