Tuesday preview: Coronavirus, BP in focus

The focus on Tuesday was likely to continue to be on the 2019-nCoV coronavirus in China and updates regarding the pace of new infections as traders continued to look for confirmation in the data that they might be slowing.

Against that backdrop, and in an exceedingly light day for economic updates, the Reserve Bank of Australia was set to meet to decide on interest rates.

Stateside, the only report due out was for factory orders in December.

On home turf, no major economic releases were scheduled.

In the corporate patch, BP was set to publish its fourth quarter numbers.

Analysts at UBS are expecting that the oil major will post a 39.8% drop in fourth quarter earnings to reach $2.09bn which would be roughly 7.0% down on the previous quarter.

Production meanwhile was seen edging up 0.2% to 3.807m barrels of oil equivalent per day, but only thanks to positive maintenance and seasonal effects, with production set to be roughly unchanged on the year, albeit in-line with guidance.

BP's downstream operations may show "unusual resilience" they said, due to its Whiting refinery activities and access to cheaper Canadian crude, while it was possible that IMO drove strong oil trading, they said.

UBS had also penciled in $1.25bn of disposals despite no major sales having been announced, although it was likely that BP would choose to take further impairment charges.

Also due out were Kantar's grocery share figures for the 12 weeks through 26 January.

Tuesday 04 February

INTERIMS

Genedrive , K3 Capital Group , Mattioli Woods

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Johnson Matthey, Mitie Group

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Factory Orders (US) (15:00)

Producer Price Index (EU) (10:00)

Q4

BP

FINALS

Micro Focus International, RM, St. Modwen Properties

AGMS

Agronomics Limited, Blackrock Frontiers Investment Trust, Hargreave Hale AIM VCT , Numis Corporation

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Larsen and Toubro Ltd. GDS (Reg S)

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

PMI Construction (09:30)