3 Shares Set to Beat the FTSE 100 Today

LONDON -- The FTSE 100 is continuing its New Year surge with no sign of faltering so far. Today it is up 0.86% to 6,106 points as of 10:12 a.m. EST. After a lengthy wait for the index of top U.K. stocks to break the 6,000 barrier, 6,100 came in no time flat.

Fools, of course, don't place any meaning in absolute index values and are more interested in the performance of individual companies. Here are three that are doing well today.

Centamin
Following the legal wranglings that caused a couple of sharp share-price drops in the last quarter of 2012, it's nice to see the Centamin Egypt price being moved by actual company performance.

This time it's fourth-quarter preliminary production results from the company's Sukari gold mine, which beat expectations and resulted in a 45% increase over the same quarter last year (and a 40% rise over the third quarter this year). The share price responded by climbing 16% to 51 pence.

Costain
Costain Group has made a 3.5% gain to reach 265 pence on the news that the company has been awarded a new contract by Network Rail for the next phase of the West Coast power supply upgrade. The contract goes to a joint venture between Costain, Alstom, and Babcock and should enable the West Coast main line to carry more frequent services.

Unlike some in its sector, the engineer has seen its shares doing pretty well, with the price rising nearly 25% over the past 12 months.

Galliford Try
Homebuilder and construction group Galliford Try got a nice boost from today's trading update, with the share price putting on 0.39% to hit 774 pence. That takes it up about 65% over the past 12 months, as the whole sector is recovering strongly.

Galliford told us that a rise in revenue will bring in half-year profit in excess of previous board expectations and that the firm's net debt has been reduced to 60 million pounds from 69.8 million pounds at the same stage last year.

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The article 3 Shares Set to Beat the FTSE 100 Today originally appeared on Fool.com.

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