The Market Close – Hunting rises sharply as it expects to get back to profits in 2017.

Today’s Closing Update

U.S. shares were higher, with earnings from a host of Dow components, including McDonald’s and Caterpillar, likely to set the tone for the day.

European stocks were mixed, as investors continued to monitor the latest corporate earnings and keep a close eye on Spain’s constitutional crisis.

Smiths Group has agreed a deal to insure £207m of its pension scheme with insurer Canada Life under a buy-in bulk annuity agreement. As part of the deal, Canada Life will take on some of the pension scheme risk, which remains with the company. Smiths said that through a series of buy-ins, around £0.5bn of the Smiths Industries pension scheme liabilities has now been insured. Across the group’s two main UK schemes, around £1.5bn of the liabilities has now been insured.

Apple will take a much smaller than expected delivery of its new iPhone X model, it was reported. Initial shipments of the new smartphone model will reach roughly 20m units, the Nikkei reported, which is half the planned amount for the year. Last month Apple was revealed to be facing setbacks in the production of the iPhone X due to an imbalance of the key pair of components affecting the device’s new facial recognition system.

The UK financial watchdog has confirmed it is investigating Equifax’s UK over the cyber breach that led to a massive loss of personal data by its US parent. More than 15m British people’s records were stolen in a major data hack on US-based Equifax, which was originally reported at half that amount last month before the company admitted the full toll, including “sensitive information” on nearly 700,000 individuals. The Financial Conduct Authority said that it has launched an investigation into the “circumstances surrounding” the loss of UK customer data “held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its US parent”.

Hunting expects a “modest” profit for the year as revenue during the third quarter continued to strengthen, with management now expecting annual revenue to come in way ahead of that seen in 2016. The company expects revenue for the full year to be around $700m. This compares to USD455.8 million for 2016 when the company suffered from the global slowdown in the oil and gas industry caused by low oil prices The figure expected for the current year, though a significant improvement on 2016, is lower than the 2015 figure of $810.5m.

Oil Prices fell towards $57 a barrel as crude flows through Iraq’s northern pipeline to Ceyhan in Turkey rose further, offsetting an expected fall in U.S. crude inventories.

Gold prices dipped as investors nervously awaited news on the next head of the U.S central bank, while strong share markets and a calmer geopolitical environment sapped safe-haven demand.

UK Major Risers & Fallers – 4:35pm

Prices supplied by Saxo Capital Markets UK Limited, part of the Saxo Bank A/S Group of companies.