Heavyweight UK firms Vodafone, BP and Shell will step into the spotlight this week in one of the busiest corporate weeks of the year, marking a pivotal point for investors looking to lift the market's deepening gloom.
Joining the mobile phone and oil giants in this week's diary are Europe's biggest drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline, telecoms group BT and four of the UK's biggest banks. In all, some 33 companies are due to report results or issue trading updates, representing just over a 50 percent weighting in the FTSE-100 share index.
After generally positive US second quarter results have been overshadowed by cautious outlook statements to keep pressure on world equity markets, investors said forecast-beating results could fail to perk up the market if firms remain wary on prospects for 2005.
The FTSE-100 is set to post its 5th consecutive weekly fall on Friday after slumping to its lowest close for 8 months on Thursday.
The index was at 4,325 points at mid-morning on Friday, down 14 points on the week and 3.3 percent down this year.
"The market's looking into 2005 and there's certainly going to be a slowdown (in economic growth) and if corporate profitably is going to slow as well inevitably people won't be prepared to pay as much for shares," said Henk Potts, investment manager at Barclays Private Clients.
Vodafone is expected to post strong customer growth when it releases key performance indicators for the first quarter on Monday. But as a muted reaction to better-than-expected growth from smaller rival mmO2 last week showed, investors will also want reassurance that industry competition is not stiffening.
BT releases its first quarter results on Thursday. It stemmed a revenue decline in the final quarter of last year but still faces increasing competition in its core business.
The backdrop is more positive for BP, Britain's biggest company, which is expected to post bumper second quarter earnings on Tuesday after already saying production in the quarter jumped 17 percent.
The high oil price should also help Shell's new management direct attention away from this year's reserves restatement debacle when it reports on Thursday, a day after smaller rival BG Group.
The banking reporting season gathers pace with quarterly results from HBOS and Lloyds TSB and from perennial take-over targets Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester, who could shed light on whether there is any substance to mounting talk of further industry consolidation. Abbey shares jumped on Thursday as take-over talk returned.
GlaxoSmithKline is expected to report a sharp drop in earnings on Tuesday.
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