Trainline lifts guidance, Coats Group buys Texon International

London open

The FTSE 100 was called to open 50 points higher at 7,075.

Stocks to watch

Online rail ticketing platform Trainline lifted annual guidance after a bigger-than-expected surge in demand for travel, particularly from US visitors.

The company now sees net ticket sales growth of between 18% and 27% versus pre-Covid fiscal 2020. It also expects revenue growth of between 22% - 31% and adjusted core earnings as a percentage of net ticket sales of between 1.9% - 2.1%.

Industrial thread maker Coats said it had bought Texon International Group, a footwear solutions provider, for an enterprise value of $237m.

Texon, a company with operations in Asia and Europe, supplies structural components to the global footwear market, Coats said.

Newspaper round-up

More than 2m households have missed a bill payment every month this year as people struggle to keep their heads above water in a “relentless cost of living crisis”, according to new research from consumer group Which?. In June an estimated 2.1m households missed or defaulted on at least one mortgage, rent, loan, credit card or bill, according to the consumer champion’s monthly insight tracker. This figure has been above 2 million every month so far this year, it said. – Guardian

Next to the container terminal at Portsmouth International Port, just a few hundred metres from the water’s edge, stands a new hi-tech border control post. Built over the past 18 months at a cost of £25m, a cost shared by the taxpayer and the port’s owner, Portsmouth city council, the high-specification facility should be in its inaugural week of use, handling post-Brexit checks on imports of animal, plant and forestry products arriving from the EU. - Guardian

The Bank of England has raised the spectre of a sharp rise in interest rates after deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe said that households could withstand borrowing costs as high as 5pc without defaulting on their debts. A combination of more fixed rate mortgage borrowers, lending caps imposed by the Bank in 2014 and taxpayer support during the cost of living crisis mean that families could cope with rates far higher than the 3pc peak forecast by markets in coming months, Sir Jon said. - Telegraph

The team behind Britain’s most-used Covid booster vaccine is being sued by a German pharmaceutical firm which has accused it of stealing the technology behind the jab. CureVac has filed a lawsuit against BioNTech in Germany, saying it is seeking “fair compensation” for infringement of its intellectual property rights related to the mRNA technology used in the vaccine. - Telegraph

Marks & Spencer Group suffered a sizeable investor revolt yesterday against the pay package last year for Steve Rowe, its outgoing chief executive. Almost 30 per cent of shareholders who voted at the annual meeting were against approving the retailer’s remuneration report, uneasy about a £1.6 million bonus that doubled Rowe’s salary at a time when there are still question marks over the company’s recovery and dividend. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks turned in a mixed performance on Tuesday as the US dollar rallied against the Euro and recession fears returned to the forefront of investors' minds.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.42%% at 30,967.82, while the S&P 500 was 0.16% firmer at 3,831.39 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.75% stronger at 11,322.24.