With the Good Friday bank holiday looming there’s not much hump to this week’s hump-day, nonetheless, Tesco Plc results should give the market something to pay attention to.
Naturally, prices will be closely examined as the UK’s biggest grocer reveals its annual numbers.
Following on from last week’s profit warning from Morrison’s there’s a certain nervousness around the sector especially in terms of consumer spending, food inflation, spiralling wage costs and squeezed household incomes.
Analysts reckon Tesco won’t suffer the same trading problems as Morrison’s.
City forecasts see Tesco’s underlying operating profits at around £2.8bn with guidance towards a flat year ahead. Shareholders should be rewarded with a dividend of 10.9p, up 19% while UBS expects more share buybacks to be announced.
Out of the supermarket, in the broader economy, with the next consumer price index (CPI) from the Office for National Statistics expected to confirm that UK inflation has risen to its highest level for 30 years.
“We expect March's consumer prices report… to show that CPI inflation leapt to 6.7% – its highest rate since March 1992,” Pantheon Macroeconomics said, which would be well above the "around 6%" range predicted by the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.
The MPC will indeed be keenly watching, said Deutsche Bank, which is also expecting 6.7%.
“We expect a lot of the jump in prices to come from energy and food – both baskets impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war. We anticipate strong core goods and services prices too – though we think this will likely take a backseat to the non-core components.”
Over in the United States, the first big name in US earnings season steps up to the plate, with JP Morgan Chase starting proceedings, followed by fellow big institutions Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS), Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo which report a day later.
Wednesday 13 April
Finals: Lookers PLC, Petropavlovsk PLC, Tesco PLC
Trading announcements: PageGroup PLC
AGMs: AssetCo PLC, Smith and Nephew PLC
Economic data: Consumer Price Index (UK), Producer Price Index (UK), Retail Price Index (UK), MBA Mortgage Applications (US), Producer Price Index (US), Crude Oil Inventories (US),