Tuesday preview: UK public sector borrowing, TalkTalk in focus

Following increases of £47.8bn for April and £54.5bn for May, as Westminster was forced to ramp up borrowing to pay for crisis response measures, analysts are bracing for another sharp increase.

Yet despite the national debt being on track to rise past 100% of gross domestic product for the first time since World War II, as Michael Hewson at CMC Markets points out, with the Gilt yield curve mostly in negative territory at present "it isn’t something they need to be too concerned about right now".

No major economic reports are scheduled for release in the States.

Across the Channel meanwhile, the main reference for markets will be a speech by European Central Bank vice-president, Luis de Guindos, at 1430 BST, from Greece, alongside that country's central bank governor and finance minsiter.

Rate-setters in Budapest are also scheduled to meet to decide on policy.

In Asia meanwhile, South Korean export data for July are due out, together with the minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia's last policy meeting.

For broadband provider TalkTalk's first quarter trading update, UBS analyst Polo Tang anticipates that the revenue trend seen in the last three months of the 2020 financial year, when they fell by 4.%, had carried over into the start of the current year.

Tang said the absence of Sky Sports would hit TV revenues with those from connection also expected to decline.

Net adds likely also declined amid lower installations across the entire market albeit alongside less churn given households' reluctance to switch in the midst of the pandemic.

The trend of lower average revenues per user was also expected to remain intact, with a falling contribution from TV/Sky Sports and declines in voice offset in part by fibre upgrades and less drag from customer migration to lower fixed price plans.

On the other hand, given that the firm had published results just a month before, no change was anticipated to guidance for a stable earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.

Helping to boost EBITDA in the face of a falling top line was the company's flexibility on costs, both commercial costs and those for programming.

Tuesday 21 July

INTERIMS

Audioboom Group, Gresham Technologies, Tclarke

GMS

Reach4Entertainment Enterprises

FINALS

Begbies Traynor Group, Redcentric, SDI Group

AGMS

Audioboom Group, Aveva Group, Bloomsbury Publishing, Intermediate Capital Group, Perpetual Income & Growth Inv Trust, Seneca Global Income & Growth Trust, TalkTalk Telecom Group , Ted Baker

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

DP Eurasia N.V. (DI) , Euromoney Institutional Investor, Intermediate Capital Group, RPS Group

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Public Sector Net Borrowing (09:30)