Given that it’s Black Friday, Friday is set to be a busy day for shops on the high street and online but for another market – the stock market – it’s set to be a pretty quiet session.
One of the handful of companies known to have news out tomorrow is London Pride brewer Fuller Smith & Turner PLC (LON:FSTA), which made a decent start to its financial year which bodes well for Friday’s interim results.
In the 16 weeks to 22 July like-for-like sales in its managed pubs and hotels were up 6.6% year-on-year, with like-for-like profits in its tenanted inns up 5%.
Chief executive Simon Emeny did have a grumble about cost headwinds, such as increased business rates, the impact of the National Living Wage and the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy, but mercifully no long rant about Britain's membership of the European Union.
Britain's reliably unreliable weather stopped playing ball towards the end of July, so Numis expects the strong start to have tailed off somewhat.
Analysts at the City broker are looking for a half-year adjusted profit before tax of £26.3mln, earnings per share of 33.4p and a dividend of 7.6p.
The market already has a good idea of what to expect from magazines group Future PLC’s (LON:FUTR) full-year results on Friday.
A detailed pre-close update confirmed that trading for the year would be ahead of expectations after a strong end to the period, with the media and magazine divisions both performing well.
Numis don’t expect any major surprises given the recent update, so the focus for analyst will be on current trading and outlook for the rest of the year.
Friday 24 November
Finals: Future (LON:FUTR)
Interims: Babcock International Group PLC (LON:BAB); Caffyns PLC (LON:CFYN); Fuller Smith & Turner (LON:FSTA)
Economic events: BBA loans for house purchases, CBI reported sales