THE recovery fortunes of part-nationalised banks Lloyds and RBS will be examined in a coming busy week for City updates.
On Thursday, Lloyds will deliver its first update since the Government cut its stake to 25% by selling £4.2 billion of shares last month.
The stock was sold to institutions, with a further multi-billion pound public sale expected later in the year.
Share value, which peaked at more than 80p earlier this year, has been falling since the latest placing, when shares sold for 75.5p.
Nomura analysts have raised the target price to 89p and said Lloyds was on track to be the highest-yielding UK bank with a strong capital position.
Morgan Stanley analysts expect first-quarter results to show growth in core loans, a slight improvement in margin and underlying profits up 24% to £1.8bn.
In contrast, RBS publishes a first-quarter update on Friday after annual results earlier this year showing a loss of £8.2 billion.
Morgan Stanley analysts expect operating profits of £900 million for the first quarter, up slightly on last year, set against restructuring charges of £500m.
Meanwhile, Argos owner Home Retail Group reports full-year results on Wednesday after a buoyant trading update last month.
The group told investors to expect profits to March 1 to be ahead of market projections of £111m.
Keith Bowman, equity analyst at stockbrokers Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Home Retail remains well placed in terms of capturing the unfolding recovery."
Costa and Premier Inn owner Whitbread is expected to show a 12% rise in earnings after strong trading.
Analysts on average expect annual pre-tax profits to rise to £397.9 million.
But Panmure Gordon analysts say Premier Inn and the group's restaurants continue to under-perform.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article