Thursday preview: CBI survey to ease, Saga and Chemring report

Thursday should be a quieter day on the UK financial calendar, with the CBI industrial trends survey providing macroeconomic data and little in the way of scheduled results apart from updates from mid-sized names including Saga, Chemring and Go-Ahead Group.

In the US, outside of the weekly initial jobless claims figures, the big news will probably be the Republican senators unveiling of their draft healthcare bill.

"The effort has been plagued from the start by tensions between moderates and conservatives," reports Reuters, with Democrats criticising the GOP's weeks of behind-the-scenes meetings.

UK INDUSTRIAL TRENDS

The CBI's industrial trends survey will be released at 1100 BST, providing qualitative opinion from senior manufacturing executives on past and expected trends in output, exports, prices, costs, investment intentions, business confidence and capacity utilisation.

With the UK's manufacturing sector having put in a rather disappointing performance of late, with contraction in January, February and March this year, April's survey saw a positive number.

Last month’s headline number from the CBI gave the survey's highest reading since February 2015 of +9.

With the purchasing managers index for April only just short of a three-year high, will the CBI survey point to further improvement in May?

The consensus forecast is for this to ease to +7 in May.

COMPANY UPDATES

Saga will issue a first-quarter trading statements, which have traditionally been very short with no performance metrics.

This will be the first update since new chief executive Lance Batchelor laid out his strategy to shift to a new lower-capital model where Saga will leverage a deep knowledge of its most loyal 'High Affinity Customers' to enable it to increase margins by acting as a broker of various third-party services.

At the final results in March, Batchelor suggested that the year had started well, with guidance being for ongoing consistent profit growth.

Broker Numis thought it was too early for the company to show material progress with its new strategy.

"Recently there has been less emphasis on outright growth in insurance customer numbers but instead greater priority on attracting insurance customers that are likely to become HACs," said analyst Nick Johnson.

"As such we do not expect significant growth in insurance customers in either motor or home this year. Instead we expect the travel business to be the main short term growth driver," he said.

Chemring will publish interim results for the for the six months ended 30 April.

In mid March the high-technology defence supplier said it had started the year positively, continuing the momentum of the second half of last year.

Order intake in the first four months of the year was £127.4m with revenue during the four months to 26 February of £145.6m versus £106.5m in the same period last year, helped by the much weaker pound and contracts in the Energetics Systems division.

The order book at 26 February was £556.9m, down from £596.3m over the year and from £592.9m at the end of October as some order backlog was cleared and the pound recovered a little.

At the time the board said their expectations for trading for the full year remained unchanged, with seasonality and customer requirements meaning that trading performance and cashflows will be weighted to the second half, though less pronounced than last year.

Thursday June 22

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Cerillion , Euromoney Institutional Investor

INTERIM EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Elegant Hotels Group , Gooch & Housego, Maven Income & Growth 3 VCT, Maven Income & Growth 4 VCT, Maven Income & Growth VCT, Orchard Funding Group , Sherborne Investors (Guernsey) 'B' Limited

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Total SA, UIL Limited (DI)

QUARTERLY EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Funding Circle SME Income Fund, Land Securities Group, Mercantile Investment Trust (The)

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Continuing Claims (US) (13:30)
House Price Index (US) (13:00)
Initial Jobless Claims (US) (13:30)

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

CBI Industrial Trends Surveys (11:00)

INTERIMS

Chemring Group

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Go-Ahead Group

SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Alternative Liquidity Fund Limited

SPECIAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Chelverton Small Companies Dividend Trust, Northern 2 VCT, Northern 3 VCT, PayPoint

AGMS

Adgorithms Limited (DI), Avesoro Resources Inc. (DI), Braemar Shipping Services, Cadogan Petroleum, ECSC Group, EVR Holdings, Petropavlovsk, PJSC Acron GDR (REG S), PJSC Centre For Cargo Container Traffic Transcontainer GDR (Reg S), PJSC Centre For Cargo Container Traffic Transcontainer GDR (Reg S), Pro Global Insurance Solutions , Saga , Savannah Petroleum , Senterra Energy , Taliesin Property Fund Limited, Tandem Group, Tiger Resource Finance, Union Jack Oil, Universe Group, Velocys plc, Wentworth Resources Ltd (DI), Widecells Group , Xtract Resources

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Cineworld Group, Gamma Communications

FINAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI), BGEO Group, Big Yellow Group, Edinburgh Inv Trust, Fuller Smith & Turner, Gresham House Strategic , Helical, JD Sports Fashion, KCOM Group, Majestic Wine, Mediclinic International , Montanaro European Smaller Companies Trust, Morses Club , MS International, Norcros, Northern 2 VCT, Northern 3 VCT, PayPoint, Sprue Aegis, Tex Holdings, TR Property Inv Trust, United Utilities Group, Wynnstay Properties