Aston-Martin Lagonda Q3 losses widen, Next Q3 sales beat forecasts
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Wednesday 29 Oct 2025
(Sharecast News) - LONDON PRE-OPEN
The FTSE 100 was expected to open 13.6 points higher ahead of the bell on Wednesday, after wrapping up the previous session 0.44% higher at 9,696.74.
STOCKS TO WATCH
Luxury car maker Aston Martin Lagonda posted a third-quarter loss of £112m on Wednesday, driven by lower-than-expected wholesale volumes as a result of US tariffs. Aston Martin said its pre-tax loss for the three months ended 30 September compared with a loss of £12.2m a year ago. Total wholesale volumes fell 13% to 1,430 vehicles as reported three weeks ago when it issued a profit warning.
Retailer Next said on Wednesday that full price sales had risen 10.5% year-on-year in the thirteen weeks ended 25 October, ahead of guidance for a more modest 4.5% increase. UK sales were up 5.4%, lower than the 7.6% growth achieved in the first half, while overseas sales rose 38.8%, ahead of 28.1% in H1. As a result of its improved third-quarter sales performance, along with improved sales guidance for Q4, Next increased its full year pre-tax profit guidance by £30m to £1,135m.
NEWSPAPER ROUND-UP
Donald Trump landed in South Korea on Wednesday to meet President Lee Jae Myung, with deadlocked talks over a $350bn trade deal between the two countries threatening to cast a shadow over the event. After arriving on a flight from Tokyo, where he signed a rare earths deal with Japan's new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, the US president addressed a summit of CEOs ahead of a meeting with Lee in the town of Gyeongju, a historical city playing host to the annual Apec summit. - Guardian
Rachel Reeves has hired an economist from a Left-leaning think tank who said Brexit made the UK worse off. The Chancellor has bolstered her team of advisers by appointing Emily Fry, an economist focused on trade, who has several times described Brexit as an economic shock that damaged the UK's prosperity. - Telegraph
Google has been accused of promoting fake pension news to Britons after showing spam websites with misleading information at the top of its news feeds. Online stories falsely claiming that Labour is changing the pension age and that 62-year-olds will have to renew their driving licences have been among the most popular news articles on Google's Discover service in recent weeks. - Telegraph
OpenAI has finalised a restructuring plan with its external shareholder Microsoft that values the ChatGPT maker at $500bn and clears the way for it to become a for-profit business. Under the deal OpenAI, which was founded as a research-focused non-profit business in 2015, will take on a more investor-friendly structure to allow it to raise capital. A non-profit called the OpenAI Foundation will hold equity in the company's for-profit arm. - The Times
The United States has announced an $80bn plan to build a fleet of nuclear power plants for less than two thirds of the cost per gigawatt of Britain's Sizewell C project. About eight of Westinghouse's one gigawatt AP1000 reactors are to be built across America, under a partnership between the US government and the reactor-maker's owners, Brookfield and Cameco, to accelerate nuclear power deployment. - The Times
US CLOSE
Major indices closed higher on Tuesday as market participants digested more solid quarterly earnings reports.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.34% at 47,706.37, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.23% to 6,890.89, and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.80% firmer at 23,872.49.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com
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