Dixons Carphone maintains full year guidance, Burberry sales fall in third quarter
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The FTSE 100 is expected to open 17 points higher on Wednesday, having closed down 0.11% on Tuesday at 6,712.95.
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Dixons Carphone maintained full year guidance as it reported a sharp rise in electricals revenue over the Christmas period driven by people buying televisions and computers during the coronavirus lockdown. The company on Wednesday said like-for-like revenue from the electricals unit rose 11% in the 10 weeks to January 9. In the UK and Ireland online sales grew 121%. However mobile phone total revenue plunged 40% as its Carphone Warehouse stores were closed under Covid restrictions.
Burberry sales fell in the third quarter as the impact of Covid-19 and fewer price cuts offset strong sales of full-price items. Reported retail revenue fell 4% to £688m in the three months to the end of December as coronavirus-related store closures averaged 7%. Comparable store sales fell 9% as Burberry reduced markdowns but full-price transactions rose at a "high single-digit" pace.
Pearson said on Wednesday that group sales declined by 10% in 2020, with the company expecting to report adjusted operating profit between £310m and £315m, with portfolio changes, inflation and the trading impact of Covid-19 partially offset by restructuring savings. The FTSE 100 education publisher said the “challenging impact” of the pandemic had been felt most acutely across its international and global assessment sectors, due to test centre and school closures, exam cancellations, reduced global mobility and international economic pressure on spending. It said it had, however, accelerated demand for digital learning, with performance in its global online learning operation strong.
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The Bank of France’s governor has said that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union has driven almost 2,500 jobs and “at least €170bn in assets” to France. London remains the continent’s foremost financial centre but Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris have all scrambled to attract businesses that wanted to remain active in the 19-nation eurozone. - Guardian
More than half a million freelancers excluded from state support could be handed a last-minute lifeline, as influential MPs put pressure on the Chancellor to include them in the final round of self-employed grants. Hundreds of thousands of newly self-employed were excluded from help as they had never filed tax returns. But campaigners have insisted they could now make it into the last round of the self-employed income support scheme being dished out in February. - Telegraph
Ministers must "press the reset button" on restrictions when restaurants and pubs reopen to secure the future of the sector, industry chiefs have warned. Bosses have urged the Prime Minister to scrap rules such as the curfew and substantial meal rule introduced under the Government’s tiers system to contain outbreaks in some of the worst-affected parts of the country. - Telegraph
The Bank of England’s chief economist expects Britain’s economy to begin to recover “at a rate of knots” from the second quarter of this year as vaccines against the coronavirus are deployed. Andy Haldane said that the huge economic shock caused by the first lockdown in March and April last year, when output fell 25 per cent, was likely to prove more transient than the 2008-09 global financial crisis that generated a large overhang of bad debts. - The Times
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Stocks on Wall Street finished higher on Tuesday after a long weekend, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 0.38% to 30,930.52.
The S&P 500 added 0.81% to 3,798.91, and the Nasdaq Composite was 1.53% firmer at 13,197.18.