7.48am: Currys serves up tasty returns
Currys has doubled its dividend and unveiled a new £50 million share buyback as the electricals retailer posted profits in line with previous guidance.
Adjusted pre-tax profit for the year to 2 May jumped 18% to £191 million, on revenue up 6% to £9.25 billion, in line with previous guidance.
Overseeing his last set of results before leaving next month, CEO Alex Baldock said trading at the start of its new financial year had been “very solid”.
The board is “comfortable” with current market expectations, where the mid-point is an adjusted pre-tax profit of £198 million, despite continued macroeconomic uncertainty.
7.28am: Genel buys Capricorn
Genel Energy has agreed to buy fellow London-listed oil and gas producer Capricorn Energy in a recommended cash deal valued at around $360 million.
Genel will pay $4.74 for each Capricorn share, comprising $3.75 in cash plus a special dividend of $0.99, expected to be declared before completion.
The offer represents a premium of about 34% to Capricorn’s closing on 10 March, the day before the offer period began.
Capricorn, formerly Cairn Energy, has been listed in London since the 1980s.
FTSE 100 Live pre-open
The pattern seems to be that every day in recent weeks, London’s blue-chips are predicted to fall at the open, and today is no different.
The FTSE 100 has been called 19 points lower on the futures market, having lost the same amount of points yesterday when trading closed at 10,478.34.
Wall Street also finished lower overnight, with the Nasdaq bearing the brunt of the selling, down 0.7%, while the S&P 500 finished down 0.2% and the Dow Jones losing just 14 points or 0.03% after hitting an all-time intraday high during the session.
Asian markets are mixed this morning, with South Korea’s Kospi slumping more than 6%, Japan’s Nikkei falling 2% and China’s Shanghai Composite down 1.4%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, India’s Sensex are both higher.
US futures are in the red too, with the Nasdaq again at the forefront, down 0.3%, with futures for both other majors just below flat.
Oil prices have continued to fall, with Brent crude down 1.2% at $70.74 a barrel, the lowest since late February.
The pound is at close to a two-week high against the US dollar, ahead of the big US non-farm payroll data which is coming later today, as the usual Friday date is blocked off by the Independence Day holiday tomorrow.
Around 114K jobs are expected to have been added in June, with monthly wage growth remaining steady at around 0.3%, while annual wage growth could edge up from 3.4% to 3.5%.
“Given the Fed’s explicit emphasis on inflation and price stability, any pickup in wage growth could revive hawkish Fed expectations and push US yields higher, pressuring equity valuations at a time when questions around the technology rally are getting louder,” says market analsyt Ipek Ozkardeskaya at Swissquote.
“The good news is that the reason inflation picked up momentum – the Iran war-led spike in energy prices – has largely faded. But the bad news is that if we see a correction in the technology complex, the rest of the index may find it hard to reverse the tide.”
