Friday preview: UK retail sales, NatWest Group in focus

The market spotlight at the end of the week will be UK retail sales figures for the month of January.

Consensus is for month-on-month growth of 0.6%.

Stateside meanwhile, the market spotlight will be on speeches by Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller and Chicago Fed president, Charles Evans, at 1545 GMT, on the central bank's new policy strategy.

Across the Channel, the main data releases will be those for euro area consumer confidence in February and for the bloc's current account in December.

NatWest Group is due to update investors on its fourth quarter results at the end of the week.

UBS analyst Jason Napier believes that the lender will post a 30% surge in quarterly profits before tax to reach £817m despite a 2% decline in net interest income and an 8% drop for non interest income.

A 7% reduction in costs and a loan loss back write back, instead of the charge incurred during the year earlier quarter, are also expected.

The analyst was also anticipating a dividend per share of 7.0p and a £1.2bn share buyback to be unveiled.

Friday 18 February

INTERIMS

City of London Inv Trust

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Solid State

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Consumer Price Index (EU) (10:00)

Current Account (EU) (09:00)

Existing Home Sales (US) (15:00)

Q4

NATWEST GROUP PLC ORD 100P

FINALS

NATWEST GROUP PLC ORD 100P, Pod Point Group Holdings, SEGRO, TBC Bank Group, The Renewables Infrastructure Group Limited

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

GFK Consumer Confidence (00:01)

Retail Sales (07:00)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Victrex plc