Welcome to the week ahead, our summary of the forthcoming key company announcements. Companies are no longer obliged to notify the London Stock Exchange (LSE) of results and trading updates, so this list does not claim to be comprehensive. You can read company announcements at http://announce.ft.com and our daily online news summaries record all key company announcements and business press headlines.
Monday 1 April
Easter Monday Public Holiday: UK markets closed
Tuesday 2 April
Finals: 21st Century Technology, Eurasia Drilling
EGM: Dolphin Capital
AGM: Lo-Q
Economics: Purchasing managers' index - manufacturing, M4 money supply, Net consumer credit, Mortgage approvals, Net lending secured on dwellings
Wednesday 3 April
Final: Bond International Software
Trading statement: Babcock International
EGM: Scotty
Economics: BRC shop price index, Purchasing managers' index - construction
Babcock International (BAB) issued a confident third-quarter trading statement and, with the shares of the engineering outsourcing group trading at an all-time high of 1,100p, investors will be banking on yet another positive update this week ahead of the release of full-year results in May.
At the start of 2013, Babcock's order book was stable at around £12bn (£12.5bn at the half-year results in November) and the pipeline was up from £13bn to £14bn, including Network Rail framework rebids, new training opportunities and further BBC work.
Since then, the support services group has been awarded preferred bidder status on contracts to provide ground fleet maintenance to British Airways and baggage handling systems operations and maintenance for Heathrow Airport Limited. The contracts, worth a combined total of around £440m, will become effective in the first half of the 2013-14 financial year and run for five years, with an option to extend the contract with HAL for a further two years.
Ahead of the pre-close trading statement, analysts at broker Peel Hunt were predicting full-year pre-tax profits of £313m and EPS of 72.2p for the 12 months to the end of March 2013, up from £274m and 61.2p the previous year, and a raised dividend of 25p, up from 22.7p. On that basis, at 1,100p the shares trade on 15 times earnings and offer a 2.3 per cent yield. That's a pretty full rating, so to justify further share price upside we will need analyst upgrades.
Thursday 4 April
Final: Clean Air Power
Trading statements: AMEC, Booker, Domino's Pizza, KCOM
AGMs: AMEC, Emblaze, Publishing Technology
Economics: Purchasing managers' index - services, Official reserves, Bank of England interest rate announcement, BoE asset purchase target
Domino's Pizza (DOM) plans to increase advertising spending this year and improve its marketing initiatives to support growth in its 612 mature stores. However, growth rates have been slowing as like-for-like growth has become harder to achieve. And heavy snowfall in January made for a slow start to the year: like-for-like sales nudged ahead 1.6 per cent in the first seven weeks of 2013, although without the weather this would have been 2.6 per cent. That compares with like-for-like growth of 5 per cent last year and recent poor weather will not have helped, either.
Still, the major long-term opportunity for the pizza company is in Europe, where Domino's UK has the master franchise licence for both Germany and Switzerland. Progress has been encouraging and investment in rolling out the business will be accelerated, although broker Canaccord forecasts start-up losses until 2015-16.
Broker Numis Securities forecasts pre-tax profits of £50.5m and EPS of 23.8p for the 12 months to the end of December 2013, based on a 13 per cent hike in sales, up from £46.7m and 22p, respectively, in 2012. This is some way below long-term historic growth rates and the job for Domino's will be made tougher by the economic environment, cost increases and the absence of major sports events compared with 2012. So, while there is no doubting the underlying quality of Domino's business, at an all-time high of 600p, a rating of 25 times forecast earnings is unwarranted given the potential constraints to growth.
Friday 5 April
Trading statement: easyJet, Aer Lingus
Economics: New car registrations
Shares going ex-dividend on 3 April
| Company | Dividend (p) | Payment |
| 32RED | 0.8 | 3 May |
| 4imprint | 10.2 | 3 May |
| Dragon Oil | 12.8 | 3 May |
| F&C Asset Management | 2 | 24 May |
| Finsbury Growth & Income Trust | 4.8 | 2 May |
| Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust | 2.5 | 1 May |
| Hammerson | 10 | 14 May |
| HgCapital Trust | 23 | 15 May |
| Interserve | 14.1 | 20 May |
| Investors Capital Trust | 1.1 | 3 May |
| Jardine Lloyd Thompson | 15.9 | 1 May |
| Keller | 15.2 | 31 May |
| Lowland Investment Co | 8 | 30 Apr |
| Murray International Trust | 13.5 | 16 May |
| Pearson | 30 | 3 May |
| Rit Capital Partners | 14p | 26 Apr |
| RSA Insurance | 3.9 | 24 May |
| Smith (DS) | 2.5 | 1 May |
| Standard Life | 9.8 | 21 May |
| Standard Life | 12.8 | 21 May |
| Torchmark | $0.17 | 1 May |
The ex-dividend date is the first day on which it is no longer possible to buy the shares and qualify for the dividend. Ex-days are almost always a Wednesday. The record date is usually two days after the ex-date. The payment day is the day on which the funds are transferred to shareholders.
