AstraZeneca to raise annual dividend, Darktrace lifts full-year guidance

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 27 points higher on Thursday, having closed up 0.33% on Wednesday at 7,961.21.

Stocks to watch

Biopharma giant AstraZeneca has announced it will increase its annual dividend by 7%, which the board said demonstrates its confidence in the company's performance and cash generation. The company said it would raise the annualised payout for 2024 by 20 cents to $3.10 per share. "This uplift is in line with our progressive dividend policy, which remains unchanged, and reflects the continuing strength of AstraZeneca's investment proposition for shareholders," said chair Michel Demaré.

Cybersecurity specialist Darktrace lifted its guidance for the year on Thursday, after a strong third quarter saw annualised recurring revenue grow 23.5% year-on-year to $731.1m. The FTSE 250 company experienced revenue growth of 26.5% to $176.1m. It said it now expected its adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter to surpass its full-year guidance of at least 21%, as it raised its expectations for year-over-year revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin.

Newspaper round-up

New post-Brexit UK border controls coming into force later this month will cost British businesses £2bn and fuel higher inflation, according to a report warning that UK-EU trade will be damaged as a result. With less than a month before the introduction of new checks on animal and plant products from 30 April, the insurer Allianz Trade said the controls agreed under Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal could add 10% to import costs over the first year. – Guardian

Rishi Sunak ordered multiple taxpayer-funded focus groups and polls to craft the messaging of his planned “eat out to help out” campaign in July 2020, despite keeping the UK’s top medical and scientific advisers in the dark about the scheme. The Treasury negotiated five public opinion contracts worth more than £2m from June 2020 throughout the pandemic, while Sunak was chancellor, including those to establish how best to “sell” the hospitality scheme to voters. – Guardian

Heat pump owners are to host visitor days at their homes for prospective buyers as Britain races to boost demand for the technology in an attempt to hit net zero targets. Homeowners can invite curious neighbours round so they can see the pumps in action using a website launched by the charity Nesta, in a move likely to recall 1960s Tupperware parties when the brand’s supporters showed off its products to their friends. – Telegraph

McKinsey is planning to lay off hundreds of staff as the consulting giant grapples with weaker demand for its services. The management consultancy company is preparing to make 360 redundancies across its design, data engineering, cloud and software divisions. McKinsey’s layoffs will affect about 3pc of 12,000 of workers across the business’s global offices who are considered as specialists or as having technical expertise. The job cuts will not affect the firm’s traditional consultant roles, Bloomberg first reported. – Telegraph

Hundreds of staff at the Dutch division of KPMG cheated on professional exams and misled investigators, resulting in the Big Four accountancy firm being hit with a record $25 million fine from America’s audit regulator. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States found that between 2017 and 2022 hundreds of KPMG workers in the Netherlands, including senior partners and managers, had shared questions and answers with one another. This included for exams that they had to sit to test their understanding of professional ethics. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed sharply lower on Wednesday as market participants digested a hotter-than-expected March consumer price index.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.09% at 38,461.51, while the S&P 500 lost 0.95% to 5,160.64 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.84% weaker at 16,170.36.

The Dow closed 422.16 points lower on Wednesday, easily extending modest losses recorded in the previous session.

Wednesday's primary focus was inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which revealed that in seasonally adjusted terms, its consumer price index increased at a month-on-month pace of 0.4% in March. The increase was more than expected amid gains in the cost of energy, clothing and medical care services.

Year-on-year, CPI was ahead by 3.5%, having risen by 3.2% during the previous month. Core CPI, meanwhile, was up by 0.4% over the month, against a consensus forecast for 0.3%.