London pre-open: Yesterday's gains to disappear

20th Oct 2011 07:26

The top-share index is set to give back all of yesterday's gains and more at the outset, with City sources predicting the FTSE 100 will open down 80 points or so from yesterday's close of 5,450, after last night's lacklustre showing on Wall Street. Oil and gas facilities services provider Petrofac expects to deliver like-for-like net profit growth for the full year of at least 15% and in line with current market expectations. The group's order backlog at the end of September stood at around $10.8bn, down from $11.4bn at the end of June. Mining giant Anglo American saw iron ore production increase by 3.3% to 12.2m tonnes in the third quarter from a year earlier, mainly due to increased volumes from Kumba's Sishen mine. Total production of of coal rose by 5% to 8.0m tonnes, while copper production fell 8% year-on-year to 139,000 tonnes.Department stores group Debenhams saw its headline profit before tax rise 10% to £166.1m in the 53 weeks to 3 September, ahead of market expectations of £158.7m. Like-for-like sales were up 1.2% including VAT but down 0.3% excluding it.  --jh