Friday Email: 29 July 2016

Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his weekly run-down and upcoming events in the investor calendar, like this one:

The FTSE 100 has had a flat week and is pretty much where it began. Politics has gone quieter for the time being but plenty lies ahead with the Labour leadership contest and the battle across the pond between Clinton and Trump.

The past week has seen a large number of companies reporting to the market. We saw the currency effect in particular yesterday with RELX who increased their dividend by over 30% in sterling terms. Solid sterling dividend increases also came from Astra Zeneca, Glaxo, Royal Dutch, Smith & Nephew and others. Most did not actually put up their dividend in dollars, but the fall in the pound meant good increases.

ITV produced solid numbers that showed that the Brexit fears were well overdone, especially as they showed a currency gain as we suggested last week. With the strong gain in in non NAR revenue, over half of their revenues now come from this source. Overall though I have been disappointed by the reporting season as dividend increases have been low.

The week ahead continues to be very busy with another raft of companies reporting to the market.

This email was originally sent on Friday 29 July 2016

The Friday email is delivered to over 20,000 subscriber’s every week, and remains a widely read run-down of recent events and what investors can expect in the week ahead written by our chief analyst Mark Riding.

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