Thursday preview: Bank of England, AstraZeneca in focus

The focus on Thursday will shift to the Bank of England, which is expected to boost the size of its asset purchase facility by £110bn, followed later in the session by the US Federal Reserve which may also signal that further quantitative easing is in the pipeline.

That is of course barring a major surprise on Wednesday night in the form of a Biden win being announced, which would require him to take the states of Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, then the result will not be known at least until Friday, when vote counting will be finished in Pennsylvania, and perhaps not until the following week.

The US jobs market will also be in the spotlight as the Department of Labor publishes key weekly jobless claims data.

Those figures will be followed by the all-important monthly jobs report, which in turn may feed into expectations for fiscal stimulus once the election results are known.

Covid-19 will not be far from investors' minds either as AstraZeneca, who is developing a vaccine alongside Oxford University updates on its third quarter financials.

UBS's Michael Leuchten is ahead of consensus for both the drugmaker's top and bottom lines.

The analyst is forecasting a total revenues of $6.72bn (consensus: $6.67bn), for core operating profits of $1.91bn (consensus: $1.82bn) and core earnings per share of $1.05 (consensus: $1.0).

Investors' focus will be on the firm's Covid-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222), which is one of the front-runners in global efforts to tame the novel coronavirus pandemic.

However, concerns about cash generation are likely to resurface and momentum on topline growth will be "key", he said.

Linked to the above, he highlighted the "softness" seen recently in some of the company's peers with AstraZeneca having a roughly 20% exposure to the Asian giant.

At the individual product level, consensus was anticipating sales for Tagrisso of $1.13bn, $463m for Lynparza, $546m for Imfinzi and $130m for Calquence.

"We will also look for any commentary around COVID-19 potential impact in Q4'20 as well as 2021 and the path to recovery."

Thursday 05 November

INTERIMS

Auto Trader Group , Aveva Group, Sainsbury (J), Trainline, Wincanton, Wizz Air Holdings

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Anglo Asian Mining, EMIS Group, Octopus AIM VCT 2

INTERIM EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Bloomsbury Publishing, Downing Three VCT H Shs, Downing Three VCT J Shs, LLoyds Banking Group 9.25% Non-Cum Irredeemable Pref Shares, LLoyds Banking Group 9.75% Non-Cum Irredeemable Pref Shares, New Century AIM VCT, Steppe Cement Ltd, Tribal Group

QUARTERLY EX-DIVIDEND DATE

BP, Custodian Reit , Greencoat Renewables, Picton Property Income Ltd, Tufton Oceanic Assets Limited NPV

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Continuing Claims (US) (13:30)

Factory Orders (GER) (07:00)

Initial Jobless Claims (US) (13:30)

Q3

Amryt Pharma, AstraZeneca, Bank Pekao SA GDS (Reg S)

FINALS

BowLeven, Kin and Carta , RDI Reit

ANNUAL REPORT

Applied Graphene Materials

SPECIAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Softcat

AGMS

Arc Minerals Limited NPV (DI), JPMorgan Emerging Markets Inv Trust, Panthera Resources , PCI-PAL

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

DWF Group , Hansard Global, Howden Joinery Group, Lancashire Holdings Limited, RSA Insurance Group, Superdry

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

PMI Construction (09:30)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Begbies Traynor Group, DWF Group

FINAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Ashmore Group, Clinigen Group, Dechra Pharmaceuticals, EKF Diagnostics Holdings , Ideagen, Jupiter UK Growth Investment Trust, New Star Investment Trust, NWF Group, Schroder Japan Growth Fund, Softcat