Wednesday preview: UK CPI, Bunzl, Netflix in focus

At 0700 BST, the Office for National Statistics is expected to announce that the year-on-year rate of harmonised CPI accelerated from 0.4% for February to 0.8% in March.

Core CPI is expected to be up by 1.1% following a 0.9% advance during the month before.

Nevertheless, it was in April that negative base effects were expected to kick-in and push CPI higher.

No major economic releases are scheduled either in the US or Eurozone.

Among the companies that are due to update investors in the UK on Wednesday is Bunzl.

UBS's Kate Somerville anticipates that the global outsourcing and distribution specialist will post a 3.5% drop in organic growth for the first quarter, even if after the 4.5% rise seen over the previous three months.

That decline would be driven by lower demand for Covid 19-related products, which she pegged at £230m or 8.5% of topline growth.

The analyst also expected to see continued weakness in Bunzl's base business and that it would reiterate the still "uncertain" outlook.

M&A announcements were also a possibility, she said.

In any case, Somerville believed consensus expectations for a 3% drop in organic growth overestimated the company's ability to maintain sales of personal protection equipment and the size of the recovery in its base business.

To take note of, the latest earnings results due out in the US are likely to be the most consequential for risk appetite globally.

After the close of markets in New York on Tuesday, video-streaming giant Netflix is expected to post earnings per share for the first quarter of 2021 of $2.97 together with a 6.0m increase in the number of subscribers.

And as Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK pointed out, "downside risks as we look ahead to Q2 are likely to be a slowdown in subscriber growth as economies come out of their winter lockdowns and start to embrace the great outdoors."

Wednesday 21 April

INTERIMS

Carr's Group

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Crude Oil Inventories (US) (15:30)

MBA Mortgage Applications (US) (12:00)

FINALS

Distribution Finance Capital Holdings, Pennant International Group, Wentworth Resources NPV

SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Invesco Income Growth Trust

EGMS

DP Eurasia N.V. (DI)

AGMS

Alliance Trust, Biome Technologies, Bunzl, Drax Group, Dukemount Capital, EP Global Opportunities Trust, Hunting, RTC Group, Serco Group, Zhejiang Expressway Co 'H' Shares

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Antofagasta, BHP Group, Quilter, Rio Tinto

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Consumer Price Index (07:00)

Producer Price Index (07:00)

Retail Price Index (07:00)