Wizz Air passenger numbers rise 2.1% in May; BAT backs FY guidance

London open

The FTSE 100 was called to open around 20 points lower.

Stocks to watch

Budget carrier Wizz Air said May passenger numbers rose 2.1% although capacity was still impacted by the grounding of 45 Airbus aircraft due to issues with their Pratt & Whitney GTF engines.

The airline carried 5.1 million passengers with a load factor of 91%, up from 90% from 2023. Capacity rose 1.2% year on year to 5.6 million seats.

Cigarettes, tobacco and vape manufacturer British American Tobacco said it remains on track to hit guidance this year after first-half trading met expectations.

Full-year results, which should deliver low-single digit increases in revenue and adjusted profit, will be weighted to the second half as previously highlighted, with growth still expected to accelerate “driven by the phasing of innovation in New Categories, and the benefits of H1 investment in US commercial actions and related wholesaler inventory movements”.

Newspaper round-up

Lawyers and HR experts expect an increase in employment tribunal cases as companies increasingly clamp down on working from home and staff become resentful that the flexibility they have enjoyed since the pandemic is being slowly rolled back. A number of companies are now advocating a full five-day return to the office, with others enforcing a minimum number of days in the workplace. Administrative staff at Boots, who previously worked in the office three days a week, will return to the office five days a week from September. Many US banks, such as Goldman Sachs, also expect senior staff to come in for the full week, and its chief executive, David Solomon, labelled remote working an “aberration”. – Guardian

Star fund manager Nick Train has paid himself an estimated £14m dividend despite apologising last month for a recent run of poor stock-picking. Accounts for Lindsell Train, the investment firm founded by Mr Train and Mike Lindsell, showed its founders shared a dividend pot worth £39m in the year to January. Mr Train and Mr Lindsell, with their spouses, each own around 36pc of the business. - Telegraph

The US owner of Channel 5 has agreed to a $8bn (£6.3bn) merger deal with a billionaire tech heir’s production company, signalling an end to a months-long takeover saga. Paramount, the TV and film studio formerly known as ViacomCBS, has reportedly agreed to the terms of a merger with Skydance, a company set up by David Ellison, whose father is the Silicon Valley mogul Larry Ellison. – Telegraph

London must not become a listings venue of “last resort” for companies with “dubious human rights records”, one of London’s leading fund managers has warned in a broadside against the City’s bid to host the $70 billion float of Shein. Peter Hugh Smith, chief executive of CCLA Investment Management, which oversees about £14 billion of assets and is an investor in Amazon, said reports that the Chinese fast fashion group was eyeing a float in the UK were “worrying”. – The Times

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, has quietly built up a portfolio of personal investments valued at almost $3 billion in technology companies, some of which do business with his artificial intelligence firm. Altman, 39, has become one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors with holdings in more than 400 companies, including Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit, managed by his family office. The scale of his investment empire was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks delivered a mixed performance on Monday after a big day for the blue-chip Dow Jones in the previous session.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.30% at 38,571.03, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.11% to 5,283.40 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.56% firmer at 16,828.67.

The Dow closed 115.29 points lower on Monday, taking a bite out of solid gains recorded in the previous session.