Kingfisher posts solid second quarter, Tullow's TEN begins flowing

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 38 points higher on Thursday morning, according to pre-market trading.

Stocks to watch

Sales slowed only slightly in the second quarter for Kingfisher as B&Q and Screwfix grew strongly in the UK and Ireland to offset a decline in France. Chief executive Véronique Laury called the group like-for-like rise of 3.0% a "solid" sales performance, after the 3.6% gain in the first quarter, adding that management remain cautious on the short-term outlook although there had been no clear evidence of any Brexit impact on demand so far.

Having overcome a technical failure early last month, Fresnillo's San Julián milling facility has successfully begun processing ore and operations at the leaching plant were on Thursday confirmed as having run "normally" for a week. The $515m silver-gold project has an expected average production of 10.3m ounces of silver and 44,000 ounces of gold per year once the second phase is commissioned by year-end and it reaches full capacity.

Crude oil began flowing from Tullow Oil´s TEN fields offshore Ghana on time and on budget. First oil had started being pumped to its floating production offtake vessel Prof. John Evans Atta Mills from the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN), the company said in a statement.

Newspaper round-up

The value of commercial tie-ups between British universities and businesses has risen by more than 6 per cent to £4.2bn year-on-year, as higher education bodies seek out other ventures to compensate for leaner public funds. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) released a range of statistics on Thursday covering the collaborations between universities and businesses in 2014-15 compared to the previous year. – Financial Times

Britain’s economy will slow down but should not go anywhere close to a recession, according to economists at credit ratings agency Moody’s, while growth in the rest of the world is also “stabilising.” Although markets dived on the referendum result in June, stock prices have recovered and now economists also believe the impact of the vote will be relatively modest, compared with some early fears. – Telegraph

The City of London police arrested a Sage Group employee at Heathrow airport on Wednesday on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, just two days after the FTSE 100 company revealed a data breach. The 32-year-old female's arrest follows Sage's announcement earlier this week that an internal login had been used to gain unauthorised access to around 280 customers personal details. – Telegraph

Drug companies are slashing the prices of new cancer medicines to avoid having them banned from NHS use, following the closure of the Cancer Drugs Fund. The manufacturers of four cancer drugs have dropped their prices followingclosure of the fund – a pot of money worth £340m a year to pay for drugs that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) did not find cost-effective. – Guardian

US close

US stocks recouped mid-session losses to finish slightly higher on Wednesday as the Federal Reserve’s meeting minutes showed a continued reluctance to jump to any conclusions about the state of the economy.

Having earlier slipped around 75 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed almost 22 points or 0.12% higher at 18,573.94, while the S&P 500 ended the session up just over four points at 2,182.22 and the Nasdaq composite concluded just a point and half higher at 5,228.66.

Minutes from the Fed’s minutes of its 26-27 July policy meeting delivered past the midway point of the session showed policymakers divided on pace of rate hikes needed, indicating a September move is unlikely.

The minutes stated that, regarding the near-term outlook, members of the Federal Open Markets Committee "generally agreed that the prompt recovery in financial markets following the Brexit vote and the pickup in job gains in June had alleviated two key uncertainties about the outlook” but the rate setters were not yet ready to declare an “all clear” for the next hike.