Stocks to watch
Consumer goods company Unilever (LON:ULVR) said on Thursday that underlying sales had grown in the third quarter, leading the group to raise its full-year sales guidance.
Unilever stated underlying sales were up 10.6% over the three months ended 30 September and 8.9% year-to-date. As a result, the FTSE 100-listed group now expects underlying sales growth for the full year to be above 8% as it warned of "more negative underlying volume growth" than seen in the first nine months.
UK bank Lloyds (LON:LLOY) lifted net income guidance on Thursday despite a fall in third-quarter profit and rising bad loan charges.
Lloyds now expects net interest margin, a key measure of the difference between lending and savings rates, to be above 2.90% - compared with 2.84% in the year-to-date. Pre-tax profit fell 26% to £1.5bn, while net income rose 12% to £13.0bn on the back of surging interest rates.
Newspaper round-up
Shares of Meta plummeted on Wednesday after the company announced mixed results in its third-quarter earnings report, alongside billion-dollar losses in the division devoted to its ambitious "metaverse" project. The Facebook (NASDAQ:META) parent company beat analyst predictions for revenue but offered a weak forecast for the upcoming quarter. It posted $27.7bn in revenue for the third quarter, higher than the $27.4bn predicted but 4% less than the same period last year. Its earnings a share, which accounts for expenses, was $1.64 – lower than the $1.89 predicted. – Guardian
Britain's plan to become a post-Brexit "science and technology superpower" has suffered a significant setback after a fall in research and development investment of almost a fifth since 2014, according to a report. The Institute for Public Policy Research said the UK's share of global investment in R&D projects – including in health and life sciences – had fallen sharply from 4.2% eight years ago to 3.4% in 2019 immediately before the Covid pandemic struck. – Guardian
Net zero restrictions on oil drilling are tightening Saudi Arabia's grip over the global market for crude and will deepen tensions with the West, the International Energy Agency has warned. Green rules which limit new oil fields mean that the Saudi-led OPEC cartel will come to control 52% of the market, the agency said, compared to just over a third now. – Telegraph
Elon Musk last night signalled his intention to complete a $44.0bn takeover of Twitter by posting a video on the social media platform of him carrying a kitchen sink into its San Francisco headquarters. The world's richest man, who also heads Tesla, the electric car company, and SpaceX, the spacecraft and satellite operator, must complete the deal to buy the the micro-blogging site for $54.20 per share before a court deadline tomorrow. – The Times
Boeing (NYSE:BA)'s struggling defence division blew a $2.8bn hole in its parent company's bottom line in the last quarter as it faced higher production costs and technical issues. The American aircraft maker moved to reassure investors yesterday that it would end the year with positive cashflow, despite widening losses this summer. Nevertheless, shares in Boeing fell by 8.8%, or $12.86, to close at $133.79 on Wall Street last night. – The Times
US close
Trading finished mostly below the waterline in the US on Wednesday, after weaker-than-expected third-quarter earnings from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) weighed on sentiment.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.01% at 31,839.11, while the S&P 500 lost 0.74% to 3,830.60 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 2.04% weaker at 10,970.99.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com