IAG pulls full-year guidance after Q1 loss, IHG trading improves in first quarter

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 35 points higher on Friday, having closed up 0.52% on Thursday at 7,076.17.

Stocks to watch

British Airways owner IAG reported a first quarter operating loss of €1.06bn and pulled full-year guidance as the Covid pandemic continued to batter the airline industry. The result compares with a loss of €1.86bn a year earlier. IAG said it expects to fly around 25% of 2019 capacity, but warned that those plans “remain uncertain and subject to review”.

InterContinental Hotels Group said trading improved in the first quarter and that a pickup in March continued into April, particularly in the US and China. Revenue per available room was down 50.6% in the three months to the end of March compared with two years earlier and 33.7% from a year earlier.

AstraZeneca said on Friday that high-level results from the ‘POSEIDON’ phase 3 trial of ‘Imfinzi’, or durvalumab, showed the combination of Imfinzi, tremelimumab and chemotherapy demonstrated a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful” overall survival benefit versus chemotherapy alone in the first line treatment of patients with stage four non-small cell lung cancer. The FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals giant said the Imfinzi plus chemotherapy arm, however, demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival versus chemotherapy, but the overall survival trend observed in that previous analysis did not achieve statistical significance.

Newspaper round-up

A coalition of organisations including City of London police and the consumer body Which? is demanding the government make tech giants such as Google and Facebook legally responsible for fake and fraudulent adverts. In a joint letter to the home secretary, Priti Patel, the 17 organisations have urged ministers to force search engines and social media sites to vet all adverts they publish to protect the public from an “avalanche” of scams involving investments and other financial offers. - Guardian

A Brussels plot to lock the City out of European markets has backfired and harmed the finances of banks on the Continent, the boss of the UK's finance watchdog has said. Nikhil Rathi, head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said in a first major intervention that European Union lenders have lost market share because of resistance to a so-called equivalence deal that would have preserved ties with Britain. - Telegraph

Sanjeev Gupta is seeking a £200m lifeline that will allow his UK steelmaking operations to get back to full production. Liberty Steel is thrashing out details of a new working capital facility with US-based White Oak Global Advisors, a company which specialises in funding struggling businesses. The agreement is subject to due diligence checks by White Oak and would guarantee that the money is ring-fenced for Liberty’s UK operations, not funnelled into parent company GFG. - Telegraph

The global semiconductor shortage, which is hobbling some of the world’s leading carmakers, is trickling down into the supply chain as GKN warned that is being hit by the knock-on impact. Its warning came as Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, said that it is in “crisis mode” over the microchip shortages. VW warned that production could be significantly affected in the second half. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks finished in positive territory on Thursday, as the Dow Jones tacked on a new fresh record following its same achievement in the previous session.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.93% at 34,548.53, as the S&P 500 added 0.82% to 4,201.62 and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.37% firmer at 13,632.84.

The Dow closed 318.19 points higher on Thursday, piling on to the gains recorded on Wednesday as corporate earnings and comments from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen were both in focus.

On investors' minds on Thursday, weekly jobless claims dropped sharply in the week ended 1 May, with first-time claims hitting a new Covid-19-era low.

Initial claims came to 498,000 last week, according to the Labor Department, better than estimates for a reading of 527,000 and down from the previous week's print of 590,000, which was upwardly revised from the initially reported 553,000.