Petrofac claims 'positive' start to year, LondonMetric sells last Marlow office
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open nine points lower on Tuesday, after closing up 0.31% at 7,446.80 on Monday.
Stocks to watch
Petrofac issued a pre-close trading update on Tuesday morning, ahead of the announcement of its half year results for the six months to 30 June on 30 August, claiming underlying net profit for the first half of 2017 was expected to be between $135m and $145m, with full year net profit expected to be weighted to the second half of the year. The FTSE 250 company reported a new order intake of $1.7bn in the year to date, with a backlog of $13.0bn at 31 May. Net debt was forecast to be around $1.1bn at 30 June, which would be in line with expectations.
LondonMetric Property said it had sold its last remaining office asset in Marlow to Kildare Partners for £68.5m. The 231,000 sq ft office property is 96.7% let off a weighted average unexpired lease term of seven years to Allergan, Dun & Bradstreet, Lexington Catering, Icon Clinical and Aptos. The rental income is £4.9m per annum.
Newspaper round-up
Households continued to pile debt on to their credit cards and run down their savings to meet living costs in May as the squeeze on wages bit deeper. The annual growth in personal deposits dropped to 2.6%, the lowest for more than five years, according to figures from the British Bankers' Association. Consumer credit growth, in credit cards, overdrafts and personal loans, slowed to a rate not seen since October 2015, but at 5.1% remained high by historic standards. - The Times
The threat of a global trade war was growing last night after the European Union promised to retaliate if the Continent's producers became "collateral damage" in measures to protect the American steel industry by classifying it as a matter of national security. Brussels is drawing up plans to hit back at US exports if the European steel industry suffers as a result of the United States resorting to a rarely used measure to restrict steel imports. - The Times
The White House has declared that it believes Bashar al-Assad’s regime is preparing to carry out another chemical weapons attack, and warned that the Syrian leader and his military would "pay a heavy price" if it went ahead. - The Guardian
An Israeli billionaire was on the verge last night of raising more than £300m to fund his property empire by selling more than half of his remaining holding in the gambling company that he founded, Playtech. - The Times
Workers at a British luxury smartphone maker fear that hundreds of skilled jobs may be at risk amid anger over missing pension contributions and a dispute over how its Turkish exile owner took control of the business. Vertu Corporation Ltd (VCL), which was once owned by the Finnish mobile giant Nokia and sells its "Handmade in England" handsets to wealthy clients for as much as £40,000, is also facing claims by suppliers over unpaid bills. - The Daily Telegraph
US close
US stocks ended mixed on Monday as investors digested some weaker-than-expected data.
The S&P 500 ended flat at 2,439.07, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 0.1% to 21,409.55 and the Nasdaq ended down 0.3% at 6,247.15.
Data released earlier in the session revealed that durable goods orders fell by 1.1% month-on-month in May, undershooting forecasts by a wide margin as orders for civilian and defence aircraft and so-called 'core' orders acted as a drag.
According to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in recent years core capex orders had lagged oil prices by a few months. If that relationship continued to hold then orders would remain steady throughout the summer and then fall modestly in the fall. However, Shepherdson did not expect to see a meltdown in capex.
Elsewhere, the Federal Reserve bank of Chicago's national activity gauge slipped from a reading of 0.57 points for April to -0.26 in May.
Overnight, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, John Williams, echoed chair Janet Yellen, calling for continued gradual rate hikes in order to avoid overheating from tightness in the labour market.