Wednesday preview: UK CPI, Bellway in the spotlight

The market spotlight in the middle of the week will shift to UK inflation.

Data due out at 0700 GMT from the Office for National Statistics is expected to show just a one tenth of a percentage point uptick in the year-on-year rate of increase in consumer prices to 0.8%.

Factory gate price increases, which are due to be published alongside, are seen accelerating from 1.3% to 2.6%.

At the core level on the other hand, consensus is for them to be unchanged in annual terms.

Against that backdrop, later in the morning, IHS Markit will release the preliminary results of its Purchasing Managers surveys for UK manufacturing and services in March.

To take note of, the services PMI is expected to edge past the 50.0 point threshold which denotes an overall expansion, while that for manufacturing is projected to print at 55.0 (February: 55.1).

Comparable surveys for the US due out later on Wednesday are also expected to show improvement, as is the PMI for euro area services, for which a rise to 46.0 is anticipated (February: 45.7).

UBS's Anastasia Solonitsyna is anticipating a modest beat for Bellway on its bottom line for the first half of its 2021 financial year.

The analyst has penciled in profits before tax of £288.0m (consensus: £280.0m) for over the latest six-month stretch, down from the £292.0m seen in the comparable year ago period.

The homebuilder had already disclosed a 12.5% rise in housing sales to £1.72bn and Solonitsyna was only anticipating a 2.6 percentage point drop in its operating margins over the half to 17.0%.

For the full year, the analyst had also penciled in completions of 9,900 (consensus: 9,800) on the back of a 32% jump in sales and with operating margins of 16.6%.

Nevertheless, the latter was only a smidgen better than the roughly "at least" 16.5% rise guided to by company management.

In a research note sent to clients, she added that she would also be watching the sales rate trend for March "after a modest -2% decline recorded in H1 to 0.69x as well as more details on FY21 guidance, including prices, volumes and margin development."

Wednesday 24 March

INTERIMS

Applied Graphene Materials , Bellway, Softcat

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Jupiter UK Growth Investment Trust, St James's Place

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Crude Oil Inventories (US) (14:30)

Durable Goods Orders (US) (12:30)

MBA Mortgage Applications (US) (11:00)

Q4

MHP SE GDR (Reg S)

FINALS

Anglo Pacific Group, Burford Capital NPV (DI), Circassia Group , CPP Group, ECSC Group, Kenmare Resources (CDI), Keywords Studios, MHP SE GDR (Reg S), Pendragon, Sopheon , Strix Group , Tclarke , Telit Communications

AGMS

Arden Partners, Blackrock Throgmorton Trust, Highway Capital, Hyundai Motor Company GDR (Reg S), LG Electronics Inc GDS (Reg S), Mitchells & Butlers, N4 Pharma , Oxford Biodynamics , Pantheon Resources, Rights & Issues Investment Trust , Shanta Gold Ltd.

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Diploma

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Consumer Price Index (07:00)

Producer Price Index (07:00)

Retail Price Index (07:00)