Fool's Eye View

[ December 1, 2000 ]

Reporting Next Week

By Rob Davies

Carburton Street, London -- On Monday the long-awaited flotation of the Bradford & Bingley takes place. The company has said that 38.5% of its members have opted to dump their allocation of 250 shares straight away. The total value of the 250 shares is expected to be approximately £700.

According to some we might get final results from Lastminute.com (LSE: LMC) on Monday. They should make interesting, although time-consuming, reading, as Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman seem to excel at the art of spinning awful data into good news. In the current market traders won't be taking prisoners, but the saving grace for the company is that retail investors only got 35 shares each at the IPO and at today's price of 73.5p the commission on selling will almost equate to their value of £25.72. So they won't sell.

Tuesday will be more interesting. Results from Carlton (LSE: CCM), the TV group, should show an increase in earnings per share from last year. Anything close to 30p on normalised earnings will be good, but exceptional charges for its failed merger will make a big dent in the net profit. As TMF Eagle pointed out in his article on Granada Media (LSE: GME) the key feature for this industry is the upcoming white paper on communications. Since the last Act in 1990 BSkyB (LSE: BSY) has won a market share matching ITV's and the Internet has come from nowhere to become a powerful new medium. How all this will interact in the future is the stuff of Civil Service nightmares.

More mundane, but safer for investors, will be interim results from Halma (LSE: HLMA), the low profile but reassuringly profitable engineer. Last year the company made 1.8p per share, although the figure rises to 3.9p before exceptional items and amortisation of goodwill. Sales in the US account for 30% of revenue so the strong dollar should provide a following wind as well.

In the same category of "old economy" is Scottish & Newcastle (LSE: SCTN). It will present interim figures and hopefully news of progress on plans to sell some of its pubs. The balance sheet will be flush with cash after netting £670m from the sale of its Center Parcs leisure division. Figures from troubled travel company Stagecoach (LSE: SGC) might be less inspiring.

Wednesday brings annual figures from Rolls-Royce (LSE: RR.). Expect the market to be more interested in its outlook for the future than the historic data. On the same day software company Sage (LSE: SGE) gets the opportunity to spook the market when it releases its final figures. In the last few weeks other software companies have been bringing expectations of future profits downwards: will it do the same?

What Next?

• AFX Forward Diary of Events