3 Shares the FTSE 100 Beat Today

LONDON -- The FTSE 100 finished the day up 1% to 6,355 points, as fears that the American and Japanese central banks might bring their stimulus packages to an end appear to be fading. The U.S. Federal Reserve still seems committed to its bond-buying policy, at least for now.

But not all is well with individual shares prices. Here are three constituents of the FTSE indexes that fell today.

Pearson
Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times and owner of Penguin books, saw its share price fall 3.7% on results day despite posting a 5% rise in sales to 6.1 billion pounds and a 1% rise in adjusted operating profit to 936 million pounds. What seems to have done the damage was a 2.7% fall in earnings per share to 84.2 pence and a 20% drop in operating cash flow to 788 million pounds -- although it was all pretty much in line with expectations.

And the company felt confident enough to lift its dividend by 7% to 45 pence per share for a yield of 3.9% on the current price.

Bovis Homes
Good-looking results, followed by a share price fall, were the order of the day for Bovis HomesGroup, as the homebuilder's shares fell 1.8%. That happened despite a 17% rise in revenue for the year to December to 425.5 million pounds and a 69% jump in pre-tax profit to 54.1 million pounds. Basic earnings per share climbed 75% to 30.7 pence, enabling an 80% dividend boost to 9 pence per share. That's still only a yield of 1.4%, but it's in the right direction.

By Friday we should have a better picture of the sector as a whole, as we have four more homebuilders reporting this week.

Domino's Pizza
Domino's Pizza Group brought us the same story, with the share price falling 2.2% after the company released strong results. A 12.8% rise in sales to 598.6 million pounds led to a record pre-tax profit of 46.7 million pounds, up 10.8%. U.K. like-for-like sales in mature stores gained 5%.

A 14% rise in pre-exceptional earnings per share enabled the company to lift its full-year dividend by 17.9% to 14.5 pence per share for a yield of 2.8%.

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

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