Bellway reinstates its dividend, Halma to beat profit expectations

Stocks to watch

Housebuilder Bellway reinstated its dividend as it reported a slight fall in interim profits and a strong forward order book. The company on Wednesday said pre-tax profits for the six months to January 31 fell 4% to £280.2m. The forward order book at 14 March was 8.4% ahead at £1.64bn comprising 6,028 homes, up from 5,772 homes a year ago. A dividend of 35p a share was declared.

Halma said annual profit would beat expectations as revenue continued to improve and rose in all its major regions. The safety and protection company said adjusted pretax profit for the year to the end of March would be similar to a year earlier - up from previous guidance for a decline of about 5%. This includes a small adverse effect from movements in exchange rates. Order intake from 1 October to now is ahead of revenue and of the same period the year before. The FTSE 100 group also said Louise Makin, who joined as a non-executive director in February, will replace chairman Paul Walker in July.

IT infrastructure company Softcat reported “strong” income growth in its first half on Wednesday, as it upped its interim dividend by 18.5% to 6.5p per share. The FTSE 250 firm said gross profit - its key measure of income - was up 20.4% year-on-year in the six months ended 31 December at £134.5m. That was on the back of a 10.2% improvement in revenue, to £577m. The board said the second half has started well, adding that the full year was looking to be “significantly ahead” of its prior expectations.

Newspaper round-up

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”. - Guardian

More than 11,000 outlets permanently disappeared from high streets, shopping centres and retail parks in Great Britain last year, with independent retailers and villages faring far better than chain stores and city centres. A net total of 9,877 chain outlets and 1,442 independent retail, restaurant and leisure premises closed their doors in England, Wales and Scotland in 2020, according to the Local Data Company (LDC). The analysis covered 680,000 outlets in 3,000 shopping locations. - Guardian

Robinhood, the stock trading app that has soared in popularity during the pandemic and recent GameStop frenzy, has filed to go public in the US. The company confirmed it had confidentially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an upcoming initial public offering, saying the price of its shares was yet to be determined. - Telegraph

Three of Britain’s biggest wholesale food markets are set to move to a riverside site in Dagenham after the City of London Corporation received planning approval to relocate them. Billingsgate, Smithfield and New Spitalfields markets are poised to merge after Barking and Dagenham’s planning committee approved plans for a new site formerly occupied by Barking power station in east London. - The Times

The government has been urged to extend the scope of its proposed online sales tax from internet retailers to any online sales that might have been made on the high street, including travel, accommodation and software. Several submissions to the Treasury’s business rates review have argued for a broader definition. While roughly £100 billion a year is spent with internet retailers, the value of all online sales excluding financial services is £700 billion, the Treasury said. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed sharply lower on Tuesday, twelve months to the day that the Covid-19 pandemic bull market began as stocks tumbled 30% at the fastest pace in history.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.94% at 32,423.15, while the S&P 500 was 0.76% weaker at 3,910.52 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.12% softer at 13,227.70.

The Dow closed 308.05 points lower on Tuesday, reversing gains recorded in the previous session.

Tuesday's losses came as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note continuing to retreat after hitting a 14-month high last week, currently sitting at around 1.63%.

In terms of Covid-19 headlines, a US health agency expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have been operating on outdated drug information in its coronavirus vaccine trial results. However, the firm defended its data.