Dunelm posts 9% jump in Q1 sales, Spire Healthcare buys Vita
London open
The FTSE 100 was called to open 26 points lower at 7,562.
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Homeware retailer Dunelm posted a 9% jump in first-quarter sales to £390m.
This was largely driven by volume, it said, noting that both stores and digital channels performed well.
Chief executive Nick Wilkinson said: “Our proposition, which offers an increasingly wide range of homewares products, continues to prove popular with customers, as we delivered another strong sales performance in Q1.”
Spire Healthcare said it had bought Vita, a market-leading provider of mental and physical health services in the UK, for around .£74m in cash.
Vita provides a range of NHS outpatient mental health talking therapies, musculoskeletal and dermatology services, with operational hubs in London and four regional centres in Bristol, Orpington, Oldham and Leicestershire.
Newspaper round-up
The Bank of England should be set a 3% inflation target and given powers to crash borrowing costs below zero in response to future economic shocks, a leading thinktank has said. The Resolution Foundation said Britain required a big overhaul of its economic toolkit to avoid decades of rising debt or austerity, and called for reforms at the Bank and the Treasury to get a “bigger bang for each buck”. – Guardian
Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses. It has started testing Digit, a two-legged robot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes. – Guardian
Jeremy Hunt is poised to overhaul how the pensions triple lock is calculated in a move that is expected to save the Treasury £900m a year. In his Autumn Statement next month, the Chancellor is expected to announce that the payout to retirees will rise in line with regular wages at 7.8pc, rather than the 8.5pc surge in total pay when bonuses are taken into account. – Telegraph
The bosses of Abcam, the Cambridge-based biotech firm, are set to receive payouts of $28.8 million on completion of a takeover by the US medical conglomerate Danaher. Alan Hirzel, chief executive, and Michael Baldock, finance chief, are on course to receive $19.2 million and $9.6 million respectively from an incentive scheme if shareholders accept the $5.7 billion bid. – The Times
The UK is on track to lose out on £98 billion of economic growth by 2030 because of an anticipated shortage of 250,000 tradespeople. Net zero targets are increasing demand but young people do not feel encouraged consider such careers, according to a survey from Kingfisher. – The Times
US close
US stocks fell sharply on Wednesday as rising bond yields, a surge in commodity prices and escalating tensions in Israel dampened risk appetite on equity markets.
The Dow finished down 1%, the S&P 500 slumped 1.3% while the Nasdaq dropped 1.6%.
The yield on a 10-year Treasury topped the 4.9% mark, as its steady climb to 5% continued in the wake of better-than-expected US economic data in recent weeks, raising uncertainty about how the Federal Reserve will act at its last two meetings of 2023.