ME Group confident after first half, Chemring signs deal with Northrop

Stocks to watch

ME Group International reported a positive first-half trading performance in an update on Monday, with a 4.6% increase in group revenue and a 10.3% rise in profit before tax compared to the same time last year, driven by growth in its photobooth and laundry operations. The company said it saw significant success in its Wash.ME Revolution laundry business, with a 17.4% revenue increase and a record 420 new machines installed, indicating strong momentum for the rest of the financial year. ME Group said it remained financially robust with substantial cash flow and long-term contracts, with the board confident in achieving record profitability for 2024.

Chemring said it had signed a 15-year deal partnering deal with US defence firm Northrop Grumman for the supply of HMX energetic material used in its missile programmes along with an order for the product worth $83m as demand for military weapons increased globally.

US regulators have approved the use of GSK’s Arexvy vaccine for a younger age group, the biopharma group announced on Monday. The Food and Drug Administration said the vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is now allowed to be used on adults aged 50 to 59, after having been approved last year for individuals 60 years and older. GSK said more than 13 million adults have a medical condition that increases their risk of severe RSV outcomes.

Pennon Group has chosen David Sproul, a former global deputy CEO at Deloitte, as its Chair Designate. A chartered accountant, Sproul was also chair at Starling Bank, as well as serving as a non-executive director at asset manager Safanad, a senior adviser at Bridgepoint Europe and is the Chair designate at University of Hertfordshire. He will replace Gill Rider on 24 July.

Newspaper round-up

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has been accused of gambling with French democracy after announcing that he will dissolve parliament and call snap legislative elections in the wake of his allies’ crushing defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) in Sunday’s European parliament elections. - Guardian

A leading shareholder in THG has joined a revolt against the company’s chairman as investors put pressure on the business to address its flagging share price. Ophorst Van Marwijk Kooy Vermogensbeheer, a Dutch investment firm that is the ecommerce group’s tenth largest investor with a stake of 1.89 per cent, has joined calls from Kelso, an activist fund, to vote against the re-election of Lord Allen of Kensington as chairman of what was The Hut Group. - The Times

She is diminutive, dapper and softly spoken, but Julia Hoggett, boss of the London Stock Exchange, pulls no punches in the battle between global stock exchanges to attract multi-billion pound company listings. 'You should assume we're going after everything. We fight for everything,' she says. The London market has been losing out to rivals, particularly Wall Street, as companies have defected or chosen to list elsewhere. - Daily Mail

Labour is planning to override local councils to build data centres on the green belt, as Sir Keir Starmer’s Opposition seeks to boost Britain’s artificial intelligence industry. Peter Kyle, the shadow science, innovation and technology secretary, is understood to be considering classing data centres as nationally significant infrastructure projects in a bid to bypass opposition from Nimbys. - Daily Telegraph

US close

Stocks on Wall Street closed in the red on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.22% at 38,798.99.

The S&P 500 lost 0.11% to 5,346.99, and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.23% at 17,133.12.