• Morrisons share price fell 3.77% on Monday morning (04 October 2021), following reports that it will be acquired by a US private equity group
• Ryanair share price rose 2.4% despite a dip in passenger traffic in September 2021
• AstraZeneca share price inches up 1.2% in early trading, after one of its regimens was granted the Breakthrough Therapy Designation
• Keen to take advantage of rising and falling share prices? Open an account with us to long or short these stocks now.

Morrisons (LON: MRW)

Morrisons, the UK’s fourth largest supermarket chain, is poised to be acquired by US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R).

It was reported that CD&R has won a bid auction for the supermarket group with a £7 billion (US$9.5 billion) offer.

CD&R had offered 287p per ordinary share, versus rival Fortress’ 286p per share bid.

Morrisons board of directors will now present the offer to shareholders at a meeting scheduled for 19 October.

If the bid is approved by shareholders, CD&R will officially take over Morrisons by November.

Ryanair (LON: RYA)

Ryanair said its traffic hit 10.6 million passengers in September 2021 on the back of 69,500 flights, which more than doubled September 2020’s 5.2 million passengers.

This equates to a load factor of 81% versus a load factor of 71% of a year ago.

However, this is slightly down from August 2021’s load factor of 82% and traffic of 11.1 million passengers.

AstraZeneca (LON: AZN)

AstraZeneca’s Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan) has been granted the Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive breast.

Enhertu is a HER2-directed antibody drug conjugate (ADC) jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo Company.

The regimen has been approved for adult patients who have received two or more prior anti-HER2-based regimens in the metastatic setting in the US, Japan, the EU and several other countries, based on the results from the DESTINY-Breast01 trial.

Susan Galbraith, Executive Vice President, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca, said: ‘This is an important step in bringing Enhertu as a potential new option in earlier lines of treatment for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, given the urgent need to improve outcomes.’

Keen to trade Morrisons, Ryanair and AstraZeneca shares?

Go short and long with spread bets, CFDs and share dealing on these three UK stocks and 16,000+ shares with the UK’s No.1 platform.* Learn more about trading shares with us, or open an account to get started today.

Read our day trading strategies for beginners.

* Best trading platform as awarded at the ADVFN International Financial Awards and Professional Trader Awards 2019

Kelvin Ong | Financial writer, Singapore
04 October 2021