Markets
Europe
The FTSE-100 finished yesterday's session 0.36% lower at 7,615.84, whilst the FTSE AIM All-Share index was up 0.35% at 1,068.20. In continental Europe, the CAC-40 finished 0.25% lower at 5,481.21 whilst the DAX was down 0.87% at 13,298.36.
Wall Street
Last night in New York, the Dow closed 140.67 points higher at 26,392.79, the S&P 500 added 1.71 points to end at 2,839.25, while the NASDAQ lost 3.89 points to close at 7,411.16.
Asia
In Asian markets this morning, the Nikkei 225 was 42.50 points lower at 23,626.99 heading into the close. The Hang Seng was up 452.32 points at 33,106.77 and the Shanghai Composite was 11.63 points higher at 3,559.93.
Oil
In early trade today, WTI crude was 0.20% lower at $65.38 per barrel and Brent was down 0.28% at $70.22 per barrel.
Latest Video
On Thursday, 25th January 2018 Edward Dawson, CEO and Managing Director of Prospex Oil & Gas answered questions posed by private investors at the Beaufort offices. Click here to see the interview.
Headlines
Walmart signs Japan online grocery deal with Rakuten
Customers will place orders through Rakuten, which will then be fulfilled by the joint venture. The operation - to launch later this year - will replace Walmart's existing online grocery delivery service in Japan. As part of the deal, Rakuten subsidiary Kobo will sell e-books, audiobooks and e-readers through US Walmart stores. The launch of the new e-commerce business is the US firm's latest attempt to crack a competitive overseas market, by teaming up with a popular local partner. In 2016, it applied a similar strategy in China, selling its own website to the country's second largest online retailer JD.com in exchange for a 5% stake in the company. Source: BBC News
Company news
Diageo (LON:DGE) ,2,572.00p – Hold
Diageo (DGE.L) reported robust Interim results this morning, for the period to end December 2017. Organic net sales growth was 4.2% ( Vols +1.8%, Price/mix +2.4%) and the underlying EBIT margin grew by 81bps to 33.5%, which contributed to over £1bn free cash flow. Overall very solid results. DGE will benefit from a 1% effective tax rate reduction in the full year to June 2018, mainly due to the now sharply lower US corporate tax rates. Despite such positive results and outlook, Diageo’s valuation is top of its peer group and with the US$ starting to weaken against Sterling, sentiment will hold the shares back we believe. We thus downgrade our recommendation to Hold (Buy) and reduce our target price to 2,500p (2,600p).
Click here to see Beaufort's full research note on Diageo published yesterday