Coca Cola HBG sales hit by FX moves

London open

The Footsie is being called to start the session 11 points lower from Thursday's closing level of 6,104.19.

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Weak emerging country currencies and a strong euro combined to hit sales at bottler Coca-Cola HBG, with net sales revenues down 2.7% to €1.3bn in the first quarter. On a constant currency basis, sales rose 2%. The company reported good growth in Nigeria, Romania and Poland, which offset a weak performance in Russia. Volume sales were flat at 439m cases, helped by increases in developing and emerging markets. Chief executive Dimitris Lois said pricing remained weak, particularly in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Megabrewers Anheuser-Busch InBev and FTSE 100-traded SABMiller did some asset-shuffling with Brazilian brewer Ambev this week, ahead of their proposed combination of the British and Belgian companies. AB InBev confirmed it has entered into an agreement with Ambev, in which it will transfer SABMiller’s Panamanian business to Ambev in exchange for Ambev’s Colombian, Peruvian and Ecuadorian businesses. The board of AB InBev said this will allow it to focus on countries where the SABMiller business it acquires and combines with are well-established, and allow Ambev to initiate operations in Panama through the established SABMiller business and further expand in Central America.

In the press

Dong Energy set out plans for a summer stock market flotation yesterday, as it pressed ahead with a big expansion of its offshore wind energy business in Britain.Dong, the world’s biggest investor in offshore wind projects, said that it would list at least 15 per cent of its shares on the Nasdaq Copenhagen exchange this summer in a flotation that could value the Danish company at up to £10 billion. That would represent the country’s biggest IPO.

Bill Gates has his own 19-seat private jet and family holidays are held on a 134m yacht powered by eight diesel engines. But yesterday it emerged that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had sold its holding in BP in the latest move to divest its fossil fuel assets. The world’s biggest health charity sold its $187 million stake in the British oil giant at the end of last year, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

plan to overcome the £500m pensions deficit that is proving a massive hurdle to the sale of Tata’s UK steel business is set to fail, according to a leading pensions expert. Changes the Government is reported to be considering "drive a coach and horses through a fundamental principle” of pension schemes, according to John Ralfe, who is also advising a government inquiry into BHS, the Pension Protection Fund and the Pensions Regulator.

US close

Wall Street was mixed at the close on Thursday as oil prices rose and investors weighed a worse-than-expected weekly jobless claims report and speeches from Federal Reserve policymakers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.05% while the S&P 500 fell 0.02% and the Nasdaq dropped 0.49%.

Oil prices advanced after the International Energy Agency said global oil supplies will experience a “dramatic reduction” in the second half of the year, helping to soothe concerns about a global crude glut. West Texas Intermediate crude increased 0.38% to $46.41 per barrel and Brent rose 0.66% to $47.92 per barrel.