Josh White Sharecast News
14 Jan, 2025 07:36

Ocado Retail delivers strong finish to 2024, Smiths announces new CFO and upgrades guidance

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open three points higher on Tuesday, having closed down 0.29% on Monday at 8,224.19.

Stocks to watch

Ocado Retail delivered a strong finish to its financial year, with sales growth accelerating in the fourth quarter as weekly orders reached a milestone of 500,000 for the first time. The company, which is the grocery joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S, reported retail revenues of £715.8m for the 13 weeks to 1 December, up 17.5% year-on-year and a pick-up from the 15.5% growth seen in the third quarter. That was followed by a record performance over the key Christmas trading period, Ocado Retail said.

Smiths Group announced on Tuesday that its chief financial officer Clare Scherrer will retire on 30 April, with Julian Fagge, currently president of Smiths Interconnect, succeeding her as CFO from 1 February. The FTSE 100 company also upgraded its 2025 organic revenue growth guidance to between 6% and 8%, citing strong performance in Smiths Detection and Smiths Interconnect and improved order book visibility, while maintaining its operating profit margin guidance.

Newspaper round-up

Taxpayers are being asked to shoulder £1bn in debt amassed by a bankrupt Surrey council that will be merged in the government’s plan for the biggest transfer of powers to England’s regions this century. Posing a fresh financial headache for the government, councillors in Surrey have requested that ministers “write off” £1bn in debt held by troubled Woking borough council to enable a merger between the county’s 12 local authorities. – Guardian

Chinese officials are in preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok’s operations in the United States to billionaire Elon Musk, should the short-video app be unable to avoid an impending ban, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Beijing officials prefer that TikTok remains under the control of parent Bytedance, the report said, citing sources. – Guardian

Britain’s hiring downturn is “just the tip of the iceberg”, business chiefs have warned, as companies face surging costs in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s tax raid. The share of employers putting the brakes on hiring jumped during the last three months of 2024, according to figures from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), with companies already slashing jobs following the Budget. – Telegraph

One of Britain’s biggest lenders has stepped up efforts to bring employees back to the office as it emerged that senior staff at Lloyds Banking Group may have bonuses cut if they fail to go in at least twice a week. The risk of a lower bonus for falling short of office attendance requirements applies to about 20 percent of Lloyds’s 60,000 staff who are considered to be senior employees. – The Times

Amazon has put in orders for more than 150 electric heavy goods vehicles to create Britain’s largest zero-emission truck fleet. The delivery company is also to start moving packages at scale by rail, using freight trains on the west coast main line which runs between Scotland, the West Midlands and London. – The Times

US close

US equity markets were mixed on Monday after finishing well above their daily lows, with the S&P 500 erasing early losses to close higher but weakness in the tech sector kept the Nasdaq in the red.

Overall, the mood was one of caution to start the week, as bond yields continued to creep higher in the aftermath of Friday's bumper jobs report.

The S&P 500 finished up 0.2%, having fallen as much as 0.9% earlier on, while the Nasdaq fell 0.4%.

The Dow, however, jumped 0.9% as investors shifted into more defensive cyclical sectors with economic bellwethers like banks and industrial stocks performing well.

10-year US Treasury yields rose a further 1.8 basis points to 4.787% on the back of December's stronger-than-expected reading of non-farm payrolls, which raised uncertainties regarding the Federal Reserve's near-term path for monetary policy.

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