5 FTSE Blue-Chip Stocks That Are Worth Watching

By - Team Kalkine Media

The coronavirus pandemic has had a harsh impact on almost all sections of the London Stock exchange. The sudden rise in the infection rates and the imposition of the Lockdown in the country resulted in most of the indices on the exchange to trade at their historic lows, and most of the blue-chip stocks lost a significant amount of their value. However, since then the mood on the exchange has changed and most of the stocks if not all have regained most of their value that they had lost in the month of March. There are many stocks, however, which performed well on the real business side even during the lockdown whose effects were clearly visible on their stock prices when the lockdown started easing down in May.

Below are five blue-chip stocks belonging to the FTSE 100 index of the London Stock exchange, which has good underlying businesses and performed well in the past few months and can be seen as long term prospect.

  1. AstraZeneca Plc – (LON: AZN) – AstraZeneca Plc has been in the news recently for all the good reasons. The company has tied up with the Jenner Institute of the Oxford University to manufacture and distribute its vaccine for the prevention of the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccine in question is the first of many vaccine candidates in the world that will be available to the public at the earliest. The company has indicated that it will manufacture millions of doses of the vaccine at the earliest possible and supply it to different parts of the world.

The shares of the company have been steadily rising on the London stock exchange since the news of the vaccine deal with the Jenner Institute was announced. In the past one month the shares of the company have been trending in the positive territory. On 24 June 2020, its shares were trading at GBX 8344.00, and they rose upto GBX 8,652.00 a month later on 24 July 2020 rising around 4 per cent during the period.

  1. Fresnillo Plc – ( LON: FRES) Fresnillo is a Mexico based gold and silver mining and production company with zinc and Lead as by-products. On 22 July 2020, the company came out with its production report for the second quarter of 2020. Except for gold (6.4 per cent drop) company’s other metal products have seen a rise in production for the quarter, despite the adoption of widespread social distancing measures adopted by the company. The demand for bullion has also skyrocketed in recent times and is expected to remain high till the threat of the pandemic does not subside. The shares of the company have given a good performance in the past few months on the London Stock Exchange. Since the beginning of July, the shares have gained nearly 42 per cent.
  2. Antofagasta Plc – Antofagasta PLC (LON: ANTO) is a London, United Kingdom-based copper mining company. It is mainly engaged in the activities related to exploration, evaluation, and mining of copper in Chile. In 1888, the group was incorporated in London. The company’s business is differentiated into two divisions, being mining and transportation. The mining segment is further divided into different segments based on the exploration activities and mines of the company. The company is part of FTSE 100, FTSE 350, and FTSE All-Share Index.

On 22 July 2020, the company came out with its half-yearly production report stating the performance of the company through the first half of the year. Despite the challenges faced because of the COVID- 19 crisis the company has been able to reach very close to its production guidance for the half-year of 371,700 tons and was also been able to lower its costs by 6 per cent because of a weaker Chilian peso. During the past one month the shares of the company have given a return of 11.89 per cent in trading.

  1. Avast – Avast Plc (LON: AVST) is the Prague Czech Republic domiciled and one of the world’s largest cybersecurity company. The company specialises in cybersecurity software’s, Machine learning as well as Artificial Intelligence based applications. The company was founded more than thirty years ago as cooperation, then it became a private company in 2010, before going public in 2018. The company had acquired AVG technologies in July 2016 for $1.3 billion, which at that time had the third-largest anti-virus product in the market. The company is duel listed both on the Prague Stock Exchange as well as the London Stock Exchange.

Despite the challenging circumstances the company paid a final dividend of 8.1 pence per share on 24 June 2020. Other than that, the company also chose the month of June to launch its new security software “Breachguard” which is targeted towards improving the online privacy of the customers. During the past one month the shares of the company have given a return of 8.14 per cent in trading.

  1. Justeat takeaway.com – (LON: JET) Just Eat Takeaway.com is one of those companies that did extremely well during the lockdown. It was amongst those few food and beverage companies that kept serving food to people who could not come out of their houses to buy provisions or did not have the means to cook for themselves. The company is dual listed on the London Stock Exchange, and at the Euronext in Amsterdam, it is also a component of the FTSE 100 index on the LSE. The company in the month of June announced the acquisition of Grubhub, an American food delivery company, having, significant user base in the United States of America. The move is being seen favourable by the market and the shares of the company have been rising ever since. In the last one month the shares of Justeat takeaway.com have underperformed slightly on the London stock exchange and have given a return of -2.1 per cent.

There are several other promising companies on the FTSE which have done well in the past month, but the above five have been selected because of the positive developments that have happened in their real businesses.


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