Grocery, clothing and house prices will be the big story in the background from a pair of FTSE 100 company updates on Tuesday, while HSBC PLC will kick off London's bank reporting season.
Associated British Foods PLC (LSE:ABF) will release interim results with investors hoping some good news can revive a share price that has plunged over 20% so far this year to a little over £16, and down from £26 pre-pandemic.
Much of the concern centres around budget clothing arm Primark and how it is coping with inflation and supply chain issues that have had to be passed on to consumers. This is not to ignore its food businesses, which owns brands from Allinson's, Jordans, Silver Spoon and Twinings, will be under similar if not greater pressure.
In a trading update at the end of February, AB Foods said sales were expected to be ahead of pre-Covid levels.
Primark benefits from already being the ‘cheap’ option, meaning it should be able to better navigate the cost-of-living crisis, it said, with inflationary and supply chain issues largely mitigated by a “reduction in store operating costs and overheads and a favourable US dollar exchange rate”.
Housebuilders are also reporting first-quarter updates, also coming after the industry committed to removing dangerous cladding and remediate fire safety issues in taller buildings built over the past thirty years.
Taylor Wimpey PLC (LSE:TW.) is first in line on Tuesday, having said cost inflation was running at around 6% at the time of its final results early last month.
Chief executive Pete Redfern, who has held the CEO role since 2007 and before that at George Wimpey before the merger with Taylor Woodrow was agreed, will be handing in his hard hat and boardroom role at the day's annual shareholder meeting.
The group will welcome its first female CEO, Jennie Daly, whose immediate targets are to keep the company on its 2022 growth targets for low-single-digit growth for new house completions and operating margins at 21-22%.
Banks and buses
HSBC will be the first of the Footsie's blue-chip lenders to report first-quarter numbers and the mood is ex[ected to be a lot less celebratory than the last set of bumper numbers.
With the Asia-focused giant getting the ball rolling, analysts at UBS expect soft wealth management revenues given the recent Covid restrictions in Hong Kong.
The pivot towards Asia and away from the UK and Europe is an ongoing theme, while costs will also be an issue to watch.
Consensus predictions are for HSBC to report profits of US$3.72bn, down by 36% on a year ago.
Elsewhere, National Express Group PLC is scheduled to provide a trading update, which will come just over a month after it urged shareholders in target Stagecoach to "take no action" on the rival bid from German infrastructure fund DWS.
After Stagecoach withdrew its backing for a proposed merger with National Express that valued it at £445mln, and instead switched support to a £595mln offer from DWS, the FTSE 250-listed company said its bid offers “a superior value creation opportunity”.
National Express argued that if its share price recovered to pre-pandemic levels around 421p this would imply “an illustrative look-through value” per Stagecoach share of around 170p, which represents a 66% premium to the DWS offer.
Earlier in March, National Express revealed it had returned to profit last year as easing Covid restrictions increased travel, with revenue up 11%.
The group is in the midst of its Evolve strategy, which aims to add £1bn of revenue to National Express by 2027 through a shared mobility initiative.
Significant announcements on Tuesday 26 April:
Finals: Billington Holdings Plc, Corero Network Security PLC, Futura Medical PLC , Learning Technologies Group PLC, Northcoders Group PLC, Puretech Health PLC, Warpaint London PLC
Interims: Associated British Foods PLC (LSE:ABF), Focusrite PLC
Trading announcements: IWG PLC, Jupiter Fund Management PLC, National Express PLC, Taylor Wimpey PLC (LSE:TW.)
AGMs: Aquis Exchange Limited, City Pub Group PLC, Elementis plc, Franchise Brands PLC, GlobalData PLC, Maven Income & Growth VCT 5 PLC, Oriole Resources PLC, RPS Group PLC, Taylor Wimpey, Tissue Regenix Group PLC
Economic data: Public Sector Net Borrowing (UK), Durable Goods Orders (US), House Price Index (US), Consumer Confidence (US), New Home Sales (US),