NatWest unveils share buyback, Segro hikes dividend as profits rise

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 24 points lower on Friday, having closed up 0.18% on Thursday at 8,012.53.

Stocks to watch

Britain’s NatWest said annual profits rose by more than a third and unveiled a £800m share buyback as it cashed in on surging interest rates, despite a net impairment charge of £337m. The bank on Friday posted pre-tax profit of £5.1bn for 2022, up from £4bn a year earlier and in line with forecasts. A final dividend of 10 pence was declared and NatWest continued to expect to achieve a return on tangible equity of 14-16%.

Medical technology company Smith+Nephew said it had appointed former Serco chief executive Rupert Soames as chair, succeeding Roberto Quarta who will this year. Soames will be appointed at the company's annual general meeting on April 26. Quarta has agreed to continue as chair to ensure a smooth transition and will put himself forward for re-election as a non-executive director, the company said on Friday.

Segro reported a strong full-year financial performance on Friday, with adjusted pre-tax profit increasing 8.4% to £386m, and net rental income ahead 18.9% to £522m due to strong like-for-like rental growth and development completions. However, its adjusted net asset value per share decreased 15% to 966p, primarily due to market-wide yield expansion, although that was partly offset by estimated rental value growth and asset management successes. The company hiked its full-year dividend by 8.2%, to 26.3p.

Newspaper round-up

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has said in a filing that it is increasing its spend on the personal security of chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg by $4m (£3.3m) to $14m, at a moment when the company has cut thousands of jobs in what Zuckerberg has called the “year of efficiency”. Meta’s board declared that the 40% increase was “appropriate and necessary under the circumstances” and was in place “to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as Meta’s founder, chairman, and CEO”. – Guardian

Jeremy Hunt should cut business taxes at next month’s budget to boost the economy, George Osborne has suggested. The former chancellor warned that the historically high burden on industry risked putting companies off investing in Britain. He referenced pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, which has decided to build its new vaccine factory in Ireland because of the UK’s high levies. – Telegraph

Lenders have been told by the City minister that they could sue the Bank of England over tough new financial rules amid fears that Threadneedle Street's regulations are putting the City at risk. Andrew Griffith suggested that finance executives could take legal action against the Bank over reforms to so-called Basel rules, which risk forcing British lenders to hold back billions of pounds more in cash than their rivals in the European Union. – Telegraph

The head of Rolls-Royce’s passenger jet engine manufacturing division, the British engineer’s largest and most important business unit, has been removed from his post as the new chief executive begins to make his mark on the company. In the first shake-up of existing management since he arrived as chief executive at the turn of the year, Tufan Erginbilgic has told senior executives that Chris Cholerton, president of Rolls-Royce’s civil aerospace arm, is to step aside to other duties and that a search for his replacement has begun. – The Times

The UK accounting regulator has opened an investigation into PwC’s audits of Intu Properties, the collapsed shopping centres owner, bringing the number of regulatory inquiries into the Big Four firm to five. Specifically, the Financial Reporting Council is looking at Intu’s 2017 and 2018 audits. Apart from confirming that the decision to launch its inquiry was made at the end of last month, the watchdog gave no further information. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed sharply lower on Thursday as market participants digested a number of data points that seemed to stoke a fear of rate hikes.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.26% at 33,696.85, while the S&P 500 slipped 1.38% to 4,090.41 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.78% weaker at 11,855.83.

The Dow closed 431.20 points lower on Thursday, easily reversing gains recorded in the previous session following a stronger-than-expected January retail sales report.

Market participants were focussed on a number of key macro points on Thursday, with most hoping to gain further insight into the state of the US economy.

Americans unexpectedly filed unemployment claims at a decelerated rate in the week ended 11 February and remained near a nine-month low. Initial jobless claims dropped to 194,000, according to the Department of Labor, down from the previous week's downwardly revised level of 195,000 and below market expectations for a print of 200,000.