Tuesday preview: Midterm elections, Imperial Brands and Weir Group in focus
Imperial Brands
1,827.50p
17:15 25/04/24
All eyes will be on the US mid-term elections on Tuesday, although barring surprises most analysts expect them to result in little change to the Trump administration's policies.
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Weir Group
1,967.00p
16:40 25/04/24
According to most polls, the most likely scenario is that the Democrats will recover control of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, with Republicans retaining that in the upper house, the Senate.
Indeed, slim majorities for each party in the two chambers may promote compromise, said analysts at Credit Suisse, resulting both in passage of an amended version of NAFTA but helping to forestall more "ambitious measures" on immigration and trade.
There is little by the way of economic data scheduled to be published, with the main releases expected to be a reading on German factory orders for September, followed by the US JOLTS labour market survey referencing that same month later in the day.
Imperial Brands and Weir Group are among the outfits in the UK which are set to update shareholders on Tuesday.
For the former, analysts at UBS had penciled-in net sales growth of 2.0% for the back half of 2018, on the back of an improved performance in its Russian operations and a boost from its next generation product.
In parallel, the company's earnings per share were seen ahead by 3.9% over the full-year at constant exchange rates and were expected to hit 268.7p.
Analyst Nik Oliver noted how the cigarette-maker's shares were trading at half the price-to-earnings multiple of its consumer staples peers, versus a 10-year average of between -20% to -50%.
For Weir Group, Numis's David Larkam believed the focus would be on its activities in the Oil&Gas space, given the lack of detail from management in September as related to the slowdown in the Permian basin.
Read- across from rivals, if applicable, also appeared to indicate that annual budgets had already been maxed out, implying potential softness elsewhere in the business.
However, the Minerals side of the business, which accounted for roughly three-quarters of the firm on a pro-forma basis, was expected to benefit from easy comparators and order intake was also expected to be positive, albeit led by services, as peers had generally been reporting a "somewhat muted" pick-up in the market for original equipment.
Tuesday November 06
INTERIMS
Castleton Technology, First Derivatives
INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
Huntsworth, Synthomer
QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE
Supermarket Income Reit
Q3
Randgold Resources Ltd., Verona Pharma
FINALS
Associated British Foods, Connect Group, Imperial Brands , Up Global Sourcing Holdings
IMSS
Weir Group
SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
Barratt Developments
AGMS
Abcam, AIQ Limited (DI), Craneware, GCP Student Living, Mid Wynd International Inv Trust, Pacific Horizon Inv Trust, Supermarket Income Reit
TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS
Direct Line Insurance Group, Georgia Capital , Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets, Purplebricks Group, Vesuvius, Weir Group, William Hill
FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
Barratt Developments