London pre-open: Stocks seen higher after Apple's earnings impress
London stocks were set for a firmer open on Wednesday, tracking gains on Wall Street after tech giant Apple’s third-quarter earnings beat expectations, pushing the shares to an all-time high in after-hours trading.
The FTSE 100 was expected to open 12 points higher at 7,434.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: “The company beat expectations on profits and revenues, while also reassuring that there would be no delay on the iPhone 8 which is due to be released this year, and where there was some concern due to supplier problems. The App store also continued to deliver more revenue, with sales rising 22% in the quarter to $7.3bn.”
On the UK data front, the construction purchasing managers’ index is at 0930 BST.
Hewson said: “Today’s construction PMI data is expected to reinforce the positive picture despite some concerns in the sector about labour shortages, which might prompt a slight decline from the 54.8 number we saw in June. A slight slowdown to 54.3 is expected but nonetheless the sector would still appear to be in good shape.”
In corporate news, BAE Systems' new chief executive Charles Woodburn presented a strong set of interim results on Wednesday, keeping the aerospace and defence group on an even keel and firing off a confident view on the outlook.
The FTSE 100 giant generated £9.57bn of revenues in the six months to 30 June , up 10% or 4% if currency tailwinds are ignored, while underlying earnings per share increased by 14% to 19.8p and the interim dividend was hiked 2% to 8.8p per share.
AstraZeneca and its haematology research and development centre of excellence, Acerta Pharma, announced on Wednesday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted and granted priority review for the New Drug Application (NDA) for acalabrutinib.
The company described acalabrutinib as a “highly-selective, potent” Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor.
“FDA's acceptance of the acalabrutinib application and Priority Review illustrates the impact it could have on patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma as we work to bring this potential medicine to those in need as quickly as possible,” said AstraZeneca’s chief medical officer and executive vice president of global medicines development, Sean Bohen.
Rio Tinto said it would be returning $3bn of cash to shareholders for the first half of 2017, declaring an interim dividend of 110 cents per share as well as a share buy-back of $1bn by the end of 2017.
The mining giant generated operating cash flow of $6.3bn in the first half of the year.