Esentra buys Wixroyd Group, Auction Technology swings to profit before tax

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 12 points higher on Thursday, having closed up 0.81% at 7,573.05 on Wednesday.

Stocks to watch

Components maker Essentra said it had bought Wixroyd Group, a UK supplier of industrial parts for the engineering sector, for an initial £29.5m with a further £7m potentially payable on a deferred earn-out basis.

Auction Technology Group reported an 11% rise in pro forma revenue to £119.8m in its full-year results on Thursday, as reported revenue surged 71% year-on-year. The FTSE 250 company said adjusted EBITDA was ahead 70% year-on-year to £54m, as its adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 45% as high operational leverage offset significant planned investments in the talent and infrastructure needed for the firm to achieve its scale ambitions, as well as the full-year impact of public company costs. It swung to a profit before tax of £9.3m from a loss of £25m in the prior year.

Newspaper round-up

More than 7 million people who no longer qualify for energy support from next spring face years in fuel poverty if average heat and light bills remain at £3,000, according to a report calling for more targeted help. In his November budget the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced that the government’s energy price guarantee (EPG) would rise from April to £3,000 a year for the typical home, and the £400 help paid to all households this winter – regardless of income – would not be repeated. – Guardian

Britain is to be disrupted by strikes every day until Christmas as trade unions seek to bring the country to a halt in a new winter of discontent. Rail workers, including staff at Eurostar, nurses, teachers, security guards handling cash, driving examiners and rural payments officers are planning industrial action that will affect every day over advent. – Telegraph

Google has been hit with a £13.6bn lawsuit over claims the tech giant’s stranglehold on the online advertising market has deprived publishers of revenue. The class action lawsuit, filed in the Competition Appeals Tribunal on Wednesday, claims that Google raked in “super profits” at the expense of hundreds of thousands of websites and mobile apps in the UK. – Telegraph

Italian oil major Eni is in early stage talks to buy Sam Laidlaw’s Neptune Energy for up to $6 billion. Preliminary talks are underway but no formal offer has been made, a source said, confirming a report by Reuters. – The Times

Lloyds Banking Group’s £52 billion staff pension fund was forced into fire sales of equities and faced collateral calls of billions of pounds at the height of the gilts market crisis, according to unusual evidence tabled in parliament. Henry Tapper, a pensions expert who gave evidence to the work and pensions committee last week, made a written disclosure in which he referred to his partner, Stella Eastwood, who is head of group pensions at Lloyds. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed well above the waterline on Wednesday, as market participants digested comments from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell after an avalanche of economic data.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.18% at 34,589.77, as the S&P 500 added 3.09% to 4,080.11, and the Nasdaq Composite was ahead 4.41% at 11,468.00.

The Dow closed 737.24 points higher on Wednesday, easily reversing the previous session's single-digit gain.

The head of the US central bank earlier opened the door to a downshift in the pace of interest rate hikes as soon as December, in remarks to the Brookings Institution.

However, what now mattered most was how much more rates needed to rise and for how long they should be kept at a "restrictive" level to return inflation to 2%, Jerome Powell said.