Cranswick in profit alert after pork price increase July 26, 2011 CRANSWICK, the sliced meat and sausage maker, has been forced to warn it will miss profit forecasts this year after a rise in pork prices. During the first half of the year pig prices have increased from £1.33 per kg to £1.53 per kg, an increase of 15 per cent. Analysts have knocked between £6m [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS July 24, 2011 BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO Ahead of first-half results on 27 July, Citi rates the tobacco group as a “hold”, and lifts its target price from 2800p to 2890p. The broker also lifts its forecasts three per cent above consensus having upped its estimates for Asia to take into account a boost in the Japanese market, following [...]
Pepsi warns on US demand and cost inflation July 21, 2011 US food and drink maker PepsiCo scaled back its full-year earnings forecasts on ongoing economic uncertainty yesterday. Pepsi said performance in its North American drinks business was worse than expected, due to weakened consumer demand and intensifying competition, which has made it difficult to raise prices to offset soaring commodity costs. “Of the three factors [...]
Public spending still over half of GDP July 21, 2011 ED Miliband should be happy: Britain officially remains a state-dominated economy. For all the talk of “swingeing” cuts, public spending is set to remain at 50.1 per cent of GDP in 2011, according to the latest OECD predictions. This is an astonishing figure: more than half the economy, which by one definition means that the [...]
Public spending still over half of GDP July 20, 2011 ED Miliband should be happy: Britain officially remains a state-dominated economy. For all the talk of “swingeing” cuts, public spending is set to remain at 50.1 per cent of GDP in 2011, according to the latest OECD predictions. This is an astonishing figure: more than half the economy, which by one definition means that the [...]
Bank minutes show no sign of a rate hike July 20, 2011 DESPITE warning of even higher than expected inflation to come, the Bank of England appears increasingly reluctant to raise interest rates. Minutes of the Bank’s July meeting, released yesterday, suggest that bearish economic news has pushed the rate-setting committee even further from the first step in normalising rates. “Recent developments had reduced the likelihood that [...]
MPC says near term rate rise unlikely July 20, 2011 The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee judged that recent economic weakness had reduced the chance that interest rates would need to rise in the near term, minutes to the Bank’s July meeting showed. Committee members voted 7-2 to keep rates at 0.5 per cent, as they did in June. Bank chief economist Spencer Dale [...]
US inflation pressure high and industry weak July 15, 2011 US consumer prices fell slightly more than expected in June on weak fuel costs, but underlying inflation pressures remain high, new data shows. The US consumer price index fell 0.2 per cent, the Labor Department has said, the largest drop since June 2010, after rising 0.2 per cent in May. Economists had expected prices to [...]
Early summer sales tame UK inflation July 12, 2011 EARLY summer sales in British stores saw consumer price inflation tamed down to 4.2 per cent in June, yet analysts still expect the index to rise above five per cent in the coming months. “With surplus stock to shift, this year’s summer sales appear to have started relatively early, and perhaps with bigger price cuts [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS July 12, 2011 BRITVIC RBS rates the soft drinks maker a “buy” with a £5 target price as it believes Britvic has now hedged against 95 per cent of its input cost inflation – expected to be 9-11 per cent in the UK this year – leaving it protected against further shocks. RBS expects third-quarter trading to be [...]