Centrica will meet investors’ expectations when the energy and services firm puts out its full-year results tomorrow, a market analyst has predicted.
Ken Odeluga of City Index said Centrica’s revenues for 2016 may well have dropped 2.3% in 2016 to £27.3billion.
But Mr Odeluga said observers should look past revenue figures to get a good indication of performance at Centrica, whose brands include British Gas.
He said: “I would tend to look at the core underlying profits for a company like Centrica – and that is looking quite good.”
Mr Odeluga also said Centrica had given a positive sign in December when it lifted its 2016 earnings forecast in a trading update.
He thinks Centrica’s operating profits will need to have risen by about 5.5% to £1.475billion in 2016 to keep investors happy.
“Centrica will need to show an improvement at the core of the business to satisfy shareholders,” Mr Odeluga said.
“Anything less and you can expect shares to fall by 5-7% in one day.
“But I think they will pull it off. We got a signal when Centrica released its trading update in December. I think we should be looking at a good result.”
Centrica also used December’s update to confirm it had slashed 3,000 jobs under a previously announced restructuring of its upstream business.
The firm had clawed back £300million of its £700million total of planned savings so far, according to the update, which was published just days after first gas flowed from Cygnus – a major North Sea gas field in which Centrica has a 49% stake.
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