Civitas buys 10 supported living properties, AG Barr plans dividend restart

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 28 points higher on Friday, having closed down 0.1% on Thursday at 7,019.67.

Stocks to watch

UK care-based housing and healthcare real estate investment trust Civitas said it had bought 10 supported living properties across Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk and Wales for £8.6m. The portfolio provides adapted homes along with personalised specialist care for 41 people with complex mental health care needs, administered by three care providers which already work across other properties within the Civitas portfolio, the company said on Friday. The properties are leased with rents adjusted annually in line with CPI over the full-term and are subject to a lower limit of inflation of 0% per annum and a maximum indexation of 4% a year.

AstraZeneca said ‘Tagrisso’, or osimertinib, has been approved in the European Union (EU) for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients with early-stage epidermal growth factor receptor-mutated non-small cell lung cancer, after complete tumour resection with curative intent. The FTSE 100 drugmaker said Tagrisso is indicated for EGFRm patients whose tumours had exon 19 deletions, or exon 21 mutations. It said the approval was based on positive results from the ‘ADAURA’ phase 3 trial, in which Tagrisso demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in disease-free survival in the primary analysis population.

AG Barr said trading was in line with expectations and that it planned to restart dividends in this financial year after the easing of lockdown restrictions for the hospitality sector. Despite lockdown restrictions in place for much of the first quarter, sales of soft drinks such as Irn Bru have been relatively strong since the start of the financial year in late January, the beverage maker said. Sales direct to consumers of AG Barr's Funkin cocktails were strong and the range's on-trade sales were a cause for optimism about the hospitality sector, the company said in a statement before its annual general meeting.

Newspaper round-up

More than £700,000 is lost to bank transfer scams every day, which works out at £491 a minute, according to research by the consumer body Which? It claimed the banking industry’s approach to reimbursing victims of this type of fraud was “unfair and inconsistent,” with less than half of losses being returned to those affected. - Guardian

Boris Johnson is considering plans for a carbon tax on imports from polluting industries in a move that could protect British farmers from foreign rivals. The proposals would initially target heavy industry such as steelmaking but could in future be expanded to include agriculture, a major CO2 emitter. UK farmers would likely hail the move as a lifeline if it goes ahead, amid widespread anxiety that rivals in Australia and elsewhere could use new trade deals to flood the country with cheap produce. - Telegraph

BT's infrastructure builder has doubled the number of homes and businesses it will upgrade to full-fibre broadband in the countryside, the Telegraph can reveal. Openreach plans to ease the burden on the Government by shouldering the cost of delivering full-fibre to an extra 3m premises in some of the hardest-to-reach parts of the UK. - Telegraph

Agreement on a global minimum corporation tax that would raise billions of pounds from footloose multinationals may come as early as next week. Negotiators are close to landing a set of common principles as part of an overhaul of the international tax code that the world’s leading advanced economies will sign up to at next Friday’s meeting of G7 finance ministers. - The Times

Trade union membership has risen for a fourth year in a row as more public sector workers joined up during the pandemic. Official figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy showed a rise of 118,000 to 6.6 million in 2020, up from 6.2 million in 2016. Although a significant rise, this is still only half the peak of 13.2 million in 1979. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed mostly higher on Thursday as investors mulled over this week's jobless data from the Department of Labor.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.41% at 34,464.64, while the S&P 500 was 0.12% firmer at 4,200.88 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.01% weaker at 13,736.28.

The Dow closed 141.59 points higher on Thursday following a somewhat muted session for major indices a day earlier.

Thursday's primary focus was the latest set of jobless claims data, with initial jobless claims coming in at 406,000 in the week ended 15 May, according to the Department of Labor. While still well and truly above numbers seen prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, the figure was also below analyst estimates for a reading of 444,000 and a fresh pandemic-era low.

Also on the macro front, orders for big-ticket US goods dropped unexpectedly in April, the first decline recorded in 11 months amid a shortage of computer chips that halted auto production. The Commerce Department said orders for factory goods meant to last at least three years declined 1.3% in April after rising 1.3% in March, with transportation orders slipping 6.7%.