Market Report: Shell share price keeps falling despite HSBC backing

The stock market is missing a trick with Shell, according to analysts at HSBC. The oil supermajor’s share price keeps falling and yet the company is showing “tangible evidence of a sharper edge to management around capital discipline and financial performance”, HSBC’s Gordon Gray said, highlighting work halted by Shell in Alaska and its Canadian oil-sands project.

Investors appear to be running for the hills, with the price of oil showing no signs of recovering soon.However, Mr Gray reckons the dividend is not under threat at Shell – one of the big concerns in the City amid the commodities rout – even if the price of Brent crude remains around $50 a barrel next year.

Crunching the numbers for its £43bn (£28.5bn) takeover of BG Group, the analyst, who has a buy rating and 1,960p target price, said a bulkier Shell “looks far healthier than it would on a standalone basis”.

His comments lifted Shell by 26p to 1,692.5p, though the shares are still down by a quarter this year, while BG Group was 23p better off at 1,032.5p and BP 3.5p richer at 389.6p.

But it was mining stocks that were the driving force behind the FTSE 100’s 55.49 point rise to 6,393.13 even with trading volumes low due to Wall Street’s Thanksgiving closure.

Embattled Glencore gained 5.3p to 95.88p and Anglo American, just as troubled, picked up 18.6p to 435.8p, as commodity prices rallied in anticipation of output cuts from China.

Shares in Daily Mail & General Trust picked up 31p to 700p as the Daily Mail publisher sold a 70 per cent stake in voucher site Wowcher to Exponent Private Equity and bought the UK and Ireland business of rival deal site LivingSocial for net proceeds of £29m.

Supermarket till operator PayPoint plunged 68p or 7 per cent to 924.5p after writing off £18m on the value of its online payments business, for which it has failed to find a buyer.

On the junior market, Alliance Pharma, which licenses approved drugs that the major drug makers no longer want, dipped 5.25p to 45.75p after striking a deal to buy the dermatology business of Sinclair IS Pharma, which put on 2p at 37.75p.