AstraZeneca records over $1bn in Q3 vaccine sales, Wood Group to review consulting business

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 17 points lower on Friday, having closed up 0.6% at 7,384.18 on Friday.

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AstraZeneca on Friday reported $1.05bn in third-quarter Covid vaccine sales as the not-for-profit drug added 1% to earnings in the period, while the company reiterated annual forecasts for 2021. The company said it was now expecting to progressively transition the vaccine to “modest profitability” as new orders are received. Vaccine sales in the final quarter are expected to be a blend of the original pandemic agreements and new orders, with the large majority coming from pandemic agreements, the company said. Third-quarter revenue rose 50% to $9.8bn and by 32% to $25.4bn for the year to date.

Wood Group announced a strategic review of the part of its consulting business facing the built environment end market on Friday, against the backdrop of improving momentum in many of its markets following the challenging market conditions created by the impact of Covid-19. The FTSE 250 company said the review would consider options to best unlock value from that part of the business that it believed were not currently being recognised in its market capitalisation. It said the review was taking place against the backdrop of improving momentum in many of Wood's markets, following the “challenging” market conditions created by the impact of Covid-19.

Newspaper round-up

Graduates from poorer backgrounds earn half as much as their more privileged peers in their first job after university because they put themselves forward for fewer roles and lack the family connections and financial support to hunt for top jobs, a survey has shown. The survey of 5,000 graduates suggested that those whose parents held professional roles, including chief executives, doctors and teachers, earned an average of £23,457 in their first job after university, compared with just £11,595 among those whose parents held technical, manual or service jobs. After university, poorer graduates applied for an average of six jobs compared with nine for their wealthier peers, the figures showed. - Guardian

Controversial plans to build a 305-metre high tower in the City of London have been thrown out by the government. The surprise decision, announced by the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities, ends a long-running saga of contradictory decisions on the fate of the planned tourist attraction – designed by Foster + Partners and called the Tulip – at 20 Bury Street in London’s financial district. - Guardian

Striking workers at Clarks have been accused of shouting homophobic abuse at staff and attempting to damage cars as Britain lurches into a winter of discontent. Picketers scattered nails across the road to be run over by traffic outside Clarks' factory in Somerset and a striker shouted "take that, gay boy" at a member of staff heading into the building, the 196-year-old shoemaker claimed amid an increasingly bitter dispute over pay. - Telegraph

Boris Johnson is facing calls from more than 40 cross-party MPs to table legislation to stop the use of UK property for economic crime, as a rise in ownership in offshore tax havens is said to have placed the country “at the heart of the world’s dirty money crisis”. Seventeen Tory backbenchers and peers are among those urging the prime minister to bring forward legislation to introduce a register of overseas entities that own UK property. Draft legislation has been ready since 2018. - The Times

An autonomous technology start-up went public in New York yesterday, bringing to the stock exchange one of the youngest chief executives of a listed American company. Embark Technology, which specialises in developing software and services for self-driving lorries, was valued at more than $5 billion in a so-called blank-cheque merger. - The Times

US close

Markets on Wall Street were closed on Thursday for the Veterans’ Day holiday.

They had finished in negative territory on Wednesday, however, as market participants sifted through consumer inflation numbers that came in hotter than anticipated.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.66% at 36,079.94, as the S&P 500 lost 0.82% to 4,646.71 and the Nasdaq Composite was off 1.66% at 15,622.70.