Tuesday preview: Brexit talks, US housing data, easyJet in the spotlight

Barring surprises, the market spotlight on Tuesday will continue to be on the talks between London and Brussels on the outline of their future relationship, the terms of which may help to ease passage of the Withdrawal agreement in Parliament.

But no major economic reports are scheduled for release in the UK.

Stateside, the lone economic report that is scheduled to be published is that on US housing starts and permits for the month of October, at 1330 GMT.

easyJet is among the companies set to update markets, with UBS analyst, Jarrod Castle, penciling-in full-year profits before tax of £584m, which is right at the top of the company's guidance.

Although given that management had already provided a year-end update, projecting a 6.5% increase in revenues per seat and a rise of about 4% in costs per seat, excluding fuel, the analyst believed "surprises" were unlikely.

Castle was also expecting the carrier to update on trading in the first quarter of 2019.

On that note, as of 24 October, analysts at Deutsche Bank were projecting flat profits for fiscal year 2019, given their own expectations for fuel unit costs to jump by as much 15% on the assumption of $85 a barrel oil for the airline's unhedged exposures.

In fiscal year 2018, fuel unit costs rose by about 2%.

However, Deutsche was more positive on other counts, telling clients on that occassion: "Medium-term, we continue to believe that easyJet will be one of the main beneficiaries of the consolidation process in Europe as weaker players exit the market, something which already appears to be accelerating again, in direct correlation with the higher oil price."

For CRH, analysts at UBS were forecasting the building materials supplier to guide towards full-year fiscal 2018 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of €3.34bn, implying organic growth of about 2%, versus the company's guidance for an increase of 5%.

Guidance for the company's net debt meanwhile was pegged at €6.6bn for year-end 2018.

Tuesday November 20

INTERIMS

Accsys Technologies, AO World, Aveva Group, Big Yellow Group, Bonmarche Holdings, CML Microsystems, Eckoh, Electrocomponents, Halma, Homeserve, Scapa Group, Solid State, SRT Marine Systems, Telecom Plus

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Intu Properties, Konami Holdings Corporation, Stilo International, Taptica International (DI)

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Building Permits (US) (13:30)

Housing Starts (US) (13:30)

Producer Price Index (GER) (07:00)

FINALS

Compass Group, CYBG , easyJet, EI Group, Focusrite

SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Konami Holdings Corporation

AGMS

CAP-XX Limited, Jupiter US Smaller Companies , Meikles Ltd., Pan African Resources, Physiomics, SQN Asset Finance Income Fund Limited, Wilmcote Holdings NPV

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

CRH, Polypipe Group , SIG, Spectris

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

CBI Industrial Trends Surveys (11:00)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Close Brothers Group