JD Sports expecting decent full-year profits, Mondi chief executive officer steps down
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 30 points higher on Friday, having closed up 0.31% at 7,598.12 on Thursday.
Stocks to watch
JD Sports Fashion said it expected full year profits to be in the upper quartile of expectations after positive like for like Christmas sales, especially from its overseas operations. The company said that the figures would be influenced by trading throughout January due to a differentiated timing of the post-Christmas sale period in a number of its key overseas markets. “We remain confident that the full year group headline profit before tax will be in the upper quartile of current market expectations which, after adjusting for the impact of the transition to IFRS 16, range from £403m - £433m.,” the company said on Friday.
Paper and packaging firm Mondi said chief executive Peter Oswald would step down and leave the group on March 31. Chief financial officer Andrew King had agreed to take on the role on an interim basis until a successor was appointed, Mondi said on Friday.
Great Portland Estates has exchanged contracts to sell 24/25 Britton Street, EC1 to an overseas investor for a headline sale price of £64.5m, it announced on Friday, equating to £64.06m after the deduction of vendor top ups. The FTSE 250 company said the headline price reflected a net initial yield of 4.07% and a capital value of £1,255 per square foot. It said the premium to the September valuation was 6.2%, with completion scheduled for 22 January.
Newspaper round-up
Boeing on Thursday released hundreds of internal messages that raise serious questions about its development of simulators and the 737 MAX that was grounded in March after two fatal crashes, prompting outrage from US lawmakers. In an April 2017 exchange of instant messages, two employees expressed complaints about the MAX following references to issues with the plane’s flight management computer. “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” one unnamed employee wrote. – Guardian
BlackRock, the world’s largest investor, has joined an influential pressure group calling for the biggest polluters to reduce their emissions, after criticisms that it was undermining action addressing the climate crisis. The US investment firm has signed up to Climate Action 100+, a group of investors managing assets worth more than $35tn (£27tn), that pressures fossil fuel producers and other companies responsible for two-thirds of annual global industrial emissions to show how they will reduce carbon dioxide pollution. – Guardian
Boris Johnson’s election triumph has sent business confidence rocketing to a record high and breathed new life into Britain’s jobs market. Top finance directors reported the biggest jump in confidence on record during the fourth quarter after the election broke the Brexit deadlock and ended the threat of a far-left government, a Deloitte survey revealed. – Telegraph
Four thousand former railway maintenance workers with the collapsed Carillion construction group will have their pension promises largely met after their scheme was officially admitted into the Pension Protection Fund, the industry lifeboat. The transfer of Carillion Rail Pension Scheme, part of the gigantic Railways Pension Scheme (RPS), into the protection fund comes amid growing concern about shortfalls in the RPS — which one expert said now amounted to £11 billion, far in excess of the official actuarial deficit. – The Times
Industry in the north of England is reeling after the steel group Liberty and the train manufacturer Hitachi Rail announced the loss of 600 jobs. Liberty Steel, part of the UK business built up by the entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta buying distressed assets in the struggling sector, said that it was seeking 355 redundancies across four plants, mainly in Yorkshire but also in south Wales. Hitachi Rail, which assembles trains at its factory in Co Durham, including the new rolling stock for the Great Western and London North Eastern inter-city railways, said it was cutting 250 staff, or 30 percent of its 850 workers. – The Times
US close
US stocks finished at record highs on Thursday, with the Dow coming close to the psychologically-important 29,000 point level - as Washington appeared to take steps to avoid further conflict in the Middle East, and investors turned their attention back to the US-China trade front.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.74% at 28,956.90, the S&P 500 added 0.67% at 3,274.70, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.81% firmer at 9,203.43.
At the open, the Dow was 124.58 points higher on Thursday after closing out the previous session in the green, despite news that Iran had fired rockets at two Iraqi bases hosting American troops.
As far as Thursday was concerned, market focus began largely attuned to geopolitical developments after Donald Trump said late on Wednesday that Tehran was seemingly "standing down" following the attack on the Ain al-Asad airbase in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
Trump vowed to impose "additional punishing economic sanctions" on the Iranian regime but also indicated that Washington would be open to negotiations with the Islamic Republic.
"We must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place," Trump said.