Wednesday preview: US ADP report, Vodafone in the spotlight

Investors' attention will shift back towards the US in the middle of the week amid key data releases and company earnings.

Consultancy ADP's monthly private sector payrolls is likely to dominate the headlines, although it is not always a reliable lead indicator for the official non-farm payrolls report published two days afterwards.

Investors will also be pouring over the latest quarterly updates from Amazon and Google, which were released overnight.

The Institute for Supply Management's services sector Purchasing Managers' Index for January is also likely to draw a fair bit of attention, just the same as a raft of Fed speakers scheduled for throughout the afternoon.

On home shores, the spotlight will be on a final reading for IHS Markit's PMI for UK services in January, which is expected to be little changed from the preliminary print of 38.8.

A similar survey for euro area services is also expected to come in on the weak side, albeit not by quite as much.

Preliminary CPI data for January is due out as well, with Eurostat expected to report that the year-on-year rate of inflation in the single currency bloc picked up from -0.3% to 0.4%.

Vodafone is among the UK corporate names due out with updates.

UBS analyst Polo Tang expects the mobile telecommunications outfit will report a continued improvement in its top-line trends during its financial third quarter and reiterate its full-year guidance.

The Visible Alpha consensus was for the slowdown in the company's organic service revenues to ease from the -1.3% and -0.4% declines observed in the first and second quarters of its financial year to -0.14% in the third quarter.

For the full-year meanwhile, Vodafone had guided towards earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of €14.4-14.6bn and free cash flow of more than €5bn (consensus: €5.1bn).

Tang also described the company's shares as "cheap", pointing out how they were trading on a 10.5% free cash flow to equity, post spectrum and restructuring, and a 6.5% dividend for 2021.

Wednesday 03 February

INTERIMS

Frontier Developments

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Ashtead Group

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

British American Tobacco

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Crude Oil Inventories (US) (15:30)

ISM Prices Paid (US) (15:00)

ISM Services (US) (15:00)

MBA Mortgage Applications (US) (12:00)

PMI Composite (EU) (09:00)

PMI Composite (GER) (08:55)

PMI Composite (US) (14:45)

PMI Services (EU) (09:00)

PMI Services (GER) (08:55)

PMI Services (US) (14:45)

Producer Price Index (EU) (10:00)

Q4

GlaxoSmithKline

GMS

Stobart Group Ltd.

EGMS

DP Eurasia N.V. (DI)

AGMS

Daily Mail and General Trust A (Non.V), Premier Miton Group, Schroder Asia Pacific Fund

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Vodafone Group

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

PMI Services (09:30)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Britvic