Sales still in decline at The Restaurant Group, Revenue rises at Intertek
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open flat on Friday, after closing up 0.04% at 7,517.71 on Thursday.
Stocks to watch
First quarter sales from The Restaurant Group have improved significantly from the end of last year, but are still in decline. For the 20 weeks from the end of January, like-for-like sales across chains including Frankie & Benny's, Garfunkel's and Joe's Kitchen fell 1.8%, with total sales decreasing 1.5%. This compares to the 3.9% LFL drop last year and 5.9% collapse in the fourth quarter.
Total quality assurance provider Intertek Group released a trading update for the period from 1 January to 30 April on Friday. The FTSE 100 firm reported group revenue of £883.5m, up 14.2% at actual rates and 1.8% at constant rates, with “solid” organic revenue growth at constant rates, with products revenue up 5.8%, trade rising 5.0%, and resources falling 15.4%. It claimed “good” performance of acquisitions in sectors with “attractive” growth and margin prospects, and described “operational discipline” on cost and margin management during the period.
Newspaper round-up
China’s structural reforms will not be enough to arrest its rising debt and another credit rating downgrade for the country is possible unless it gets its ballooning borrowing in check, two officials at Moody’s ratings agency have said. Doubling down on comments earlier this week that China’s financial strength will be eroded because of huge corporate and household debt, Moody’s said the country’s “vast reform agenda” would not be enough to prevent borrowing from weighing on economic growth. - Guardian
A group of “diehard” shareholders determined to see the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin in court are refusing to accept a settlement in their £700m legal claim against the bank. The state-backed lender has offered about £200m, or 82p per share held by investors, in an attempt to avoid a case that would see Goodwin take the stand on either 8 or 9 June. - Guardian
GCHQ has demanded that directors start taking charge of cyber security, warning that they are “devolving responsibility” for protecting businesses from hackers. Ciaran Martin, the head of the agency’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said it is unacceptable for boards to plead ignorance about the threat from cyber attacks. – Telegraph
Theresa May's manifesto risks losing the Conservatives their image as the party of business, The Daily Telegraph can disclose, after Britian’s small companies overwhelmingly rejected their policies and questioned the lack of costing in the policy diktat. A vanishingly small proportion of companies support the manifesto, while the Prime Minister’s mantra of “strong and stable leadership” achieves only modest backing. – Telegraph
The political fallout has been unrelenting since the collapse of the longest running criminal trial in the history of the Irish state. Judge John Aylmer directed the jury in Dublin’s central criminal court this week to acquit Sean Fitzpatrick, former chairman and chief executive of Anglo Irish bank, of charges of false accounting and concealing loans. – The Times
The price of bitcoin jumped by nearly 13 per cent to hit an all-time high of almost $2,800 yesterday, as the digital currency built on a rally in which its value has surged by more than 600 per cent in the past year. One bitcoin was worth about 5p seven years ago, which means that an investment of less than £23.20 then would now be worth more than £1 million. Bitcoin set a record of $2,791.70 in the morning but the price, which is notoriously volatile, plunged to $2,362 in the afternoon. It was last trading at $2,514. – The Times
US close
Investors chased the Nasdaq and S&P to new record closings highs on Thursday ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend, with the tech sector driving the gains to offset falling oil prices as Opec's production cut disappointed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 0.34% higher at 21,082.95, while the S&P 500 finished higher for a sixth successive day to set a new record, rising 0.44% to 2,415.07 and the Nasdaq Composite similarly ascended 0.69% to a new peak of 6,205.26.
While Europe remains becalmed US markets clock up new highs, despite the fact that European data has been much stronger of late than its US counterpart, observed market analyst Chris Beauchamp at IG.
"Amazon and Google find themselves locked in a race for $1000; tech firms continue to leave the old economy far behind, with momentum continuing to drive the sector higher," he said.
"In a bull market, you buy the strongest performing assets – with the Nasdaq 100 nearly a fifth higher year-to-date, it is clear that momentum lies here, leaving the staid S&P 500 and FTSE 100 far behind."