888 Holdings expects record annual revenues, Marshalls lifts FY guidance

Stocks to watch

Online betting and gaming company 888 Holdings said on Tuesday that full-year revenues had grown year-on-year despite a drop in the final quarter of 2021.

888 Holdings stated full-year business-to-consumer revenues were up 15% at $934.0m and business-to-business revenues were 8% firmer at $38.0m, resulting in a 14% increase in overall revenues to $972.0m. However, for the fourth quarter, total revenues slipped 16% to $214.0m, largely reflecting a strong comparative period, together with the impact of regulatory and compliance changes, including the group's exit from the Netherlands.

Landscaping specialist Marshalls lifted full-year guidance on Tuesday after a strong final quarter in its recently wrapped up fiscal year helped drive a 26% increase in annual revenue.

The FTSE 250-listed company, which supplies the domestic and commercial hard landscaping markets, said it expected 2021 trading to be "slightly ahead of its previous view", adding that order intake was 13% higher than at the same time last year, excluding the impact of price rises.

Newspaper round-up

Soaring energy bills could eat up more than half of some UK households' incomes, a leading poverty charity has said, amid warnings that vulnerable people will be left unable to eat regularly or could even be at risk of death from the cold. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said that while households across the board faced bill increases of 40% to 47% from April, there would be huge variations in the ability of families to cope. - Guardian

Thousands of student gambling addicts are spending an average of £30 a week on betting, racking up debts and missing out on university life to fund their habit, research has found. In a survey of 2,000 students, 80% said they gambled, with 35% of those who did admitting using their student loan, bank overdrafts, borrowing from friends or taking out payday loans. - Guardian

A British start-up is preparing to make driverless food deliveries for Ocado and Asda this year after raising $200.0m (£147m) from investors including Sir Richard Branson. Wayve's fundraising, which also included investment from Microsoft and Baillie Gifford, brings its total backing to $258.0m, making it Britain's best-funded start-up developing autonomous vehicles. - Telegraph

Collecting Cars, the online car auction service, tripled sales last year as high-end buyers raced to snap up new toys, sometimes without even viewing them first, and its founder threw down the gauntlet to "dinosaur" competitors. Its sales included a 1991 Porsche 911 modified by Singer Vehicle Design with 664 miles on the clock that went for £800,000 and a 2015 McLaren P1 sold in the US for $1.6m. - Telegraph

A former KPMG partner responsible for auditing Carillion has accused his junior colleagues of lying and making fantasy claims over his alleged role in forging documents to mislead the accounting regulator. Peter Meehan, 60, told a disciplinary tribunal that he was deliberately deceived by his team working on the audit of the collapsed outsourcer as they went behind his back to backdate documents during an inspection by the Financial Reporting Council. - The Times

US close

Wall Street trading was closed on Monday in observance of the Dr Martin Luther King Day holiday