The retail group received another shot in the arm this morning after publishing a pre-AGM trading statement. These numbers underlined the growth the company continues to see in its travel sales division – and once again highlighted the challenges it faces closer to home with the High Street stores noting further revenue contraction. This appears to have provided further confidence in terms of boosting the argument for what would be a high profile exit for part of its UK operation, but the WH Smiths share price added more than 6% by 9am.
Just under two years ago, the Automotive and Powder Metallurgy divisions were spun out of Melrose industries as Dowlais. Today, the FTSE-250 listed company announced that it was recommending investors accept a cash and shares offer from American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings, equating to a 25% premium to last night’s closing price. Another departure from the UK market, another loss for UK manufacturing and potentially another point stressing how undervalued the London market remains. In early trade, the Dowlais share price was up more than 10%, still some way short of the synthesised value of the bid.
The AIM-listed tech play that creates digital workers to perform complex business tasks without human supervision saw its share price jump this morning after announcing it had integrated DeepSeek, the breakthrough open-source Chinese AI model that grabbed headlines at the weekend, across its digital worker platform. The company estimate that it can reduce cost by up to 96%, something that will unlock more use cases for the technology. The Cykel AI share price was 44% higher in early trade.
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