DS Smith FY trading seen ahead of expectations, National Grid trades in line during H1

Stocks to watch

Paper packaging products group DS Smith said on Monday that trading continued to be "very good", with interim adjusted operating profits expected to be at least £400.0m.

Revenue growth was also said to be "very strong” and, as a result, overall performance for the current full financial year was expected to be ahead of previous expectations.

National Grid said trading for the first half of its fiscal year was in line with expectations and forecast annual underlying earnings to be more marginally weighted to the second half than usual after including a full six-month contribution of National Grid Electricity Distribution (formerly Western Power Distribution).

"As announced alongside the sale of our St William joint venture in March 2022, we have completed the sale of most of the additional property sites to Berkeley Group during the first half," the company said on Monday.

Newspaper round-up

Amazon is investing more than €1.0bn (£880.0m) to add thousands more electric lorries, vans and cargo bikes to its sprawling fleet of delivery vehicles across Europe over the next five years. The online retailer said it would invest £300.0m in the UK, where it plans to have as many as 700 electric HGVs by 2025, up from just five today, and more than triple its fleet of electric vans to 10,000 across the continent. – Guardian

Thousands of Tesco staff have been forced to take a large real-terms pay cut as the supermarket puts a squeeze on store managers while offering bigger wage rises for lower-paid workers. In the latest pay battle amid the cost of living crisis, the retailer's team managers, who earn about £30,000 a year, say they have received as little as a 3% pay rise. The official rate of inflation is close to 10%, and expected to hit 11% this month. – Guardian

Sweeping new rules designed to prevent a repeat of the BHS pensions scandal will cost businesses £30.0bn and push hundreds of companies to the brink of collapse, the Government has been warned. The industry consultant LCP said that proposals meant to make final salary pensions safer will tip swathes of the private sector into chaos by forcing employers to pump billions of pounds into underfunded retirement schemes. – Telegraph

Thousands of limited liability partnerships incorporated in Britain "bear the hallmarks" of shell companies used for financial crimes, according to research that prompted warnings of "glaring gaps" in proposed legislation. More than 21,000 partnerships, 14% of the total set up over the past 20 years, "share almost identical characteristics" with those known to have been used in corruption and money laundering schemes, a report from Transparency International UK found. Almost 950 "suspect" partnerships were registered at an address in Cardiff, near Companies House. The researchers said the report was the "first to expose the scale of abuse of this type of company, with a conservative estimate putting the economic damage caused in the hundreds of billions." – The Times

Investors are preparing for America's biggest banks to reveal a sharp drop in quarterly profits when earnings season returns this week. An economic slowdown and sustained volatility in global markets has drawn a clear line under Wall Street's bumper run during the early years of the pandemic. Dealmaking has fallen, knocking investment banking fees, and lenders are also preparing for the impact of a significant downturn. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks ended the session lower on Friday after September's non-farm payrolls report did little to disused investors that the Federal Reserve will hike short term interest rates by another 75 basis points at its next meeting.

At the close, the Dow Jones was down 2.11% at 29,296.79, while the S&P 500 was 2.80% at 3,639.66 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 3.80% weaker at 10,652.40.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com