London pre-open: Stocks seen down ahead of payrolls

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set for a slightly weaker open on Friday as investors eyed the latest US non-farm payrolls report.

The FTSE 100 was called to open down around 15 points at 6,982.

The payrolls report is due at 1330 BST, along with the unemployment rate and average earnings.

Pantheon Macroeconomics said: "We think September payrolls rose by 300K, with private jobs up 275K. These forecasts are 25K lower than our initial estimates, partly because the revisions to the initial Homebase small business employment data for the payroll survey week were slightly smaller than we expected - and slightly smaller than in September last year - and partly because we have tweaked our forecast for the seasonals.

"To be clear, revising down the forecast by 25K is not significant, given the large margin of error; the best way to think of forecasts is that they are the mid-point of an unavoidably wide range. We would not be surprised by prints anywhere from 150K to 450K."

In corporate news, pub group Wetherspoons narrowed annual losses and said like-for-like sales in the first 9 weeks of the current financial year were up 10%.

The company posted a loss of £30.4m before tax and exceptional items compared with a £167m loss in 2021 when Covid lockdowns were in place. Total sales excluding VAT more than doubled to £1.74bn.

PureTech Health said on Friday that it has exchanged indicative, non-binding proposals with US biopharmaceutical company Nektar Therapeutics regarding a possible combination.

Responding to press speculation a day earlier, PureTech said that it remains in discussions with Nektar about the proposal.

There can be no certainty that any firm offer will be made, nor as to the terms of any such offer, it said, adding that a further announcement will be made as and when appropriate.