Thursday preview: Aviva, Whitbread, BoE rate decision

3rd Mar 2010 15:26

The blockbuster bid by Prudential for the Asian assets of fallen US insurance giant AIG has given insurance companies the sort of press coverage normally reserved for banks and has thrown down a challenge to the Pru's UK rival, Aviva, which declares full year figures on Thursday.Panmure Gordon is looking for a 7% drop in market consistent embedded value (MCEV) operating profit to £3.11bn, in the middle of the £2.94bn-£3.29bn range of forecasts. IFRS operating profit is seen down 17% to £1.91bn, while an anticipated final dividend of 14.1p per share would take the total payout to 23.1p, 30% less than 2008. However, given the recovery in the strength of the balance sheet last year, Panmure believes there's a good chance the dividend could be higher than everyone thinks.Charles Stanley is another broker going for a full year dividend of 23.1p, covered 2.5 times by projected earnings per share of 58.1p.Hotels, coffee shops and restaurants business Whitbread said on Wednesday that its chief executive Alan Parker will step down from the role on 25 November, his 64th birthday. He will be succeeded by 52-year-old easyJet boss and former RAC chief Andy Harrison, who joins as chief executive designate on 1 September.Chairman Anthony Habgood said Harrison will be 'joining a company in good health and with excellent prospects for future growth,' a statement that will be put to the test when the company issues a trading update on Thursday.The Costa Coffee chain has been the main engine of growth of late, picking up the slack from the budget hotel chain Premier Inns, which has, like most of the hotel industry, had a tough time of it, though its value for money offering has seen it weather the recessionary storm better than most.Numis Securities is expecting Whitbread to announce a fall in revenue per available room - RevPAR in the industry jargon - of 2.5% for the 13 weeks to the end of February. Fund manager Schroders is tipped to make pre-tax profits of £188.6m on revenue of £765.5m and announce a ful year dividend of 31.69p for 2009.Funds under management at 30 September 2009 stood at £138.9bn, up from the end-June figure of £113.3bn. Charles Stanley reckons 'it will be interesting to see whether there are further signs in Q4 that the structural shift from balanced to segregated mandates flows has weakened.'Infrastructure contractor Balfour Beatty said the final six weeks of 2009 continued the positive trends outlined in its November trading update so the full year results should not contain any nasty surprises. As with all companies that do a sizeable amount of business with government agencies the view of the management on the public sector spending outlook will be of interest.Market consensus is for profit before tax of £266.5m on turnover of £9.24bn. The full year dividend is expected to be increased to 12.36p from 11.15p in 2008.On Thursday the Bank of England (BoE) will announce its decision on its key lending rate. Inflation has shown signs of picking up recently but with BoE governor Mervyn King stating recently that the economic recovery is still fragile it would be a major surprise were the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to even contemplate upping the rate, especially given the weak state of sterling at the moment.Similarly, it would be a shock were the MPC to reactivate the Quantitative Easing (QE) programme though it may spend more time discussing this than it will an interest rate change. The case for leaving QE on the shelf strengthened after a number of economic indicators in February showed signs of improvement after the weather-affected data pertaining to January. In particular, the February purchasing managers indices for the services sector and the manufacturing sector were both moderately encouraging.INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATESSL InternationalINTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTSBalance of Trade (AUS) (00:00)Beige Book Fed Survey (US) (19:00)Business Inventories (US) (15:00)Factory Orders (US) (15:00)GMSDirectex Realisations, MedicX Fund Ltd.FINALSAggreko, AMEC, Aviva, Balfour Beatty, Fiberweb, Galiform, Hardy Oil & Gas, Hutchison China Meditech, PartyGaming, Portmeirion, Psion, Robert Walters, Spirax-Sarco Engineering, Spirent Communications, Total ProduceAGMSFormjet, Jersey Electricity 'A', LPA GroupTRADING ANNOUNCEMENTSKazakhmys, WhitbreadUK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTSBoE Interest Rate Decision (12:00)