Hochschild reports fall in production, IP Group NAV per share narrows

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 10 points higher on Wednesday, having closed up 1.02% on Tuesday at 7,747.81.

Stocks to watch

South America-focused miner Hochschild reported a 10% fall in production, offset by rising prices and the devaluation of the Argentinian peso which helped to lift adjusted core earnings. The company on Wednesday posted said adjusted EBITDA came in at $274.4m, up 10%. Revenues fell 6% to $693.7m.

IP Group said in its annual results on Wednesday that, despite a 13% decline in net asset value per share to 114.8p due to adjustments in the carrying values of key investments, it maintained a strong balance sheet with £226.9m in gross cash and continued to invest £73.2m in portfolio companies. The FTSE 250 intellectual property investor initiated a £20m share buyback, with future cash returns to be in the form of buybacks when share price discounts to net asset value exceed 20%, and over £75m already returned to shareholders through dividends and buybacks since 2021.

Anglo American has reported another increase in rough diamond sales at De Beers as prices continue to rebound after slumping in 2023, though the company warned that tough macro conditions will keep a lid on growth for a while. De Beers saw sales of $430m in its second sales cycle of 2024, up from $374 in the first cycle and $137m in the last cycle of 2023, but down from $497m a year earlier.

Newspaper round-up

Ministers will publish legislation to quash the convictions of hundreds of post office operators who were prosecuted during the Horizon scandal, marking a significant victory for victims after decades of campaigning. The legislation on Wednesday will automatically overturn convictions of theft, fraud and false accounting that were handed down in connection with Post Office business during that period. It will cover prosecutions brought by the Post Office and the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales between 1996 and 2018. – Guardian

Exposure to new technologies including trackers, robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people’s quality of life, according to a groundbreaking study from the the Institute for Work thinktank. Based on a survey of more than 6,000 people, the study analysed the impact on wellbeing of four groups of technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent across the economy. – Guardian

Morrisons plunged to a £1bn loss last year amid a surge in debt interest payments linked to its private equity takeover. The supermarket chain, which was acquired by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) for £10bn in 2021, fell deeper into the red for the year ending October 2023 as finance costs grew. Accounts for Morrison’s parent company, Market Topco, show the group made a pre-tax loss of £1.1bn last year after racking up £735m in interest costs. – Telegraph

Households face paying almost £200 extra on their energy bills under plans to keep Britain’s lights on by building more gas-fired power stations. Experts said the policy, announced by Rishi Sunak on Tuesday, would result in a bill of around £5bn for consumers, equivalent to £178 per household, most likely spread over a decade or more. – Telegraph

A top hedge fund has amassed a bet worth almost £200 million against shares in Barclays despite a recent rally in the bank’s stock price on hopes that the chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan will revive the lender’s fortunes. The short position built by Qube Research & Technologies equates to 0.73 per cent of Barclays’s issued share capital and is the biggest ever disclosed against the bank. It suggests that Qube believes the share price rise, fuelled by a turnaround plan set out by the Barclays boss last month, will run out of steam. – The Times

US close

US stocks rose strongly on Tuesday with the S&P 500 notching yet another record close as investors largely shrugged off an unexpected pick-up in inflation, holding on to hopes that the data won't derail the Federal Reserve's plans to soon start cutting interest rates.

The S&P 500 rose 1.12% to a new closing high of 5,175.27, extending the year-to-date rally to 9.12%. The Dow gained 0.61% while the Nasdaq jumped 1.54%.

According to the Department of Labor, headline consumer prices increased at a 0.4% month-on-month pace in February, which served to push the year-on-year rate of increase from 3.1% in January to 3.2%, despite economists' expectations for no change.

Core CPI also rose, up by 0.4% month-on-month, while the annual rate inched lower to 3.8% from 3.9%, albeit still higher than the 3.7% expected by the market.

February's producer price index was slated for release on Thursday, with the two key pieces of inflation data marking some of the last major macro data points scheduled for release ahead of the Federal Reserve's next monetary policy meeting on 19 March.