BP set to hit debt target in first quarter, Sage agrees sale of Swiss business

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 12 points lower on Tuesday, having closed up 0.35% on Thursday at 6,757.30 before the long Easter weekend.

Stocks to watch

Oil giant BP said it expected to hit its $35bn net debt target during the first quarter of 2021 after faster-than-expected progress on its disposals programme. The company had forecast raising $4bn ‑ $6bn from disposals and said proceeds would now be at the upper end of this range. "This is a result of earlier than anticipated delivery of disposal proceeds combined with very strong business performance during the first quarter. We look forward to updating the market at our first quarter results, including further information on share buybacks," said chief executive Bernard Looney.

Software company Sage Group has agreed to sell its Swiss business to Infoniqa for CHF 50m (£39m), it announced on Tuesday, having put it up for sale in November. The FTSE 100 company said that in the 2020 financial year, the business achieved revenue of £25m and operating profit of £4m. It said the transaction was subject to certain closing conditions, and was expected to complete within the next year.

Discount carrier Wizz Air transported 40% more passengers in March versus the month before to reach 768,113. But the Eastern Europe-focused airline's load factor dropped from 69.8% to 62.5%, as management added to capacity, with the number of available seats being increased from 382,928 to 480,203. The company's load factor was thus 29.4% below its year-earlier level, versus 24 percentage points less in February.

Newspaper round-up

Goldman Sachs is preparing for hundreds more staff to go back to its London office this week as it eyes a return to pre-pandemic working conditions. As many as 200 of the US investment bank’s workers could return to the main London office from Tuesday, joining several hundred staff who have been at their desks throughout several lockdowns. Goldman Sachs employs about 6,000 workers in London overall. - Guardian

Shares in GameStop fell on Monday after the video-game retailer said it may sell up to $1bn (£720m) worth of stock as it tries to make the best of the 900% surge in its shares from a Reddit-driven rally this year. The company said it would sell up to 3.5m shares and use the proceeds to speed up its shift to e-commerce in an overhaul being led by the billionaire Ryan Cohen, its biggest shareholder and a board member of GameStop. Shares in the company fell sharply in pre-market trading in New York but had recovered by the close to $186.95, a fall of 1.9%. - Guardian

Britain’s banks have not dipped into their capital buffers to lend to customers during the pandemic, despite being given the green light to do so. Most big banks have built up their capital strength over the past year, even as officials told them to deploy money built up in recent years to support businesses. Regulators said that it was in their own interests to do so to keep defaults down. - The Times

The chief executive of Oxford Nanopore, the biotechnology company planning one of the biggest flotations in London this year, was found by a judge in the United States to have misled regulators in a patent court case. Gordon Sanghera, when director of research and development for the diabetes business of Abbott Laboratories, an American healthcare company, was found guilty of inequitable conduct, along with Abbott’s in-house lawyer, after a patent dispute with rival multinational drug companies. - The Times

Businesses are preparing to ramp up capital spending after years of underinvestment, boosting hopes of a rapid economic bounce-back from the pandemic. The UK’s leading group of manufacturers found that over half of companies will either invest more cash as a result of the Government’s ‘super-deduction’ tax break, or bring forward their investment plans. - Telegraph

US close

Stocks closed in positive territory on Wall Street on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.13% at 33,527.19.

The S&P 500 added 1.44% to 4,077.91, and the Nasdaq Composite was 1.67% firmer at 13,705.59.