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MARKET REPORT: Shares in British Airways 'to keep gaining altitude' By JON HOPKINS Updated: 22:19, 11 December 2024 e-mail View comments British Airways owner IAG has seen its share price go on a journey this year, almost doubling in value, and Deutsche Bank thinks that journey has only just begun. The German bank’s analysts said capacity constraints on transatlantic flights should leave IAG able to lift prices into 2025. This, they said, is supported by early evidence from the bank’s fares tracker and underpinned by the macro-outlook for the US, the UK and Spain. The analysts see scope for another year of above-consensus earnings growth in 2025. As a result, they lifted their rating to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ and hiked their price target to 400p, propelling IAG up 2.1 per cent, or 6p, to 288p. After benign US inflation data opened the way for a final round of rate cuts in 2025, the FTSE 100 closed 0.26 per cent, or 21.26 points, higher at 8301.62, while the FTSE 250 was virtually flat – down 0.49 points, to 20,973.45. On the rise: Shares in British Airways owner IAG have almost doubled in value this year and are now tipped to climb even higher Among other blue-chip gainers, British American Tobacco added 1 per cent, or 39p, to 2999p after reaffirming full-year guidance for 2024, helped by a stronger second half driven by investments in its US operations and innovation in its new categories portfolio. Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser rose 2.8 per cent, or 132p, to 4835p after an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ from analysts at HSBC who noted it trades at a material discount to its peers and raised their target price to 5500p. And Endeavour Mining took on 5.9 per cent, or 89p, to 1589p as it revealed a definitive feasibility study on a gold project in Cote d’Ivoire after a preliminary assessment met strategic targets. On the downside, equipment hire firm Ashtead Group slipped 1.7 per cent, or 92p, to 5300p after sliding 14 per cent following a guidance cut in the previous session. IT firm Kainos rose 4.5 per cent, or 36p, to 839p after reappointing Brendan Mooney as chief executive, just over a year after he stepped down. Mooney replaces Russell Sloan. And SSP firmed 2.5 per cent, or 4.7p, to 191.5p after the Upper Crust owner announced plans for an IPO in the spring of its Indian joint venture, Travel Food Services. RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next Boots could return to London market as US owner enters talks... Sir Clive Cowdery set for bumper windfall on £8.3bn sale of... Share this article Share HOW THIS IS MONEY CAN HELP How to choose the best (and cheapest) stocks and shares Isa and the right DIY investing account Among the small caps, Sound Energy surged 53.9 per cent, or 0.35p, higher to 1p as the developer of gas projects completed the part-divestment of its Moroccan assets for up to £35.4million. Victoria gained 6.6 per cent, or 3,8p, to 61.8p, adding to a leap in the previous session made after the carpet firm’s chief executive bought 200,000 shares and Morgan Stanley hiked its stake to 12.5 per cent. Fintech firm Equals Group added 12.1 per cent, or 14.5p, to 134.5p after agreeing to a £283million takeover by Alakazam Holdings. And Billington rose 13.3 per cent, or 56p, to 476p after the structural steel group said it expects its full-year pre-tax profit to exceed current market expectations. But Versarien shed 16.9 per cent, or 0.01p, to 0.03p, having gained almost 23 per cent in two sessions this week after it announced a distribution deal for a biosensor chip product in the UK and Europe. Stock Watch - ProCook ProCook fell 5.7 per cent, or 2.1p, to 35p after the kitchenware retailer flagged a slow start to its key third quarter. The firm blamed fewer shoppers ahead of the Budget, though numbers have improved since. Its reported losses were up in the half-year to October 13 and, although like-for-like retail revenue rose 4.2 per cent, for the following eight weeks they were down 4 per cent. In the first eight weeks of the third quarter, revenue rose 0.9 per cent like-for-like. 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We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence. More top storiesGoogle unveiled its Willow chip this week, marking a milestone in the quantum computing space. One quantum researcher compared Google's advancement to mobile networks jumping from 1G to 2G. While the news represents a breakthrough, real-world applications are likely still years away. Google's new Willow chip may not show up in consumer products in the near future — however, quantum computing researchers say it represents a significant breakthrough in the field. That's because the chip solves a challenge that's existed in quantum computing for nearly 30 years, Google said in its announcement earlier this week. The challenge is reducing the amount of errors quantum computers generate while operating. Quantum computers aren't your standard laptop or desktop computer. Unlike your laptop, which uses bits to process information, quantum computers use something called qubits, short for quantum bits. Bits are binary digits, meaning they can only exist in one state at a time, typically as a 0 or 1. Qubits, on the other hand, can exist in multiple states simultaneously. That's important because it means you can process significantly more information at much faster speeds with qubits. That's the ultimate promise of quantum computers: They can process so much data in such short periods that they'll revolutionize science and medicine, helping us solve problems related to climate change and health, for example, that are far too complex to tackle with today's technology. However, right now, the best quantum computers can perform around a thousand operations before errors overwhelm the processing system, Steve Brierley, quantum computing researcher and CEO of error correction company Riverlane, told Business Insider. "If we want to get to this big potential like transformational technology, we need to get to millions and trillions of free operations," Brierley said. That's where Google's Willow chip has made a significant breakthrough. With the Willow chip, the more qubits Google adds, the fewer errors the system creates. The Willow chip reduces errors exponentially, the company said. The ability to reduce errors while scaling qubits is known in the field as being "below threshold," and it's been an unresolved challenge since 1995. This plays out via processing speed. Google said its researchers used the Random Circuit Sampling benchmark to compare computing speeds across various technologies. The RCS is a standard in the field and the "classically hardest" benchmark to pass, to compare computing speeds across various technologies. Google said its Willow chip can perform the standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, which would take one of the fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete — longer than the known age of the universe. In the field of quantum, error correction is much more difficult and requires more hardware to function properly, which is why Google's advancement is so important, Mark Saffman, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director at the Wisconsin Quantum Institute, told BI. Brierley compared Google's quantum computing advancement to what mobile networks experienced when they shifted from 1G to 2G networks. When mobile networks shifted from 1G to 2G, "Qualcomm added error correction into the stack and this created a huge uplift in capability," Brierley said. "And this is exactly what's happening right now in quantum computing." The ability to constantly correct errors is a "key part" of building a quantum computer, he said. Once companies are able to scale qubits and advance quantum computing forward, they will be able to reach the point of real-world applications. Related stories Real-world impact is likely years away Google said in a press briefing about the development that it has already partnered with companies in the pharmaceutical, material science, and battery space, among others. However, advancements in those fields may not be right around the corner. Saffman said he would like to see real-world application s in five years, but it's difficult to provide an exact number. Sebastian Weidt, quantum computer professor at the University of Sussex and co-founder and CEO of quantum computing company Universal Quantum, told BI that "we're still a little while away" from quantum computing impacting the general public. Weidt said that while there was initially hope that intermediate-scale computers could offer some value to a general consumer, the science shows that qubits need to be scaled by hundreds of thousands and eventually millions to unlock real-world applications. "There are many major roadblocks on their roadmap that need to be overcome for that technology to get to that scale," Weidt said. Still, Google's advancement moves quantum computing research to the next stage — and while investors may not be able to reap the benefits in the immediate short term, Brierley said announcements like this help attract capital and talent to the space. "There's still very very far to go to make it useful relative to conventional computers," Saffman said. "But it's a great step forward."None
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