PageGroup profits slump, Endeavour Mining reports strong year
By Josh White
Date: Thursday 06 Mar 2025
(Sharecast News) - London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 56 points higher on Thursday, having closed down 0.04% on Wednesday at 8,755.84.
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Annual profits at recruiting firm PageGroup slumped in 2024 as economic uncertainty continued to hit client and candidate confidence. Pre-tax profit for the year to December fell 58% to £49.1m on revenue of £1.73bn, down 13.5%. Page said the conversion of interviews to accepted offers "remains the most significant area of challenge", adding that the slow end to 2024 had continued into the first two months of the new year.
Endeavour Mining reported a strong 2024 on Thursday, with record fourth-quarter free cash flow of $268m and full-year production of 1,103,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,218 per ounce. Adjusted EBITDA jumped to $1.325bn for the year, up from $1.047bn, while net debt was reduced to $732m, bringing the leverage ratio to 0.55x. Shareholder returns reached $277m, including a record $240m dividend, as the company expanded reserves by 32% to 18.4 million ounces and advanced its Assafou project.
Newspaper round-up
An environmental group is to take legal action against Ofwat, the water regulator, accusing it of unlawfully making customers pay for decades of neglect by the water industry. River Action will file the legal claim this month, arguing that bill rises for customers that have been approved by the regulator could be used to fix infrastructure failures that should have been addressed years ago. - Guardian
The Barclays chair Nigel Higgins's assurances that Jes Staley had "no particular relationship" with Jeffrey Epstein, days after the child sex offender's death in 2019, convinced the City regulator that there was no reason to investigate the bank's chief executive, a court has heard. Jonathan Davidson, a former director of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), made the comments during a hearing of Staley's legal challenge against the UK regulator on Wednesday. - Guardian
Workers could face a £10bn stealth raid on income tax this month as Rachel Reeves risks breaking her borrowing rules, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned. The Chancellor "has engineered a trap for herself" by leaving dangerously little room to hit the fiscal targets which she wrote in October, economists at the think tank said. - Telegraph
The Barclay family's online shopping empire is facing mounting pressure from its debt pile as sales slide, a leading credit rating agency has warned. Fitch Ratings has cut The Very Group's credit rating and put it on a negative watch, meaning it is liable for further downgrades. The retailer's CCC+ rating puts it deeper into junk bond territory, making it costlier for the group to borrow. - Telegraph
Severe cost pressures "piling up on businesses" have led the British Chambers of Commerce to downgrade forecasts for economic growth, as companies face a "long and challenging year". The lobby group's quarterly economic forecast is for the economy to grow by 0.9 per cent this year, down from a previous expectation of 1.3 per cent, with the "limited growth" driven largely by increased government spending. - The Times
US close
Major indices closed higher on Wednesday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US might meet Canada and Mexico "in the middle" to "work something out" on tariffs.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.14% at 43,006.59, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.12% to 5,842.63 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.46% firmer at 18,552.73.
The Dow closed 485.860 points higher on Wednesday, reclaiming much of the previous session's losses.
In addition to ongoing worries about Donald Trump's trade war, extremely strained relations between Ukraine and the US were also in focus on Wednesday, with tensions appearing to be easing after Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to sign a deal on the country's minerals with Washington, prompting an aide to Donald Trump to suggest that aid could be restored to the war-torn country.
After an extraordinary fracas in the White House last Friday, which saw Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance shout at the Ukrainian leader, a letter from Kyiv stated that Zelenskyy was "ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer".
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