The Week Ahead: Tui losses set to rise after French shun North Africa

 

Today

 

Those still in the holiday mood after the long weekend will have interim results from Tui Travel to pore over today. After the tour operator said in March it was doing better than its rivals in the UK, Jefferies is not expecting many surprises and predicts that first-half losses will have increased to £347m from £307m the previous year. This, say the broker's scribblers, will be mainly because of poor demand from France for holidays in North Africa. They believe Tui's bosses should reveal an update on how they are dealing with this.

HSBC brings the run of results from the UK banks to a close on Tuesday. Citigroup is expecting the Square Mile to be impressed, forecasting a pre-tax profit for the first quarter of $6.1bn (£3.8bn) which would be a year-on-year increase of 25 per cent. Analysts from the broker believe HSBC's investment banking business will have managed a strong performance, while they also predict that bad debts at its US operations will continue to show an improvement.

Results/Updates: Hiscox, HSBC, Morgan Crucible, Telecity and Tui Travel.

Tomorrow

At the same time as holding its annual general meeting, ITV will be unveiling its first-quarter interim management statement on Wednesday. The update will come ahead of what should be a great advertising summer for the broadcaster, with the London Olympics, Euro 2012 and the Queen's Jubilee all coming up. Goldman Sachs' scribes expect the update to "confirm a strong second-quarter advertising outlook of around 7 per cent [growth]".

The mood around Sainsbury's recently has been in stark contrast to Tesco, with the grocer continuing to take market share from its rival. Having reported its fourth-quarter sales figures in March, Wednesday sees the group announce its final results. UBS's Mike Tattersall is expecting pre-tax profits for the year to have risen 6 per cent to £705m. This, he says, would be "a creditable achievement" given the headwinds facing the supermarkets and would represent an "outperformance of most key competitors".

Results/Updates: Balfour Beatty, Carphone Warehouse, CRH, easyJet, F&C Asset Management, Galliford Try, Glencore International, Inmarsat, InterContinental Hotels, ITV, J Sainsbury, Resolution, Sage and United Drug.

Thursday

Morgan Stanley's Simone Porter-Smith is bullish ahead of Experian's preliminary results. The analyst believes the credit scoring group's organic revenue growth will have risen over the final quarter of the year to just under 8 per cent, while she also thinks there is a chance her estimates may prove too conservative following recent positive comments from rival Equifax.

In addition, Ms Porter-Smith points out investors could be in line for a share buyback, suggesting Experian could return around $1bn while buying out the rest of the Brazilian business Serasa it does not already own and still be within its leverage target range.

There has been much talk about the potential for BT to hike its dividend ever since the telecoms giant revealed a new deal to take on its huge pensions deficit back in March. While Deutsche Bank's Robert Grindle is less bullish than most ahead of Thursday's full-year results, predicting a final dividend of 5.5p, he notes that the group "can certainly afford to pay more".

After April's profit warning – blamed partly on getting its sums wrong – which saw the retailer's share price lose close to 40 per cent in one session, SuperGroup will be hoping it can tempt back some investors with its trading statement on Thursday. Last month the firm said it expected pre-tax profits for the full year of £43m. Numis Securities' Andrew Wade believes this new target will be met, adding that he will "primarily be looking for clarity" on the like-for-like performance of its retail unit.

Results/Updates: Barratt Developments, Beazley, BT, Bumi, Dixons Retail, Eurasian Natural Resources, Experian, Hansard, Inchcape, London Mining, Old Mutual, Rank Group, Rathbones, SuperGroup, Tissue Regenix, Trinity Mirror, Tullet Prebon and Wood Group.

Friday

International Airlines Group is expected by Credit Suisse to reveal on Friday that it suffered an operating loss of €239m over the first quarter, with the broker's analysts pinning most of the blame on its spiralling fuel bill. They also believe the British Airways owner will have suffered a €30m hit from strikes at its Iberia unit, noting that these are set to continue over the next few months at a cost of €3m for each day of disruption.

Results/Updates: Catlin, Centrica,International Airlines Group, Logica and Petrofac.

Economics Diary

TODAY British Retail Consortium shop price index; US Federal budget balance.

TOMORROW Consortium retail sales monitor.

THURSDAY Bank of England asset purchase facility; Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee interest rate announcement; European Central Bank monthly bulletin; Industrial production; Manufacturing production; NIESR GDP estimate; Trade balance; US import prices;US trade balance; US unemployment claims.

FRIDAY Producer price index data; US producer price index data;US University of Michigan consumer sentiment (preliminary).

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