As earnings season winds down, investors will still have plenty to watch this week as key companies across various sectors provide updates that could offer valuable insights into market trends.
In the UK, housebuilder Vistry will tell investors how well positioned it is to capitalise on the new government's pledge of building 1.5 million homes this parliament. Meanwhile, Currys will show if it has managed to keep momentum and delivers profits amid a tricky economic backdrop.
In the tech sector, DocuSign should provide an update on whether its cost reduction plan that included layoffs has improved profitability.
Right in the middle of the artificial intelligence wave, chipmaker Broadcom is expected to show markets that it is running "on all cylinders."
Here's what to look out for:
Housebuilder Vistry, which has been one of the top-performing stocks on the FTSE 100 so far in 2024, is due to publish its half-year results on 5 September. The shares up 50% year-to-date, as Labour's landslide victory in July's general election boosted housebuilding more broadly.
In a July trading update, which offered a sneak peek at the first-half figures, Vistry said it expected adjusted operating profits to be 10% higher for the first six months of 2024 at around £227 million than the same period last year.
The housebuilder said total completions had increased by around 8% in first half to 7,750 and that it was on track to deliver more than 18,000 completions for the full year, increasing by a fifth on 2023.
Read more: The top FTSE 100 winners and losers of 2024 so far
In addition, Vistry said its sales rate in the first six months of the year had risen to 1.21 units per site per week, up 0.86 units last year.
Last year, Vistry announced its return to fully focusing on a partnership model, which includes working with local authorities to deliver affordable housing.
Vistry CEO Greg Fitzgerald said in the July trading update that the business was "extremely well placed to support [the government's] ambition of delivering the biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation”.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.L), said: "Partnerships tend to be lower-margin than ordinary housebuilding projects, so margins may remain under pressure this year — but by increasing its scale in the partnerships space looks set to continue boosting future volumes, which should go a long way to offsetting the margin decline's effect on overall profits."
In last month's update, Vistry said it continued to secure a strong pipeline of partnership opportunities which met requirements including of having an operating margin of more than 12%.
Data released by Nationwide on Friday also spelled positive news for the property market, as it showed that UK house prices surged at their fastest pace since December 2022, as mortgages have become cheaper amid expectations of further interest rate cuts.
Housebuilder Barratt Developments has been pursuing a buyout of its smaller rival Redrow. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating the £2.5bn deal and the watchdog said last week that there were “reasonable grounds for believing that the undertakings offered by [Barratt and Redrow]...might be accepted.”
The CMA raised concerns in its phase one review of the deal relating to competition in the area around Whitchurch in Shropshire, where the two housebuilders had a high combined share of land. The watchdog then gave the two businesses until 15 August to offer solutions.
The merger hasn’t been the only effort at consolidation in the UK housebuilding sector. Bellway (BWY.L) had put forward an offer for smaller peer Crest Nicholson (CRST.L) but dropped its bid last month.
In terms of performance, Barratt is expected to report a fall in home completions. In full-year guidance released in July, the housebuilder said completions decreased to 14,004 for the year ending 30 June, down from 17,206 in the previous year. Barratt said it expected to complete netween 13,000 and 13,500 homes in the 2025 fiscal year.
Despite the anticipated fall in completions, Barratt said that it expected adjusted profit before tax to be slightly ahead of previous forecasts for 2024.
Shares are down 8% year-to-date.
Investor sentiment toward Currys has turned around over the last year, say AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould and investment analyst Dan Coatsworth. Shares in electricals retailer, which is due to release a trading update on 5 September, are now up 59% year-to-date.
Mould and Coatsworth attributed the shift to a "pair of earnings upgrades during its last fiscal year, an improved balance sheet thanks to the sale of its Greek business and an unsuccessful takeover bid at 67p a share from activist investor Elliott."
They said Currys had started to "build some profit momentum thanks to improved trading in the Nordic region and the UK, despite an economic backdrop that is still difficult."
In its full-year results, Currys posted adjusted profits before tax of £118m, up 10% year-on-year.
Currys group CEO Alex Baldock said in the report that the business was on course to grow both profits and cashflow.
Baldock also said Currys expected "AI-powered technology to be the most exciting new product cycle since the tablet in 2010".
"With our partnerships, scale and expert colleagues to demystify AI, we’re best-placed to benefit," he added.
Should Baldock offer any insights on how the 2025 fiscal year is shaping up so far, Mould and Coatsworth said analysts currently expect group sales of £8.5bn, which would be broadly flat on 2024.
They said that analysts were also expecting adjusted pre-tax profit to come in at £136m, up from the £118m reported last year.
Analysts also anticipate that Currys will resume dividend payments this year, at 1.8p a share.
"Improved profitability, recurring revenues from the iD Mobile phone contract deals and a strengthened balance sheet all underpin the anticipated return to the dividend list," Mould and Coatsworth said. iD Mobile is the network operator which is a subsidiary of Currys.
Another company due to share results on Thursday is e-signature software business DocuSign, with shares little changed year-to-date at $59.03.
In the first quarter, DocuSign reported a total revenue of $709.6m (£539.38), up 7% year-on-year and posted a net income of $33.8m, a marked turnaround from the $539,000 reported for the same period in 2023.
DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen said that in the first quarter the company "continued to stabilise the business and improve profitability, allowing Docusign to continue investing for long term growth."
Zacks Equity Research has named DocuSign as a top growth stock, saying that earnings and sales are forecast to grow year-on-year, while also highlighting that the business is "cash rich" and is expected to report a cash flow expansion of 86.5% in 2025.
DocuSign announced back in February that it was cutting around 6% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan aimed at helping "strengthen ... the company's financial and operational efficiency." It said the layoffs would mostly affect positions in its sales and marketing organisations.
The company said it expected the restructuring plan to be substantially complete by the end of the second quarter.
The announcement came after reports that acquisition talks with Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman had stalled.
Chipmaker Broadcom is another beneficiary of the AI boom and is due to share its 2024 third-quarter earnings on 5 September.
The US semiconductor manufacturer has seen shares climb 45% year-to-date.
In June, Broadcom announced a 10-for-1 stock split, which was executed in July. Stock splits are when companies increase the amount of outstanding shares on the market, which boosts the stock's liquidity and can make it more accessible to a wider range of investors.
Read more: What is a stock split and why are big tech companies opting for it?
Broadcom also posted second-quarter earnings in June that beat analyst estimates, reporting revenues of $12.5bn, which represented a 43% increase on the same period for 2023.
Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom, said its second quarter results were once again driven by AI demand and VMware, the cloud computing business it acquired last year.
On the back of the results, Bank of America said it consider Broadcom as a "top AI pick" along with Nvidia (NVDA), suggesting that its valuation could be pushed past the $1tn mark, Fortune reported.
Ahead of next week's results, CFRA Research senior equity analyst Angelo Zino told Yahoo Finance's Market Domination that he believed Broadcom's networking business to be "the bread and butter" for their semiconductor segments.
"We think that is kind of running on all cylinders. So as far as kind of the semiconductor business, AI is driving that business very well, as well as Apple (AAPL). And then the VMware side of things, they continue to exceed our expectations on both the cost-cutting side of things, as well as kind of the revenue growth trajectory," Zino said
Monday 2 September
Kainos (KNOS.L)
Ashtead (AHT.L)
ZScaler (ZS)
Tuesday 3 September
Alumasc (ALU.L)
Craneware (CRW.L)
Johnson Service (JSG.L)
Michelmersh Brick (MBH.L)
Midwich (MIDW.L)
STV (STVG.L)
DS Smith (SMDS.L)
Watches of Switzerland (WOSG.L)
Hormel Foods (HRL)
Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS)
Wednesday 4 September
M&G (MNG.L)
Direct Line (DLG.L)
Hilton Food (HFG.L)
Tod’s (TODGF)
Ciena (CIEN)
Thursday 5 September
Genus (GNS.L)
Ashmore (ASHM.L)
WAG Payment Solutions (WPSL.XC)
Churchill China (CHH.L)
Bakkavor (BAKK.L)
Funding Circle (FCH.L)
Safestore (SAFE.L)
Friday 6 September
Kroger (KR)
You can read Yahoo Finance's full calendar here.
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