Sainsbury's sales rise over festive period, B&M revenue improves in third quarter

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The FTSE 100 is expected to open 57 points higher on Thursday, having closed up 3.47% on Wednesday at 6,841.86.

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UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s reported a 9.3% rise in like-for-like sales over the festive period as Britons treated themselves to champagne and steaks in response to restrictions on the size of gatherings. Like-for-like sales excluding fuel for the third quarter to January 2 rose 8.6% with total retail sales up 6.8%. Sainsbury’s said it now expected to report underlying profit before tax of at least £330m in the year to March 2021 compared with £586m a year ago after forgoing business rates relief of £410m.

B&M European Value Retail said revenue increased 22.5% to £1.4bn in the third quarter on a constant currency basis and it would pay a special dividend of 20p a share. Performance in the 13 weeks to 26 December was driven by 21.1% like-for-like growth in the UK. B&M said annual adjusted earnings would be between £540m and £570m after it decided to pay £80m of business rates.

TP Icap updated the market on the year ended 31 December on Thursday, reporting that while trading volumes were still subdued during the fourth quarter, it expected revenue for the full year to be 1% lower than the prior year. The FTSE 250 company put that performance down to its diversification strategy, as revenue growth achieved in its data and analytics, institutional services, and energy and commodities divisions offset much of the decline in revenue in its global broking division in 2020, after a strong first quarter.

Newspaper round-up

London’s population is set to decline for the first time in more than 30 years, driven by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and people reassessing where they live during the crisis, according to a report. The accountancy firm PwC said the number of people living in the capital could fall by more than 300,000 this year, from a record level of about 9 million in 2020, to as low as 8.7 million. This would end decades of growth with the first annual drop since 1988. - Guardian

Thousands of British Gas engineers and call centre workers will down tools from Thursday as part of a national five-day strike in response to the energy giant’s “fire and rehire” plans. The GMB trade union called the strike after 89% of its 9,000 British Gas members voted in favour of industrial action following the breakdown of talks with executives at Britain’s biggest energy supplier last year. - Guardian

Workers will flock back to offices and power an economic recovery once the Covid pandemic is over, Boris Johnson said in an upbeat call with 250 business leaders as he sought to paint a picture of a brighter future. The Prime Minister said that fears the city centre is doomed are misguided and that firms will not change their business models to permanently rely on video calls and remote working. - Telegraph

A tribunal report has laid bare how Deloitte and two of its former audit partners succumbed to pressure to help Autonomy meet market expectations. Autonomy, founded by Mike Lynch, was the sole FTSE 100 audit client of Deloitte’s Cambridge office in 2009, when the software company’s revenue figures began to be bolstered by substantial sales of pure hardware. However, the hardware sales were not disclosed in the 2009 and 2010 financial statements. - The Times

US close

Stocks on Wall Street finished on a mixed note on Wednesday, as the Democrats looked set to win both seats in Georgia’s run-off election to the Senate, while violence on Capitol Hill saw the official count of the Electoral College vote suspended.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.44% at 30,829.40 and the S&P 500 added 0.57%, while the Nasdaq Composite was 0.61% weaker at 12,740.79.

The Dow closed 437.8 points higher on Wednesday, extending gains recorded in the previous session.

Senators began the official counting and certifying of the Electoral College vote earlier on Thursday - a largely ceremonial process to confirm Joe Biden as the winner of November’s presidential election.

A large number of pro-Donald Trump protestors gathered outside the Capitol turned violent, however, breaking through security barricades and storming the building which contains both houses of Congress.

Senators, Representatives and staff were locked down and subsequently evacuated as an armed standoff between a rioter and police took place at the doors to the House chamber.

Other rioters made it onto the Senate floor, while images also showed a pro-Trump protestor inside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.