London pre-open: Stocks seen muted after Monday’s gains

by | Aug 3, 2021

London stocks were set for a muted open on Tuesday following a negative session in Asia and after solid gains a day earlier.
The FTSE 100 was called to open three points lower at 7,078.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson noted weakness in the Asian session and said this wasn’t helped by comments from an official Chinese news agency that labelled online games as “spiritual opium”, igniting fears of a possible clampdown on online games companies.

“Last night’s decline in US markets and softer Asia session looks set to translate into a fairly flat open later this morning for markets in Europe,” he said.

In corporate news, BP said it expected to buy back about $1bn of shares each quarter and increase its dividend over the next five years as the oil company swung to a second-quarter profit.

Underlying replacement cost profit was $2.8bn in the three months to the end of June compared with a $6.7bn loss a year earlier after oil prices rebounded. BP increased its second-quarter dividend to 5.46p a share from 5.25p a year earlier and said it would buy back $1.4bn of shares from first-half cash flow.

BP said if oil prices average $60 per barrel it expected to buy back about $1bn of shares per quarter and to have capacity for a 4% dividend increase through 2025.

Standard Chartered reported a rise in first-half profits and said it was resuming dividends against an improving economic backdrop.

The bank made pre-tax profits of $1.15bn in the second quarter, up 55% year on year and beating consensus analyst estimates of $1.1bn. For the first half of the year,

Standard Chartered reported pre-tax profits of $2.56bn, a 57% jump from the same period in 2020.

It also announced a $250m share buyback and said it would pay an interim dividend of 3 cents per share.

Related articles

Trending stories

Join our mailing list

Subscribe to our mailing list to receive regular updates!

x