London pre-open: Early charge likely

1st Feb 2011 07:34

Overnight gains on Wall Street and a positive session in the Far East look set to send London past 5,900 early Tuesday.Upbeat data had the US higher Monday, which should feed through to UK blue chips this morning. Futures prices currently have the FTSE 100 up about 40 points.In company news, BP has resumed dividend payments, as expected, with a fourth quarter pay-out of 7 cents. But it also sprang a small surprise with the announcement of a decision to sell half of its US refining capacity.BP's replacement cost profit for the fourth quarter of 2010 was $4.61bn, compared to a profit of $3.45bn the year before. The 2010 fourth quarter figure includes a pre-tax charge of $1bn related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.For the full year, the company reported a loss of $4.91bn, including a total pre-tax charge related to the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oil spill of $40.9bn. In 2009, it had made a replacement cost profit of $13.96bn.Cash expenditures relating to the GoM incident were $5.4bn in the fourth quarter and $17.7bn for the year pre-tax. This includes contributions by BP to the trust fund of $2bn in the fourth quarter and $5bn for the year.Booming demand for mobile phones, tablet computers and other low- powered devices meant 2010 saw the highest ever annual revenues, profits and cash generation for chip designer ARM Holdings. Underlying fourth quarter profits jumped 47% to £47.6m from £32.3m, helping to lift the full year total by 73% to £167.4m. Statutory profits were £34.9m for the quarter, up from £20.1m, and £110m for the year, up from £47m.Mining giant Xstrata produced more coking coal, semi-soft coking coal, mined nickel and refined nickel in 2010 than ever before, while copper, lead and ferrochrome were all up on the year before.The Anglo-Swiss firm ramped up output of Australian coking coal to 7.7 million tonnes from 6.4m in 2009 thanks to a full year of production from Oaky No. 1 and high productivity from Oaky North. Semi-soft rose to 6.6m tonnes from 6.2m the previous year.