TUI reports rise in summer bookings, Coca-Cola HBC posts solid 2022 results
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open nine points higher on Tuesday, having closed up 0.83% on Monday at 7,947.60.
Stocks to watch
Holiday operator TUI said summer bookings were up 20% and reported a narrowing of first-quarter losses as travel continued to rebound from the effects of the Covid pandemic. The company on Tuesday reported an underlying operating loss of €153.0m compared with a loss of €273.6m with “encouraging” booking momentum across both winter and summer seasons.
Coca-Cola HBC, a bottling partner of the US-based Coca-Cola Company, reported strong results for 2022 on Tuesday, with organic revenue up 14.2%. Excluding Russia and Ukraine, organic revenue was ahead 22.7%. The firm said its comparable EBIT increased by 11.9% to €929.7m (£821.89m) with organic EBIT up 1.3%, while full-year free cash flow increased by €43.8m to €645.1m. It announced a 9.9% increase in its ordinary dividend, to 78 euro cents per share.
Plus500 posted a 16% jump in full-year revenues to $832.6m, for a 17% increase in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation to $453m, as its operating profit margin widened from 54% to 55%. In turn, the fintech group reported a 24% rise in its cash on hand at period end to reach $930.2m. Among its performance highlights were record annual revenues per user and a near doubling in the size of the average deposit per active customer to roughly $8,000.
Newspaper round-up
The US telecoms group chaired by “cable cowboy” John Malone has snapped up a stake in Vodafone in a bet on the UK company’s revival – but has ruled out making a takeover bid. Liberty Global, which is an investor in ITV and Virgin Media O2, told investors on Monday it had acquired a 4.92% stake in Vodafone, saying it believed the shares were undervalued. – Guardian
Hydrogen is to be pumped into Britain's main gas pipeline by 2025 as part of a scramble to ditch fossil fuels and move to net zero. Between 2pc and 5pc of the fuel flowing through the country's transmission network will be hydrogen in two years under plans drawn up by National Gas, which owns the pipelines. – Telegraph
Toyota is to accelerate its shift to electric vehicles as the world’s biggest carmaker unveiled plans to launch a new battery-powered flagship model. Koji Sato, chief executive of Toyota, said “the timing is right” to invest in new manufacturing methods to make electric vehicles in the latest sign the manufacturer is backing away from its hydrogen ambitions. – Telegraph
The number of directors banned for abusing pandemic support schemes has more than doubled in the current financial year compared with the whole of the previous 12 months. Official figures from the government’s Insolvency Service show that in the ten months from April last year to January, 312 director disqualifications were linked to misuse of Covid-19 financial programmes, such as the £47 billion bounce back loan scheme. – The Times
Arm is recruiting more people in the UK than in any other part of the world, bucking the trend of layoffs in the technology sector and a sign of the company’s commitment to its global headquarters in Cambridge. The microchip designer is looking for 500 new employees and 350 of those roles are in its Cambridge, Manchester, Warwick and Sheffield locations. The jobs, from graduate level to more senior hires, include software and hardware engineers, safety engineers, analysts and apprentices. Founded in Cambridge, Arm is owned by SoftBank, the Japanese investment group. It creates the blueprint for microchips in products such as Apple’s iPhones, customers pay an upfront licence fee for the design and an additional royalty every time a chip is created from it. – The Times
US close
Wall Street stocks were higher at the opening bell on Monday as both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite strained to recover from their worst weekly showing since late last year.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.11% at 34,245.93, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.14% to 4,137.29 and the Nasdaq Composite crossed the line 1.48% firmer at 11,891.79.
The Dow closed 376.66 points higher on Monday, extending the gains it recorded on Friday when major indices wrapped up a volatile week with a mixed performance.
Market participants were looking ahead to Tuesday's consumer price index, with traders hoping to gain some kind of insight into the pace of inflation and to figure just what the Federal Reserve could do next in order to combat it.
On the macro front, Federal Reserve banker Michelle Bowman said the central bank would need to continue hiking and raise interest rates in order to get them to a level high enough to bring inflation back down to its target rate.