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7.10am: Inflation rises
Inflation in June jumped to 9.4%, its highest level since February 1982, from 9.1% in May. Food inflation is running at 9.8%.
Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the ONS, said: ‘The increase was driven by rising fuel and food prices, these were only slightly offset by falling second-hand car prices.
“The cost of both raw materials and goods leaving factories continued to rise, driven by higher metal and food prices respectively.
“These increases saw raw materials post their highest annual increase on record, with manufactured goods at a 45-year high.”
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi said: “Countries around the world are battling higher prices and I know how difficult that is for people right here in the UK, so we are working alongside the Bank of England to bear down on inflation.”
Anna Leach, CBI deputy chief economist, said: “This data underscores the need to give people more control over their energy bills: through speeding up planning decisions for electricity infrastructure and creating a national effort to help households better insulate their homes.”
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: “In the face of rising pressures in supply chains and operations, retailers are doing all they can to absorb as much of these costs as possible and look for efficiencies in their businesses.
“Retailers are expanding their value ranges to offer the widest variety of goods to those most in need, providing discounts to vulnerable groups, and raising staff pay. Until inflation is brought to heel however, it will be a difficult road ahead for households and businesses in the UK.”
See also: Bank governor warns of half-point interest rate rise
7am: Royal Mail
Royal Mail said revenue fell 11.5% year on year in the first quarter, reflecting a slowdown in parcel and Covid test kit deliveries.
As the company faces industrial action it said it made an adjusted operating loss of £92 million, “reflecting inflexibility in the cost base to adjust to lower volumes and disappointing performance on delivery of further efficiencies”.
The company emphasised the need “to act now to make the most of our new infrastructure, find more flexible ways of matching resource to workload and ensure we have a more agile and sustainable relationship with the CWU.”
It said it is now “moving ahead with actions where we do not need further union agreement, notably revisions and Scan-in Scan-out (SISO) in Delivery.”
The outlook for FY 2022-23 is a weaker parcels market and lower than anticipated efficiency savings in-year.
“Provided progress can be made on above actions, now likely to be around breakeven at adjusted operating profit level, excluding any impact from industrial action.”
The holding company will be renamed International Distributions Services to reflect the group structure of two separate companies (Royal Mail and GLS).
Global markets
Streaming service Netflix was the standout performer on Wall Street with the shares up 8% after hours despite losing 970,000 subscribers in the third quarter.
However, this was regarded as a win as analysts had forecast 2m departures. Earnings beat predictions while revenues rose 9% year-on-year to $8bn.
For this quarter, Netflix guided to revenues of $7.84bn up 5% from this time a year ago but lower quarter-on-quarter.
The figures, along with forecast-beating numbers from Halliburton and Hasbro, helped Wall Street stocks close in positive territory.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.43%, the S&P 500 added 2.76% and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 3.11%.
