Market report: Wednesday close

MUSIC maker

The broker is downbeat about the group, which boasts artists such as Robbie Williams and Norah Jones on its record label, saying it is unlikely to achieve forecast 3% sales growth in the short term.

It adds that there may be some recovery as the industry has experienced a significant change for the better. But longer term, the outlook remains negative.

CSFB claims record companies are subsidised by consumers paying for albums when they just want two or three tracks and will eventually find themselves facing up to a growing online marketplace which allows people to 'buy a la carte'.

Buoyed by a convincing performance overnight on Wall Street and lower oil prices, share prices in London edged higher. The FTSE 100 index was down 3.4 points at 4820.5.

There was big turnover in fire and security alarm supplier Kidde, the target of a bid from US outfit United Technologies. The shares closed up ½p at 165¾p as more than 50m of them changed hands. Some big lines of stock went through on the ticker including 15.6m at 166p followed by 7.14m at the same level. Dealers say United may have started mopping up Kidde shares in the marketplace.

British Energy was again on the slide, the ordinary stock falling 7p to 247p and the warrants down 5½p to 159p. The debt-laden power generator was re-floated earlier this week at 285p following completion of the refinancing programme that left ordinary shareholders heavily diluted. UBS has set a fair value on the shares of 225p.

JP Morgan has repeated its underweight rating in copper miner Antofagasta, down 2p at 1135p, with fair value of 974p. The US investment bank says the copper price remains the key driver with supply starting to catch up with demand, which means prices are likely to come off. JPM forecasts a drop of 8%, which will act as a drag on the company's ability to outperform the market.

Only yesterday, UBS was moved to repeat its neutral rating on Antofagasta, but raised its 12-month target from 1050p to 1200p.

Fellow miner Rio Tinto jumped 10p to 1584p on the back of an upbeat production report. Paul McTaggart at US securities house Morgan Stanley said: 'It is an improvement, people were expecting things to be better and this confirmation is comforting.'

The latest trading update from Pearson failed to live up to expectations and the shares slumped 17½p to 620p. The Penguin-to-Financial Times publisher said it was on target to make 30p a share in earnings in the year to February, in line with City forecasts.

A bumper final quarter for its higher education business outweighed further turbulence for Penguin in the US. Pearson is selling its 22% stake in US website MarketWatch to Dow Jones for $100m (£53.6m).

Broker Numis responded by lowering its recommendation for Pearson from add to hold and will downgrade its top-of-the-range earnings forecast for 2005 from 34.7p to 34p a share.