The Week Ahead: Glencore, Barclays, Greggs
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Version 0 of 1. Glencore will reveal the damage the commodities crisis inflicted on it last year in tomorrow’s annual results. The embattled trader-cum-miner is expected to swing to a $400m (£288m) loss from a $2.3bn profit in 2014 as the metals price slump continues to put pressure on the company – the second-worst performer on the FTSE 100 last year. Profits from the trading arm – the original Glencore business which is more immune to fluctuations in commodities prices – are expected to limit the damage from a mining division which could be heavily in the red. Investors’ faith in Glencore began to unravel last year as they questioned whether its balance sheet was strong enough to withstand much more pain amid its mountain of debt. Chief executive Ivan Glasenberg embarked on an asset-selling spree to pay off some of the debt, which Macquarie thinks will continue in the next few months. The broker expects the company to sell its Cobar copper mine in Australia, its Lomas Bayas copper operation in Chile, and its stake in the agri-business by the summer. Barclays rounds off the annual banking results tomorrow and is expected to book £1.2bn in provisions for PPI mis-selling in the fourth quarter. Tomorrow also see the release of annual results for high street baker Greggs, car insurer Direct Line, comparison site Moneysupermarket.com, and silver miner Fresnillo. ITV tops the billing with its annual results on Wednesday, while Domino’s Pizza reports full-year results the following day. On Friday, there are annual results from Sir Martin Sorrell’s marketing giant WPP and the London Stock Exchange Group, fresh from the revelation it is nearing a merger with Germany’s Deutsche Boerse. Annual results from Tony Hayward’s Genel Energy will make for interesting reading on Thursday, not least because they will reveal how much cash it has left to burn as its losses deepen. Foreign oil firms such as Genel are still owed hundreds of millions of dollars in oil exports by Kurdistan’s government, which has been struggling to pay them as it finances its battle with ISIS amid the oil price slump. |