Taylor Wimpey on track for full-year expectations, Coca-Cola HBC reports 'solid' third quarter
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 40 points lower on Wednesday, having closed up 0.5% at 7,365.44 on Tuesday.
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House builder Taylor Wimpey said it was on track to deliver full year results in line with expectations, albeit with slightly higher volumes and slightly lower operating margins than guided at the half year. Sales rates for the year to date remained strong at 0.96 sales per outlet per week compared with 0.81 a year earlier, “driven by our high-quality sites and improvements in both product availability and build capacity that we have made over the last 18 months”, the company said in a trading statement on Wednesday. "Forward indicators for sales have remained at healthy levels albeit we have seen some increasing customer caution, particularly in the higher-priced markets of London and the South East, as a result of the ongoing political and economic uncertainty."
Coca-Cola HBC reported a third quarter of “solid performance” on Wednesday, even after a period of poor weather impacted industry volumes in our geographies. The FTSE 100 bottler of Coca-Cola products said it saw foreign exchange-neutral revenue growth of 3.4%, or 2.3% excluding the impact of the Bambi acquisition. It said volumes increased 1.1% in the quarter, but were down 0.1% excluding Bambi, with transactions growing faster than volume and its brands gaining or maintaining share in the majority of its markets.
Spirax-Sarco Engineering said its full year expectations were unchanged despite a subdued macroeconomic environment and forecasts for a slowdown in industrial production growth rates in both developed and emerging markets. The pump and steam-management system manufacturer reported that its organic sales growth rate in the four months to October reduced from the 8% achieved in the first half of the year, but insisted that its diversification across market sectors stood the business in good stead.
Newspaper round-up
One in every two FTSE 100 executive appointments over the next year will have to go to a woman if the UK is to meet targets to tackle the gender imbalance across British business by 2020, a report has warned. A “step change” at the UK’s biggest listed companies is needed if they are to hit a key metric where women make up at least a third of executive-level leadership teams by the end of next year. - Guardian
The City watchdog has warned staff to clean up their act following “shameful” behaviour at its London headquarters, including verbal abuse of catering teams and workers defecating on toilet floors. A senior boss at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – which is in charge of policing bankers and financial firms – has written to staff over their bad behaviour at the watchdog’s £60m office in Stratford, east London. – Guardian
A Los Angeles hedge fund has wrestled control of Domino's Pizza's boardroom overhaul as the takeaway firms fights to end a long-running row with its franchisees. Activist investor Browning West was handed a seat on the board and will lead the search for the company's top two jobs of chairman and chief executive alongside Domino's senior independent director Ian Bull. - Telegraph
New Bond Street in central London is the third priciest street in the world in which to set up shop, according to new research.The street, home to luxury retailers including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Mulberry, was found to be more expensive than anywhere other than Upper 5th Avenue in New York and Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. – The Times
Royal Mail has lost its appeal against Ofcom’s finding that it was guilty of market abuse designed to quash Whistl, a letter-handling rival. Sixteen months after the original verdict, when Royal Mail was fined a record £50 million by the regulator for anti-competitive behaviour, the Competition Appeal Tribunal found against the letters and parcels group. – The Times
US close
Stocks closed on a mixed note on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrials falling just short of registering its tenth record close of the year.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat at 27,691.49, while the S&P 500 closed 0.16% firmer at 3,091.84 and the Nasdaq Composited saw out the session 0.26% stronger at 8,486.09.
The Dow closed flat on Tuesday and fell just shy of recording another all-time high after seeing out the previous session slightly higher on the back of some positive news from Boeing that helped the index erase a 135-point decline in early trading.
Market participants remained firmly focused on China-US trade news on Tuesday, with some concerns regarding the likelihood of the two global economic superpowers actually managing to sign a trade deal in the coming weeks reappearing after Donald Trump said on Friday that he had not agreed to scrap American trade tariffs on Chinese goods.
The President spoke at the Economic Club of New York, with investors looking for clues as to the status of the ongoing trade talks between the US and China but he offered very little.
Trump also lambasted previous US leaders for allowing China to "cheat" on trade.