Tuesday preview: Whitbread, ARM, US jobs report

21st Oct 2013 15:44

Earnings from Whitbread and ARM Holdings will be in focus on Tuesday morning, though the all-important US non-farm payrolls will likely garner the most attention on the markets in afternoon trade.As a backlog of US data begins to unwind following the US government shutdown, all eyes will be on delayed release of the September jobs report. However, the fact that the data is now two weeks old means that it will likely carry less weight than usual. Nevertheless, consensus forecasts are pointing to a 180,000 increase in US non-farm payrolls last month, higher than the 169,000 gain seen in August, while the unemployment rate is expected to have remained unchanged at 7.3%.Markets are hoping that the prolonged shutdown could prompt the Federal Reserve to put off tapering its stimulus programme until next year, given that the closure is likely to have weighed on growth in the fourth quarter.Matt Basi, Head of UK Sales Trading at CMC Markets, said: "All but the most hawkish commentators have almost entirely priced out any prospect of Fed tapering in 2013, taking the edge off US data announcements to an extent."On the company front, Costa and Premier Inn owner Whitbread is to report its interim results on Tuesday and analysts at Panmure Gordon are looking for a 9% increase in first-half pre-tax profit to £211m, equal to earnings of 89.9p per share, assuming revenue growth of 12%.The Costa and Premier Inn owner reported last month that like-for-like sales grew by 2.1% in the 11 weeks to August 15th. However, Panmure pointed out that the hotel division's 2.5% revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth in the UK - UK hotels account for around 85% of the group's rooms - underperformed the peer group which saw RevPAR increase by 6.4%."Looking ahead, we believe consensus is too optimistic on RevPAR growth at Premier Inn given the increasingly strong performance from Travelodge and Accor (Ibis)," it said.Meanwhile, chip designer ARM Holdings will update the market on its performance in the third quarter. Andrew McGeary from Northland Capital Partners said that the stock had benefited last week from the news that rival Intel had pushed back the launch of Broadwell, its latest attempt to break ARM's dominance in the low-power processor market. "We will be looking for an update on ARM's own attempts to expand into Intel's core markets. Tuesday October 22ndINTERIMSB.P. Marsh & Partners, Development Securities, WhitbreadINTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTSWholesale Price Index (GER) (07:00)Employment situation for September (US) (13:30)Q3ARM Holdings, Eurasia Drilling Co Ltd GDR (Reg S), Telekomunikacja Polska S.A GDR (Reg S)FINALSAvia Health Informatics, EpiStem Holdings, Spirit Pub CompanyEGMSJSC KazMunaiGaz Exploration Production GDR (Reg S)AGMSAberforth Geared Income Trust, Diverse Income Trust (The)UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTSPublic Sector Finances (09:30)Speech from BoE's Bean (09:10)FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATEIG Group HoldingsBC