Rightmove hikes customer growth forecast, Bytes appoints permanent CEO
By Josh White
Date: Friday 10 May 2024
(Sharecast News) - London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 24 points higher on Friday, having closed up 0.33% on Thursday at 8,381.35.
Stocks to watch
Property portal Rightmove has reiterated its revenue and profit guidance for the full year, but upgraded its customer growth expectations after a strong start to the year. The company now expects customer numbers to grow by up to 2% over 2024, compared with previous guidance of a slight decrease. However, average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) growth has been cut to £75-85 from last year's £1,431, down from prior expectations of a £100-110 increase, due to strong growth lettings-only estate agency customers, who typically have a lower ARPA.
Bytes Technology Group announced the appointment of Sam Mudd as its chief executive officer on Friday. Mudd, with over two decades of leadership experience, had been serving as an executive director since July last year, and s interim CEO since February. Previously the managing director of Phoenix Software, acquired by BTG in 2017, Mudd's tenure there saw significant organic growth, following senior roles at WordPerfect, Novell, and Trustmarque Solutions.
British Airways owner IAG said it was "well positioned" for the summer after posting a huge rise in first quarter profit on the back of strong leisure travel demand, especially over the Easter holidays. Operating profit before exceptional items in the three months to March 31 surged to €68m from €9m a year earlier. Passenger capacity grew 7% over the period. "Our transformation initiatives and increased demand, including over the Easter holidays, have delivered another very good set of results with improvements to both revenue and operating profit," said chief executive Luis Gallego.
Newspaper round-up
Members of a steelworkers' union have voted to take industrial action in protest at planned job losses at Tata. The company last month rejected a plan by unions to keep open a blast furnace at the Port Talbot steelworks, ending hopes of avoiding as many as 2,800 job losses. - Guardian
A barrister who advised the Post Office to stop prosecuting branch owner-operators told a public inquiry he was "now sure" that the state-owned company "must have deceived" him because it failed to provide him with "highly relevant material". Simon Clarke, who worked for the law firm Cartwright King when it was advising the Post Office, was being questioned on Thursday as part of the judge-led hearings looking into the Horizon IT scandal. - Guardian
John Lewis has shed 3,800 jobs over the past year, as it races to cut costs across its stores. New filings reveal the number of staff working for the John Lewis Partnership, which runs department stores and Waitrose supermarkets, dropped to 70,500 at the end of January, compared to 74,300 a year earlier. This coincided with the company saving around £26m in employment costs over the year. - Telegraph
KPMG missed multiple red flags in the run-up to the 2018 collapse of Carillion, with auditors at the Big Four firm joking to each other that their work was "more Mills & Boon than Shakespeare", a report by the City watchdog has concluded. The Financial Reporting Council hit the company with a record £21 million fine last October for what it called "textbook" failures when signing off the construction and facilities outsourcer's accounts. - The Times
Thousands of international travellers who used to visit the UK for VAT-free shopping have turned to luxury retailers in Paris and Milan after the British government scrapped the tax incentive in 2021. New research has found that 162,000 visitors from non-EU countries sought VAT refunds in the UK in 2019. Now 20 per cent of those tourists are claiming tax rebates in EU countries which still have shopping schemes. - The Times
US close
Wall Street saw gains in its major indices as the closing bell rang on Thursday, with investors closely monitoring the latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed by 0.85%, closing at 39,387.76, while the S&P 500 posted gains of 0.51% to reach 5,214.08, and the Nasdaq Composite managed a more modest increase of 0.27% to 16,346.26.
In currency markets, the dollar was last down 0.2% on sterling to trade at 79.85p, while it slipped 0.32% against the common currency to 92.74 euro cents.
Against the Japanese yen, the greenback dipped marginally, down 0.05% to last change hands at JPY 155.46.
In economic news, the Department of Labor indeed revealed that Americans filed for unemployment benefits at a brisk pace in the week ended 4 May, reaching a nine-month high.
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