Thursday preview: Showtime for Tesco as struggling retailer unveils H1 results

22nd Oct 2014 15:18

Tesco will be the company on most traders' watchlists on Thursday as the supermarket unveils its highly-anticipated half-year results.Trading updates and results from Stobart Group, Unilever, Debenhams, Ladbrokes, National Express, Premier Foods, Reed Elsevier and Britvic will also be on tap, along with drilling reports from African Barrick Gold, Hochschild Mining and Anglo American.Even so, it will be Tesco that will garner the most attention in the aftermath of a string of profit warnings, an accounting scandal that led to a £250m profits black hole, as well as numerous senior-management changes.Nevertheless the struggling retailer, which drafted in new chief executive Dave Lewis last month to stem falling like-for-like sales and shrinking market share, is not expected to announce a major new strategy just yet, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank.They expect Lewis "to take a 'doing' rather than 'talking' approach to management and we may not learn about new initiatives until after they've been implemented".Deutsche Bank has pencilled in earnings before interest and tax of £854m at Tesco for its first half, which would equate to a 46% drop on last year.Any comments on trading since the half-year stage will also be closely watched after Kantar Worldpanel said this week that Tesco "may be turning a corner" and that sales trends were going "in the right direction".The research house reported that sales were down 3.6% in the 12 weeks to October, which is the smallest decline at Tesco since June.Tesco's share price has dropped a staggering 45% since the start of 2014, but the downwards momentum has eased in recent weeks.Investors "still seem confident in the supermarket chain's potential for recovery", according to John Tracey, head of TD Direct Investing Europe, who pointed out that Tesco has been the most-bought UK share by TD Direct Investing's investors for three of the past four weeks.To take note of, US tech giants Microsoft and Amazon.com are due to release their latest quarterly earnings after the close of trading.As if that weren't enough, top of the list on tomorrow's macroeconomic agenda will be the latest Eurozone manufacturing sector purchasing managers' indices (PMI), courtesy of survey compiler. Not to be outdone, previously on Thursday morning HSBC will serve up the latest China 'flash' manufacturing sector PMI.UK retail sales data will be released at 09:30 by ONS.Thursday October 23INTERIMS Bloomsbury Publishing, Stobart Group Ltd., Tesco INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE Interserve, JQW, Morgan Sindall Group, Netplay TV, Premier Farnell INTERIM EX-DIVIDEND DATE BAE Systems, China Chaintek United Co. Limited, Goals Soccer Centres, Hansteen Holdings, Harvey Nash Group, Howden Joinery Group, Intu Properties, Marshalls, Menzies(John), Octopus VCT , Rolls-Royce Holdings, Rotala, Senior, Smith & Nephew, Tullett Prebon, William Hill QUARTERLY EX-DIVIDEND DATE Assura Group Ltd., City of London Inv Trust INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS Consumer Confidence Indicator (EU) (10:00) Continuing Claims (US) (13:30) House Price Index (US) (15:00) Initial Jobless Claims (US) (13:30) Leading Indicators (US) (15:00) Q3 Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Torchmark Corp., Unilever, AFrican Barrick Gold, FINALS Debenhams, Volution Group (WI), Hochschild Mining IMSS COLT Group SA, Inchcape, Ladbrokes, National Express Group, Phoenix Group Holdings (DI), Premier Foods, SEGRO, SVG Capital DRILLING REPORT Anglo American SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE JQW SPECIAL EX-DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE Aeorema Communications, Octopus Titan VCT 4, Octopus Titan VCT 5, Thorpe (F.W.) AGMS Argos Resources Ltd. (DI), BHP Billiton, CAP-XX Ltd., Photo-Me International, River and Mercantile Group , Rosslyn Data Technologies TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS Britvic UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS BBA Mortgage Lending Figures (09:30) CBI Industrial Trends Surveys (11:00) Internet Retail Sales (09:30) Retail Sales (09:30) FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE Derwent London, Oxford Instruments FINAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE Aeorema Communications, Animalcare Group, Edge Performance VCT 'F' Shares, Edge Performance VCT 'I' Shares, Edge Performance VCT G Shares, Hargreaves Services, Haynes Publishing Group, Ideagen, IG Group Holdings, ISG, JPMorgan Emerging Markets Inv Trust, Mcbride, Penna Consulting, Ricardo, Smiths Group, Thorpe (F.W.), Wetherspoon (J.D.)