Bank cuts targets for Carlton and Granada

LONDON – Carlton Communications and Granada were both up this morning as investment bank UBS Warburg cut its price targets on the two ITV companies.

The bank reduced its target on Carlton to 142p from 230p and on Granada to 92p from 130p. Carlton was up 0.63% to 122.75p and Granada was up 3% to 75.75p.

The move follows the news earlier this week that the two are to boost their programming investment in ITV to a record £825m in a bid to woo advertisers to the station.

In August, ITV reported that ad revenues for October were likely to show a rise of about 6%. If the expectations are met, it will be the sixth consecutive rise in advertising revenues for the network.

The increase in the programming budget was proposed by Granada chairman Charles Allen and represents an almost 7% increase on last year's £775m. The boost to programming investment will go some way to closing the gap between ITV and the BBC, which spends almost £1bn a year on the BBC One channel.

ITV hopes that improved and higher-quality programming will allow it to attract more large-scale advertising deals such as the £320m deal it signed with Unilever in April.

The programming boost follows the move last month when the two ITV companies said they were to combine a number of their operations to cut costs and boost advertising revenue. The move sparked fresh speculation that the two will yet merge to form a single ITV company.

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