Plenty for markets to feast on as firms update investors
REPORTING season is definitely upon us and this week offers up a cornucopia of corporate reports for the markets to devour.
Dominos Pizza UK & Ireland serves up the first slice today and investors will be keen to hear whether the firm has continued to be a recession winner.
It reported a nearly 10 per cent like-for-like rise in sales in the 13 weeks to the end of March as consumers stayed in ordering takeaways instead of eating out. Will rising unemployment underpin the trend, or will Dominos start to feel the pinch as purse-strings are drawn even tighter?
Tomorrow will see IG Group report its final results and analysts at UBS are forecasting revenues of £257m and pre-tax profit of £125m. The markets will also be looking for an indication of revenue trends in IG’s UK and Australian businesses, which it previously said had returned to growth in the fourth quarter.
Second-quarter results from drug giant GlaxoSmithKline are out on Wednesday, and Charles Stanley has forecast year-on-year sales to have grown by 14 per cent to £6.7bn – though it expects operating margins to have been hit.
Analysts will also be looking for an indication of the projected impact of the H1N1 virus outbreak.
Thursday is a blockbuster day, with reports due in from the retail, telecoms, media and support services sectors. Kingfisher will update on its second-quarter sales, with good weather and some stability returning to the UK housing market expected to drive a more positive outlook for the DIY market.
Also on Thursday, Daily Mail and General Trust will issue an interim management statement covering the two months to the end of June. Deutsche Bank notes that the wider display advertising market showed no signs of improvement in the last quarter, and that circulation trends remain rather weak.
Yellow Pages operator Yell Group will issue its first-quarter results and is expected to reveal even slower trading than previously reported, but could shed some light on talks with its banks over refinancing.
Compass Group, Capita and Carphone Warehouse will also report.
The week will end with an interim management statement trading update from mobile operator Vodafone, which UBS says is losing market share to its competition, though other analysts expect key performance indicators to remain strong.