Monday 19 February
- Full-year results from MoneySuperMarket
- Rightmove UK house price index
- In Australia, quarterly results from BHP
Tuesday 20 February
- Full-year results from Antofagasta and InterContinental Hotels
- Chinese one- and five- year interest rate decisions
- In Asia, quarterly results from Singapore Airlines
- In Europe, quarterly results from Air Liquide, Fresenius Medical Care and Carrefour
- In the US, quarterly results from Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Palo Alto Networks, Medtronic, CoStar, Toll Brothers, Caesars Entertainment and Valaris
- Barclays full year results
Barclays will present its full year results on Tuesday 20 February, with shares down almost 20% over the past year in a period where the FTSE all-share banks index has dropped 10%.
The fall, which put shares at Barclays 80% below their 2007 peak, is due to less risk following the financial crisis, tighter regulation, shaky performance from its investment bank, and record-low interest rates, according to Russ Mould, AJ Bell investment director, Danni Hewson, AJ Bell head of financial analysis, and Dan Coatsworth, AJ Bell investment analyst.
“However, 2023 was actually a pretty good year at Barclays, in that there were no major scandals to force compensation payments, net interest margins rose early in the year after a series of interest rate rises from central banks and the long-feared recession did not arrive, so there was no major increase in bad loans,” the team said.
“The bank is therefore expected to earn £6.7 billion pre-tax, only a fraction less than it earned in the go-go glory days of 2006 and 2007.”
For the fourth quarter, Barclays is projected to record a pre-tax profit of £238m, due to an estimated £825m restructuring plan weighing down the quarter. In the final quarter of 2022, Barclays recorded £1.3bn in pre-tax profit.
Analysts will pay attention to loan deposit and growth, interest margins, and loan and asset impairments as results are released.
“Then all eyes will switch to the investment bank. Barclays fought off calls from Edward Bramson and Sherborne Investors to spin off the unit and rebutted suggestions it did not earn a consistently high enough return on equity to justify the amount of group capital allocated to it,” Mould, Hewson, and Coatsworth said.
“A bumper first quarter in 2023 helped to support Barclays’ strategy but the investment bank’s performance has ebbed since then. The final three months tend to be seasonally weak, but consensus is looking for pre-tax income of just £475 million, down from £560 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, although this unit will presumably take its share of the group-wide restructuring costs.”
Wednesday 21 February
- Full-year results from HSBC, Rio Tinto, BAE Systems and Glencore
- First-half results from Springfield Properties
- UK government borrowing
- EU consumer confidence
- In Europe, quarterly results from Wolters Kluwer, Tenaris and Fresenius
- In the US, quarterly results from eBay, Rivian, Marathon Oil, Bausch & Lomb and Mosaic
NVIDIA, the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 over the past year, will release its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday in a year where the AI boom boosted the stock over 200%.
“NVIDIA has had a stunning year in other ways. The company demolished analysts’ forecasts for sales and profits for its first, second and third quarters and its chief executive Jensen Huang set an even higher bar for the final period of the year as he guided toward further sequential improvement in both the top and the bottom line,” the AJ Bell team said.
“It is against that guidance that these fourth-quarter figures will be benchmarked, while analysts will also look for any steer on what the first quarter and new fiscal year may look like.”
While last year’s fourth-quarter sales hit $6.1bn, this year’s quarter sales are forecasted at $20bn. Net profit also shows a sizeable difference from fourth quarter of last fiscal year, with $1.4bn to this year’s projected $11.1bn.
“The AI hype-train is not only rolling but delivering, as far as NVIDIA is concerned. Momentum investors seem happy to pile in, although value seekers are likely to be more reticent, given the lofty valuation which leaves little room for error,” Mould, Hewson, and Coatsworth said.
“Bears have little to chew upon, barring a meteoric share price rise, a premium valuation (some 40 times forward earnings compared to 21 times for the S&P 500, according to research from S&P Global and Capital IQ) and seemingly universal enthusiasm for the stock. They only thing that may offer cynics some scope to cavil is a jump in trade receivables, as this implies that NVIDIA booked revenues on chips which it had shipped but for which it had not been paid.”
Thursday 22 February
- Full-year results from Lloyds Banking, Rolls-Royce, Anglo American, WPP, Hikma Pharmaceuticals, Morgan Sindall and Indivior
- Trading update from Tate & Lyle
- Flash purchasing managers indices from Japan, Asia, the EU, UK and US
- EU inflation
- Belgian Courbe Synthetique economic survey
- US oil inventories
- US existing homes sales
- US weekly initial unemployment claims
- In Asia, quarterly results from Lenovo
- In Europe, quarterly results from Nestlé, Mercedes-Benz, Axa, Zurich, Iberdrola, Danone, Telefonica, Repsol, BESI and Accor
- In the US, quarterly results from Nu, Keurig-Dr Pepper, Newmont, Moderna, Hormel, Norwegian Cruise, Carvana and Beyond Meat
Friday 23 February
- Full-year results from Standard Chartered and Mondi
- GfK UK consumer confidence
- German Ifo economic survey
- In Europe, quarterly results from Deutsche Telekom, Allianz and BASF
- In the US, quarterly results from Warner Bros. Discovery and AngloGold Ashanti
