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London open: FTSE touches yearly highs as ITV and St James lead rebound
London’s FTSE 100 bumped around 12-month highs in early trading on Wednesday as the rebound since the Brexit vote continued thanks to some encouraging corporate results releases.
Following mixed sessions in the US and Asia overnight, the UK’s blue chip index was 0.29% higher at 6,743.76 by 0835 BST, while the FTSE 250 was still some way off June’s six-month high but up 0.56% at 17,164.47.
CMC Markets‘ Michael Hewson said: “Europe’s markets look set to open higher this morning on reports from Japanese media that a new stimulus package of measures from the Japanese government could well amount to over 25trn yen, and could be announced today.
“It should be noted that this has come 24 hours after Japanese markets sold off on reports that any package could well fall short of expectations, after comments from finance minister Taro Aso earlier this week.”
On the macroeconomic calendar, the first release of second-quarter UK GDP is at 0930 BST.
“It almost seems like an irrelevance to talk about the first snapshot of UK Q2 GDP given recent events as a result of the Brexit vote just over a month ago, but this could be as good as it gets for a while for the UK as we get our first look at these numbers today,” Hewson said.
In the US, durable goods orders are at 1330 BST and pending home sales are at 1500 BST, while the Fed’s rate announcement is at 1900 BST.
In corporate news, wealth manager St James’s Place was the top riser on the Footsie, as it reported a drop in first-half pre-tax profit but lifted its dividend. For the six months to 30 June, IFRS pre-tax profit fell to £97m from £103.7m in the same period last year. The group said its underlying performance was once again impacted by a heightened levy charged by the Financial Services Compensation scheme of £17m.
St James said this expense impacts all profit measures, but it remains hopeful that the elevated levy imposed over the last two years will return to a more normalised level in future years. Chief executive David Bellamy said: “Bearing testament to the reassuring consistency and resilience of our business, I am particularly pleased that we achieved record gross and net inflows in the second quarter, up 23% and 25% respectively.”
ITV was another big riser, having lost over a fifth of its value in the last three months on fears of an advertising slowdown. Although the broadcaster’s revenue growth slowed in the latter part of the first half of the year and it cautioned that television advertising is likely to be down in the third quarter, this was not as bad as had been feared and with the board hiking the interim dividend 26% to 2.4p it encouraged investors to switch back.
Outservices group Capita said the UK decision to leave the European Union had increased uncertainty, particularly in the financial services sector, and it was “continuing to experience some delays in decision making in the short – term”.
However, it added that it expected this to be “more than offset in the medium-term by incremental opportunities that arise as clients respond to the impacts of the UK leaving the EU”.
