Proactive Investors – There’s a few bits of FTSE 350 company news this morning, including a trading update from publisher Future PLC (LON:FUTR), which reports a return to organic revenue growth in the past quarter and that it is “on track” to meet full year expectations.
A strong performance from its Go.Compare price comparison site has been key to the progress, as has a “resilient” performance from magazines, where the group’s brands range from Marie Claire and The Week to Tech Radar and Guitar World.
More challenging has been the market for digital advertising and affiliate products, which the company put down to the effects of “macroeconomic pressures and low visibility” continuing to impact the wider sector, though US direct advertising has been stronger.
Website user numbers have continued to see “broad” stabilisation in the second quarter but remained down year-on-year.
Future said it remains “highly cash generative” with cash conversion strong in the first half.
The FTSE 100 is anticipated to crawl higher on Thursday, after battling back from losses yesterday and a mixed close on Wall Street overnight.
After topping 8,000 earlier in the week London’s top equity benchmark tumbled over 115 points, and was down over 50 points yesterday before fighting back into the green by the close at 7,937.44.
Today it is seen rising 7.5 points, according to spread-betting platforms.
Overnight, US stocks mostly finished below their best levels, with the Dow Jones dipping 0.1% but the S&P 500 inching up 0.1% and the Nasdaq 0.2% higher, with most of the tech megacaps in positive territory, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) being the exceptions.
“Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell reiterated yesterday that the Fed is not in a rush to cut rates but that it will cut sometime this year and that the recent jump in inflation didn’t ‘materially’ change their policy outlook. The latter was enough to send the market higher with joy,” said market analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya at Swissquote Bank.
In addition, Powell reiterated that if “the economy evolves broadly as we expect, most FOMC participants see it as likely to be appropriate to begin lowering the policy rate at some point this year.”
Analysts said that helped to validate market pricing, which still expects 71 basis points of rate cuts from the Fed by the end of the year.
Back in the UK, this morning we will have services PMI data, which will also give a reading on inflation on this key sector.
There’s also euro factory gate inflation, US weekly initial jobless claims and the February trade balance.
Central bank speakers include the Fed’s Harker, Barkin, Goolsbee, Mester, Kashkari, Musalem and Kugler. And the ECB’s account of their March meeting.
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