The Morning Call – Domino’s reveals secret ingredient for a healthy shares price with its Q3 release.

Asian Markets

Asian shares rose, shrugging off modest losses on Wall Street, while expectations of another U.S. interest rate increase this year continued to underpin the dollar.

U.S. Markets

U.S. stocks closed lower, with the New York based exchange ending a nine-day rally as investors found few reasons to push shares deeper into record territory in a thinly traded session.

Today’s News

Domino’s Pizza Group, said trading in the third quarter improved in the UK, adding that it expects full-year underlying profit before tax to meet market forecasts. Domino’s Pizza said group system sales in the 13 weeks to Sept 24 rose 20.8% to £286.4m, with sales at UK stores open for more than a year rising 8.1 percent. UK sales were boosted by a 17.4% surge in online orders. On July 25 Domino’s reported much lower like-for-like sales growth in the first half of the year, sending its shares tumbling.

Whitbread said its Costa coffee chain had acquired the outstanding 49% of a joint venture in southern China from Yueda for RMB 310m (£35m). Costa already owned 51% of the venture, which operates 252 stores in the south of China, including 93 in Shanghai. Its separate joint venture in northern China, with BHG, is unaffected by the transaction. “One of our three key strategic priorities is to focus on our strengths to grow internationally and today’s announcement marks a significant and exciting step in our ambitious growth plans for China,” chief executive Alison Brittain said.

BAE Systems‘ new boss is preparing to trim the defence group’s workforce by at least 1,000, according to a report on Monday. Charles Woodburn, the oil executive who joined the defence contractor as chief operating officer last year ahead of his promotion to chief executive this June, will get rid of well over 1,000 jobs. The rumoured job cuts come despite last month’s news that the UK government had secured a contract with Qatar for BAE to assemble 24 Typhoon fighter jets, worth at least £2bn across the four-nation consortium behind the Eurofighter.

Royal Mail said it is seeking a high court injunction to stop strike action by the Communications Workers Union, after the union failed to withdraw its strike plan. Royal Mail members of the Communications Workers Union are due to stage a strike between 1100BST on October 19 to 1100BST on October 21. Royal Mail said it had asked the union to withdraw its plans for action in favour of mediation but said the “CWU has declined to withdraw its notification.”

Capita has appointed former Amec Foster Wheeler boss Jon Lewis as chief executive to continue its turnaround. Lewis, who had a 20-year career at oil services giant Halliburton before joining Amec last year and overseeing its takeover by John Wood, will take his seat at Capita from 1 December and allow interim CEO Nick Greatorex to resume his role as finance director. Capita’s previous CEO Andy Parker decided back in March that he would step down later in the year after 17 years at the group and left just before the recent set of results.

Ted Baker reported a 17.8% increase in first-half profit after new store openings in the UK and abroad helped boost sales. Pre-tax profit rose to £25.3m, from £21.5m, while revenue increased by 14.0% to £295.7m. Ted Baker declared an interim dividend of 16.6p, up 12.2%. On its outlook, the company said: “Despite the continued challenging external market conditions, the board is confident of making further progress for the full year in line with its expectations.”

Marston’s said its sales and profits for the full year are ahead of last year and that it’s targeting further growth in 2018. Like-for-like sales in its destination and premium division rose by 0.9% above the previous year. “The more subdued summer trading and relatively stronger performance of wet sales compared to food sales was consistent with the market,” the company said. Like-for-like sales in the taverns division rose 1.6%, as community pubs benefited from greater local interest in local and craft beers.

Vedanta Resources boosted production of various metals, including aluminum, copper and zinc in its fiscal second quarter. At the company’s Zinc India operations, refined zinc-lead metal production rose 27% on-year to 230kt. Refined silver production rose a record 31% to 4.5mn ounces. Copper production in Zambia rose by 21% compared to the previous quarter, while aluminium production increased by 36% on-year to 401,000 tonnes.

Oil prices were steady as OPEC said there were clear signs the market was rebalancing and as U.S. production remained offline following Hurricane Nate.

Gold inched up to their highest in more than a week, but the gains were capped as the dollar held firm bolstered by expectations of another Federal Reserve interest rate hike this year.