Thursday, April 11, 2013

3 FTSE 100 Shares for the Week Ahead

LONDON -- Company news is starting to pick up again after a lull over Easter. We don't have a great volume of updates expected, but we should be hearing from a handful of top FTSE 100 firms. Here are three popular companies due to enlighten us next week:

Tesco
Next Wednesday, April 17, brings us one of the most hotly awaited company announcements of 2013 so far -- full-year results from Tesco  (LSE: TSCO  ) . (NASDAQOTH: TSCDY  ) After the U.K.'s biggest supermarket had a weak Christmas in 2011, and saw its share price slump as a result, Warren Buffett famously bought in big. And he's done well so far -- from a 52-week low of 295 pence back in June last year, Tesco shares are now back up 30%, to 385 pence.

January's update told us of significantly better Christmas and New Year trading this time, with group sales for the six weeks to Jan. 5 up 3.5% (3.9% excluding petrol), and we heard that the U.K. in-store turnaround plan was bearing fruit. Since then, Tesco has announced the purchase of the Giraffe restaurant chain, buying up 49 restaurants for a little under 49 million pounds.

Burberry
Shares in Burberry Group  (LSE: BRBY  ) have had a pretty erratic year, with disappointing second-quarter sales figures back in September sending the price into a slump. The shares have recovered since then, trading at 1,313 pence apiece today, after November's interim results actually looked pretty decent. Third-quarter revenues, reported in January, picked up further.

We should find out how the full year is turning out on Wednesday, when the fashion firm brings us a second-half trading update ahead of results due on May 21. The City is currently forecasting a rise in earnings per share (EPS) of around 8-9%, to 67 pence per share, with a dividend yield of about 2.2%. That would put the shares on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of around 19, which seems to be pricing in some expected future growth.

Hargreaves Lansdown
The same day will bring us an interim management statement from Hargreaves Lansdown  (LSE: HL  ) . And what a year shareholders have had so far -- the price is up around 90% over the past 12 months, having five-bagged over five years.

The firm, which provides retail investment and brokerage services, and manages more than $30 billion in invested assets, reported a pretty strong first half for the year to 31 December, with record revenues of 140.3 million pounds (up 24%), and record pre-tax profit of 93.7 million pounds (up 30%). The interim dividend was boosted by 24%, to 6.3 pence per share.

The City is expecting a rise in EPS of more than 25% for the full year. But that would put the shares, currently priced at 879 pence, on a P/E of around 28 -- twice the long-term FTSE 100 average.

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