London pre-open: Stocks seen up after more Wall St gains; retail sales eyed

London stocks were set for a firmer open on Friday, tracking a fifth day of gains on Wall Street as investors put aside their worries about inflation, with UK retail sales in focus.

The FTSE 100 was called to open 29 points higher at 7,263.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "We ended the day with another positive close for US markets in which we’ve seen over 50% of the recent losses recovered in the space of 5 days, despite more evidence that inflation is set to push higher in the coming months, and this is expected to translate into a positive European open this morning."

On the data front, retail sales are due at 0930 GMT.

Hewson said: "Today’s UK retail sales could suffer from these higher prices in the same way this week’s US retail sales were slightly more disappointing as higher energy and food prices dampened consumption.

"In contrast to the US the UK had a pretty rotten month in December, with a slump of 1.5%, though that was largely as a result of bumper November number of 1.1% which had been boosted by Black Friday sales spending.

"Recent retail sales numbers from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG earlier this month appeared to show that while some retailers were struggling we did see a pickup in January, as consumers started to re-open their wallets after a slow December. The recent cold weather in January may well have also prompted an increase in demand for coats and gloves, with an expectation that we could see a rise of 0.6%."

In corporate news, Segro took the wraps off what it described as another strong set of financial, operating and portfolio performance metrics for the 2017 year on Friday, with a record level of development completions during the period, almost all of which have been leased.

The FTSE 100 company said adjusted pre-tax profit was up 25.7% to £194.2m, which the board put down to its focus on customer and portfolio management, delivering high customer retention rates, like-for-like rental growth and a low vacancy rate.

It also said the result reflected investment during the year, primarily the acquisition of the Airport Property Partnership portfolio and a record level of development capital expenditure.

Balfour Beatty has won a share of a huge contract to design and build an 'automated people mover' at Los Angeles International airport.

The LINXS joint venture, in which Balfour has a 30% stake, was awarded the $1.95bn (£1.4bn) contract to construct the above-ground transport system connecting the LAX central terminal area to a new rental car facility as well as six stations and a vehicle maintenance building.

Rio Tinto said on Friday it had been told by Mongolia to find a domestic power source for the $5.3bn expansion the Oyu Tolgoi mine by 2022.

The Rio subsidiary that owns 66% per cent of Oyu Tolgoi, Turquoise Hill Resources, said it and Rio were "continuing to evaluate all viable power options including construction of an Oyu Tolgoi based power plant" and was setting aside $250m a year “for the development of a power station in Mongolia in its 2019 and 2020 capex forecasts".