Cosentino Signature Wines slides on debt woe

Shares in Cosentino Signature Wines lost almost a quarter of their value yesterday after the Napa Valley wine company said its lenders would not be able to refinance debt of $18 million (£12 million).

The California company, whose wines cost up to $100 a bottle, also said it had defaulted on recent interest payments and that it was in talks with interested parties about refinancing.

Worse still, Cosentino said that its core wholesale business continued to struggle, although it believes that trade should pick up later this month, with many customers now running low on stocks. The credit crunch has taken hold of both the wholesale and the retail businesses of Cosentino in recent months, with the company having given warning before Christmas that full-year results would miss market expectations. Its shares fell 1½p to 4¾p.

Costain rose ¼p to 23¾p after it was awarded a £373 million contract to design and build municipal waste treatment infrastructure in Manchester as part of a £3 billion PFI project. Andrew Wyllie, chief executive, said that Costain was deliberately targeting the growing waste sector and wanted to make it one of its leading divisions.

TEG Group rose 9.59p to 54.09p after the company, which converts organic wastes into natural organic fertiliser, also benefited as part of the Manchester project. It will build four of its composting plants in a deal worth £38 million.

Intec Telecom Systems gained 6p to 41p after the group, which specialises in billing systems for the telecoms industry, cheered investors by revealing that it was on track to record its strongest first-half results, with sales of up to £80 million. In response, analysts at Numis Securities upgraded their full-year forecasts by 30 per cent.