Proactive Investors -
- FTSE 100 falls 51 points to 8,241
- BP (LON:BP) and Standard Chartered (LON:STAN) profits and returns impress
- Diageo (LON:DGE) and Sage Group (LON:SGE) results disappoint
Greggs serves up warm numbers
Another company helping feed the FTSE 250's gains is Greggs PLC (LON:GRG), up 5% to a two-year high after reporting interim results that were slightly ahead of average City estimates, including an 19% dividend hike.
The pastie baker's results showed like-for-like sales up 7.4%, which matched the rate reported in the first 19 weeks of the year.
Directors increased the interim dividend to 19.0p per share as first-half sales rose 13.8% to £960.6 million and underlying profit before tax jumped 16.3% to £74.1 million.
The FTSE 250 is now up 186 points or 0.9%.
Retail prices depressed
Earlier, the retail sector released its monthly inflation update, showing that the past month had seen little change overall.
Annual shop price inflation remained at 0.2% in July, according to the BRC-NielsenIQ Shop Price Index, as non-food prices remained in deflation, with an annual rate of -0.9% in July, while food inflation softened to 2.3% in July from 2.5%.
British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson said clothing and footwear prices fell for the seventh consecutive month "amidst persistent weak demand" and the prices of books fell.
"The 2023 declines in global food commodity prices continued to feed through, helping bring down food inflation rates over the first seven months of 2024," she said.
"However this shows signs of reversing, suggesting renewed pressure on food prices in the future."
NielsenIQ's head of retailer and business insight, Mike Watkins, added that lower levels of shop price inflation can be expected "for a number of months to come".
"But with the squeeze on household finances continuing, consumer confidence only slowly improving, and poor summer weather so far, retailers will still need to keep any price increases to a minimum to encourage shoppers to spend."
FTSE 100 down, 250 up
The FTSE 100 has continued lower but the mid-cap FTSE 250 has climbed out of the red.
Dragged down by falls for Diageo, Sage and Croda, London's blue-chip index is down 0.5% but the FTSE 250 is up 0.15%.
This is largely due to a 20% jump for St James's Place PLC (LSE:STJ), where interim results impressed.
These showed underlying cash profits little changed from last year at £205 million, but well ahead of the consensus forecast of £195 million as inflows of £1.9 billion were better than expected.