Balfour Beatty lifts dividend, Hammerson refinances Dublin asset loan

Stocks to watch

British infrastructure company Balfour Beatty on Wednesday lifted its dividend by 9% and said it expected annual earnings to grow after a jump in half-year profit. The company said pre-tax profit for the six months to June rose to £112m from £82m a year earlier. It lifted the dividend to 3.8p a share from 3.5p. "The outlook for the group's chosen growth markets, where we hold unique capabilities in delivering complex infrastructure projects, remains encouraging, including in the UK with the new government reinforcing commitments to critical national infrastructure,” said chief executive Leo Quinn.

Hammerson and PIMCO Prime Real Estate have secured a €350m non-recourse term loan, with Hammerson's share being €175m, to refinance the Dundrum Town Centre's existing €570m facility maturing in September, it announced on Wednesday. The FTSE 250 company said the new loan, repayable by September 2031 with an expected interest rate of 5.5%, would not change its reported loan-to-value ratio, while extending the average maturity from 2.2 to 2.9 years. It said Dundrum Town Centre in southern Dublin is 95% occupied and generates €62m in annual rent.

Newspaper round-up

Anti-sewage campaigners have warned of “extreme anger” if the Labour government does not radically reform the water regulator. Sources at the Environment Agency (EA) and in the Labour party have told the Guardian that while Labour had spent time considering reforms of the EA and Ofwat in order to fix the sewage crisis, some stricter options that had been proposed were now off the table. - Guardian

The owner of the beauty brand Avon in the UK, Europe and Latin America has filed for bankruptcy as it tries to off-load more than $1bn of debt, including millions of dollars in liabilities linked to lawsuits alleging that talc in its products caused cancer. Avon Products Inc (API), a subsidiary of Brazil’s Natura which bought Avon’s non-North American trading businesses in 2020, has filed for Chapter 11, the American version of administration. – Guardian

AstraZeneca has become Britain’s first £200bn company following a 20pc rally in its share price since the start of the year. Shares in the pharmaceutical business rose 1.1pc yesterday to value the company at £200.3bn. AstraZeneca’s stock has surged so far this year amid strong sales of its roster of cancer and rare disease ­medicines. The drug company jumped ahead of Shell in April to become the most valuable business on the FTSE 100. – Telegraph

A growing number of people have cut corners on their travel insurance since the start of the cost of living crisis, research suggests. Some withhold information to obtain cheaper cover, while others are selective about the medical information that they declare, according to AllClear Travel Insurance. – The Times

Google could be ordered to break up its operations after a judge ruled that the company has an illegal monopoly over online search, according to a report. The US Department of Justice is considering ordering Alphabet, Google’s owner, to divest parts of the search business, which could include the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, Bloomberg reported. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed sharply higher on Tuesday as market participants got their first taste of this week's key inflation numbers.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.04% at 39,765.64, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.68% to 5,434.43 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 2.43% firmer at 17,187.61.

The Dow closed 408.63 points higher on Tuesday, easily reclaiming the previous session's losses.

US producer prices rose by less than expected in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Producer prices increased 0.1% to 144.67 points in July, up from 144.53 in June but short of preliminary estimates for a 0.2% month-on-month uptick.