Flutter posts resilient first quarter revenues, Auto Trader extends free ads offer

Stocks to watch

Gambling group Flutter said first quarter revenues had been more resilient than initially expected despite the cancellation of many sports due to the coronavirus pandemic, largely bolstered by the continuation of horse racing in Australia and the US. Total revenue rose 16% to £547m for the three months to March 31. Racing in Ireland and the UK was suspended last month, leading to a 32% slump in revenue since the ban was imposed, Flutter said on Friday.

Auto Trader Group extended the support it was offering its advertiser clients on Friday, after it was announced on Thursday that the UK would remain in national lockdown for at least a further three weeks amid the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. The FTSE 100 vehicle sales platform and publisher said that, as its customers were required to remain closed during May, advertising would remain free. “As our customers are not able to meaningfully trade, we will do what we can to support them such that when restrictions are lifted, they are able to get back to business,” said chief executive officer Nathan Coe.

Whitbread said the Bank of England had agreed to buy its commercial paper if necessary to support the hotel group's liquidity during the Covid-19 crisis. The BoE's website said Whitbread's Fitch rating of BBB/F2 made the company eligible for up to £600m of support under the scheme.

Newspaper round-up

Britain’s biggest companies handed out almost half a trillion pounds in dividends and share buybacks in the years before the coronavirus crisis struck, according to a report warning that the scale of the payouts has undermined their resilience. According to research from the Common Wealth think tank, around £400bn was paid in dividends and £61bn of cash returned to investors in share buybacks between 2011 and 2018 by the 100 biggest UK companies. – Guardian

The government has been too slow to enlist British textile firms to make protective gear for the NHS, according to industry figures, who say they have been desperate to contribute to the “war effort”. Faced with a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), the Cabinet Office has only recently begun scrambling to source it from UK suppliers and has now outsourced the process to consultants from accountancy group Deloitte. – Guardian

China's economy contracted for the first time in nearly five decades last quarter as drastic measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic brought activity to a standstill, official data shows. Gross domestic product shrank 6.8 percent between January and March, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to figures released on Friday by China's National Bureau of Statistics. – Telegraph

National Grid may have to issue emergency orders to switch off power plants this summer as the pandemic hits demand and threatens to leave Britain’s networks overwhelmed by too much electricity. The company said that it expected to have to intervene more than usual to keep the system balanced because the lockdown restrictions could destroy 20 percent of usual power demand. – The Times

Demand for mortgages and credit card lending is expected to fall in the second quarter as the economy suffers a sharp fall in output, the Bank of England has forecast. In its quarterly credit conditions survey, the Bank also found that lenders were planning to scale back the availability of such loans. The survey was conducted between March 6 and March 20, just before the government imposed stringent social distancing measures. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks finished in the green on Thursday, even as millions more Americans filed for unemployment amid the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, with investors digesting another round of earnings from some major US banks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up 0.14% at 23,537.68, the S&P 500 was 0.58% firmer at 2,799.55, and the Nasdaq Composite was ahead 1.66% at 8,532.36.

At the open, the Dow had lost 241 points after seeing out the previous session in the red, as concerns about how long the coronavirus lockdown will last and what its after-effects could be, as well as some disappointing data and earnings, weighed on sentiment.

Thursday's main focus was the Labor Department's all-important initial jobless claims data, which saw weekly US jobless claims continue to surge, in effect wiping out the gains in employment since the last financial crisis.

According to the Department of Labor, over the week ending on 11 April, initial jobless claims fell by 1.37m to hit 5.24m.

That number followed a total of 16.0m over the previous three prints.

Sentiment did get a slight boost as the daily number of new Covid-19 cases in the US seemingly slowed down somewhat over recent days, however.