FTSE earnings to the fore

A mixed set of results and trading updates is lifting the FTSE on increasing signs that businesses and different regions are going back to some form of their previous lives. A clear sign of that is that airlines are getting ready to take back to the skies. Ireland’s Ryanair, which has kept a skeleton schedule of 30 flights a day across Europe throughout the crisis, said Tuesday it will restart 40% of its flights from 1 July although new rules will mean that passengers will not be able to queue for the toilets but instead ask for their turn.  

Vodafone is leading the FTSE gainers after it posted better than expected full-year profit numbers while Morrisons is also gaining ground following a Q1 trading update. The supermarket’s sales increased nearly 6% over the last three months although some of its outgoings rose too as it doubled its delivery capacity through cooperation with Amazon and Deliveroo.

Is there life coming back into retail stocks?

B&Q owner Kingfisher is also trading higher helped by a 2.7% increase in sales in the first week of May compared with a 74% fall in April. The company is getting ready to bring back some of its furloughed work force as it reopens stores in the UK and France.

Property developer Land Securities lost the most ground among all FTSE 100 stocks after it reported a pre-tax loss of $1 billion. Land Securities’ main exposure is to retail property and shopping centres like Bluewater. The group has been bleeding money while shops remained closed during the pandemic and because tenants have been defaulting on their rents.