Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 26 January 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: The mining sector helped get the FTSE off to a flying start on Monday following a rise in commodity prices, but disappointing news followed on Tuesday as Tate & Lyle announced that it was unlikely to meet expected profit targets.

Tate & Lyle’s shares fell 16 per cent as the company blamed its failure to meet market expectations on poor demand for its key sweetener product Splenda. The company commented that orders for Splenda from US carbonated drinks manufacturers had fallen below expectations. Tate & Lyle was the number one buy amongst TD Waterhouse clients this week as investors took advantage of the share price fall. Interest in the Company has also been fuelled by recent speculation of a possible takeover bid from Nestle or Kraft.

Elsewhere, Solar Integrated Technologies and RC Group made their first appearances in the TD Waterhouse top 10, with our clients choosing to buy both. Solar Integrated Technologies traded up 6.77 per cent on Thursday following an announcement of a new contract with Tesco USA at the end of last week. The contract is estimated to be worth $13m, to install what will be the world’s largest roof-mounted solar installation in a Tesco distribution centre in California.

RC Group shares rose 5.76 per cent on Thursday after the security solutions company - specialising in face, fingerprint and iris recognition - said that following a bumper second half, its final year results would be well above market expectations.

Following poor sales over the Christmas period blamed on falling DVD and CD prices, Woolworths’ shares have been trading down 1.50 per cent over the last month. Like-for-like sales in the Woolworths retail chain for the 6 weeks to 13 January declined by 4.6 per cent. Nevertheless, the group’s share price rose 1.55 per cent on Thursday perhaps following the news that the company is to launch a new travel and holiday website on 26 January.

The site will offer discounted hotels, flights and holidays from the main tour operators. This week our clients chose to buy shares in the Woolworths Group.

Top 10 Buys
1 Tate & Lyle
2 PartyGaming
3 BP
4 Tanfield Group
5 Lloyds TSB
6 Solar Integrated Technology
7 RC Group
8 BT Group
9 BHP Billiton
10 Woolworths

Top 10 Sells
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 BP
3 BHP Billiton
4 PartyGaming
5 Xstrata
6 Vedanta Resources
7 Vodafone Group
8 Antofagasta
9 HSBC Holdings
10 BT Group