London pre-open: Stocks seen nudging higher ahead of non-farm payrolls
London stocks are expected to open just a touch higher on Friday as investors err on the side of caution ahead of the all-important US non-farm payrolls report.
London’s FTSE 100 is seen starting seven points higher than Thursday’s close at 5,905.
There are no major UK data releases due, but eyes will be on the US, where non-farms are at 1330 GMT, along with the unemployment rate and trade balance figures.
“There certainly seems to be some anxiety on the FOMC about a tightening of monetary conditions, the effect of a strong US dollar, and the slowdown in global growth prospects, and this could well keep the Fed on the side-lines in the short and medium term,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
"For most of last year all the market was able to focus on was the US jobs report to the exclusion to all else and while today’s January jobs report is also likely to be the main event, it would need to be a spectacularly good number now to shift market expectations about the slowly receding possibility of an imminent rate rise.”
BG Group was doing all it could in 2015 to offset commodity price falls, it revealed in its final results on Friday, with revenue and earnings down significantly on the prior year.
The FTSE 100 company - soon to be part of Shell - saw E&P production rise 16% during the year to 31 December, to 704 kilobarrels of oil equivalent per day.
BG Group also saw 282 LNG cargoes delivered, an increase of 58%.
The lower commodity prices did have an impact on BG's financial results, as expected, with Upstream EBITDA down 35% to $4.17bn (£2.86bn), and LNG EBITDA down 46% to $1.46bn.
Business performance earnings were $1.7bn and the company's earnings per share for the year came in at 49.7c - both down 58%. Total earnings were $2.33bn, and total earnings per share were 68.2c.
BG Group managed to rein in its spending in 2015, with capex down 32% to $6.39bn, and cost and efficiency savings of $300m achieved.
Just Eat has ordered four online takeaway food businesses in Spain, Italy, Brazil and Mexico for a total of €125m (£94.7m).
The FTSE 250 company announced on Friday that it bought Spain’s La Nevera Roja and Italy’s PizzaBo (hellofood Italy) from Rocket Internet, while it purchased hellofood Brazil and hellofood Mexico from foodpanda.
The acquisition of the Spanish company should be completed by the second quarter of the year pending regulatory approval, while the other three acquisitions were completed today.