William Hill revenues down by more than half, business picks up for Computacenter

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The FTSE 100 is expected to open 49 points higher on Friday, having closed down 2.75% at 5,741.54 on Thursday.

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Group revenues at bookmaker William Hill fell by more than half in the six weeks to April 28 and the company pulled guidance as the cancellation of sports due to coronavirus lockdowns hit operations. Total net revenue fell 57%, including an 85% plunge in retail like-for-like revenue as High Street gambling shops were closed to help stop the spread of the pandemic, the company said on Friday. William Hill also secured a waiver on loans until the end of the year.

Computacenter said business had picked up further since late April and that the first half of 2020 would be "considerably ahead" of the same period a year earlier. The FTSE 250 company said it had picked up large technology sourcing contracts since its last update on 23 April. Computacenter said the market picture had become a little clearer but that it could not give meaningful guidance for the second half of 2020.

Moneysupermarket.com Group announced the appointment of Peter Duffy as its new chief executive officer on Friday, succeeding Mark Lewis. The FTSE 250 company said Duffy is currently CEO of Just Eat, and before that was chief commercial officer at easyJet, and marketing director of Audi UK. He would take up the position of CEO and join the board of Moneysupermarket.com on 1 September.

Newspaper round-up

The government has said London transport fares will have to rise, as it reached an agreement over a £1.6bn bailout with Transport for London. TfL will receive £1.1bn as a cash grant plus another £505m in loans, according to reports on Thursday night. In return, TfL will carry out a review of its finances and have government officials on its board. – Guardian

Activists are calling on tenants whose incomes have been hit by the coronavirus crisis to withhold all or part of their payments to landlords, in an attempt to generalise a growing rent strike movement. The campaign, headed by the London Renters Union, comes after activists in the US and Australia, and students at universities across the UK, began withholding their rents because of the crisis. – Guardian

A flagship Nissan plant in Sunderland could be used to make Renault vehicles as part of a deal between the two car-making behemoths - boosting the fortunes of thousands of British workers. The two companies - which operate under global strategic alliance - have opened talks to transfer production of the Renault Kadjar and Captur models from Spain to the North-East as part of a wider shake-up of global operations. – Telegraph

Almost half of all businesses do not have enough cash reserves to last them more than six months, according to the Office for National Statistics. In a survey of more than 5,000 companies, the ONS found that 44 per cent of respondents had enough cash to cover them for less than six months. That figure rose to 58 per cent among companies that have been forced to pause trading in the face of the coronavirus crisis. – The Times

BT is understood to be in early-stage talks to sell a multibillion-pound stake in Openreach, its infrastructure division, to help to finance the £12 billion extension of its full-fibre network. The FTSE 100 telecoms group has been in discussions with potential investors, including Macquarie, the Australian bank, and an unnamed sovereign wealth fund, in the past few weeks, the Financial Times reported. – The Times

US close

US stocks closed higher on Thursday on a solid performance from bank shares and climbing oil prices helped offset another dire jobless report.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.62% at 23,625.34, while the S&P 500 was 1.15% firmer at 2,852.50 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.91% stronger at 9,943.72.

The Dow closed 377.37 points higher on Thursday, reversing some of the losses recorded on Wednesday after Powell warned the coronavirus-fuelled crisis was "without modern precedent".

"While the economic response has been both timely and appropriately large, it may not be the final chapter, given that the path ahead is both highly uncertain and subject to significant downside risks," said Powell, who also stated that more needed to be done to support the US economy amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

While stocks spent most of the day in the red, a late rally from the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo helped lift major indices back into the green, as did a 9% jump in West Texas Intermediate to over $27.50 per barrel.

Also in focus on Thursday was this week's jobless claims data, with significantly more jobs lost in the US during the previous week than economists had anticipated.

According to the Department of Labor, initial weekly unemployment claims for the week ending on 9 May came in at 2.98m - a larger slowdown than the expected 2.5m.

The new claims also brought the Covid-19 crisis total to almost 36.5m over the past two months, the biggest loss in US history