Flutter H1 pre-tax losses widen, AstraZeneca's Enhertu drug gets US approval

Stocks to watch

Bookmaker Flutter said on Friday that interim pre-tax losses has widened despite seeing revenues continue to grow throughout the half.

Flutter reported a pre-tax loss of £112.0m for the six months ended 30 June, deepening from £86.0m a year earlier, principally due to a £286.0m charge for amortisation of acquired intangibles, while underlying earnings sunk 23% to £434.0m and revenues rose 11% to £3.38bn.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo's Enhertu drug has been approved in the US for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

AstraZeneca said on Friday that Enhertu's accelerated approval was based on results from its DESTINY-Lung02 Phase II trial, which confirmed an objective response rate of 57.7% in patients with HER2-mutant disease.

Newspaper round-up

Ministers have been warned that energy bills will cost more than two month's wages next year unless new help is given to households, as the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, told firms they must invest their "extraordinary" profits or face the threat of further taxation. The TUC ramped up calls for the government to cancel the October energy price cap rise, saying the cost of living crisis this winter was an "emergency of pandemic scale". – Guardian

John Lewis is to retire its 97-year-old price pledge "never knowingly undersold" on 22 August but has yet to reveal a catchy new slogan to take its place. The department store chain told customers in an email it will not accept new claims under the pledge from 23 August, instead promising them – rather long-windedly – it is "always knowingly committed to outstanding value". – Guardian

EDF energy customers in Britain are paying almost two-and-a-half times as much as their counterparts in France after Emmanuel Macron imposed strict caps on price rises. EDF customers in Britain have had their bills capped at £1,971 by energy regulator Ofgem, while French customers on regulated tariffs face bills of around €950. – Telegraph

The Chinese group that wants to break up HSBC has escalated its campaign against the bank by claiming its plan would unlock as much as $35.0bn in value and dismissing the lender's warnings about the dangers of a split. Ping An, the insurer that is HSBC's biggest shareholder with a 9% stake, has urged the FTSE 100 lender to spin off its Asian business into a separate company listed in Hong Kong. Bosses at the bank have rejected the idea, but a source close to Ping An said yesterday that HSBC had exaggerated the risks posed by a break-up. – The Times

Sam Laidlaw, the former Centrica boss and founder of Neptune Energy, has warned that the windfall tax could limit the oil and gas explorer's long-term investment in Britain. The new tax regime "increased uncertainty" and would lead to companies such as Neptune "favouring" projects in countries where energy policies "support a stable and predictable investment climate to encourage new investment", he said. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks put on a mixed performance on Thursday following the release of last month's producer price index.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.08% at 33,336.67, while the S&P 500 was 0.07% weaker at 4,207.27 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.58% softer at 12,779.91.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com