London pre-open: Stocks seen up ahead of BoE announcement

London stocks looked set for more gains on Thursday ahead of the Bank of England’s latest policy decision, having scaled new highs a day earlier.

The FTSE 100 was called to open around 30 points higher.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said: "The BoE is not expected to cut its policy rate today, but the MPC is expected to agree less on when to cut rates. Four MPC members out of nine are sitting in the hawkish camp, Governor Bailey has shifted his stance from ‘it’s too early to talk about cuts’ to ‘the inflation dynamics between the US and UK are diverging’.

"Some see a small chance that the BoE could cut rates in June meeting, In tandem with the ECB. But a more realistic scenario is an August BoE cut.

"Walking into the meeting, cable trades in the bearish consolidation zone - below the major 38.2% Fibonacci retracement on October to March rebound, and unless we hear anything unexpectedly hawkish, there is no reason for it to reverse trend.

"Cable should continue to attract sellers near the 1.25 level into next week’s US inflation report. Then, things will likely take a clearer turn."

The BoE announcement is due at midday.

In corporate news, weapons maker BAE Systems held annual guidance and said global geopolitical tensions should boost orders as countries increased defence spending.

The group still expects sales to rise 10% to 12% above 2023's £25bn and for underlying earnings before interest and tax 11% to 13% better than the £2.7bn posted last year.

"Defence spending is high across our sectors and key markets. The recent passing of the US supplemental aid package to Ukraine and the commitment by the UK government to spend 2.5% of GDP by 2030 should build further positive momentum," the company said in a trading update.

Africa-focused telecoms group Airtel said it was hit hard by a drop in the Nigerian naira in the year to 31 March, with a $549m negative FX headwind pushing it into the red on a pre-tax basis.

The company swung to a reported pre-tax loss of $89m, from a profit of $750m the year before, while reported revenues sank 5.3% to $4.98bn.