Jet2, DOM, TAST, delivery, service sector, price of fish & other:

A DAY IN THE LIFE:

Wandering around the garden in short trousers I find nettles a bit of a pain.

Literally, to be honest and, after getting stung for the umpteenth time, I’ve got to pose the question; nettles, why?

Because scratches I can live with.

RGIs, Random Gardening Injuries, are unavoidable, even when not gardening but when some brainless plant injects me with poison for no apparent benefit to itself I have to question, what’s the logic? 

I mean maybe it’s just doing it for kicks and giggles.

I prefer the more vulgar version of that phrase but, mindful of firewalls I’ll stick to the sanitised version and simply ask is having several billion humans scuffing you into the dirt and digging you up whenever they see you something that the nettles planned all along?

Well, neither nettles nor evolution stop to think at all, of course. And that’s something we may return to but, for the moment, let’s move on to the news:

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PUBS & RESTAURANTS:

Delivery:

CGA reports that ‘Britain’s top restaurant groups experienced strong growth in at-home dining in July 2025, with total delivery and takeaway sales increasing by 13.5% year on year.’ The latest Hospitality at Home Tracker says ‘this represents a sharp uplift compared to previous months of flat or marginal growth. The boost is supported by robust delivery performance, which saw sales climb by 15.8%, alongside a 9.5% increase in combined total order numbers, indicating improved frequency and consumer confidence in the delivery market…’

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Wider services sector:

S&P reports that ‘August data pointed to a solid upturn in business conditions across the UK service sector, with output and new work rising markedly. The sector splits pretty starkly between B2B companies (banks, insurance companies, accountancy firms, consultancies, IT houses and the like) and B2B service companies (hospitality, retail and the like) meaning that the aggregate data has to be treated with some caution…

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Other news:

City AM reports that some ‘hospitality bosses have joined the Conservatives in condemning the Labour government for introducing higher taxes on businesses, rolling out red tape on employment and excluding the sector from growth strategies….’

Fish & chips. The Daily Mail focuses on Hilton Foods’ comments on the price of fish saying that ‘rising prices have hurt consumer demand for seafood.’ It says that post-Brexit ‘large cuts to fishing quotas drive double-digit inflation’ and this is impacting sales in volume terms…

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Jobs market (speaks to consumer confidence): Over 1,000 jobs will be put at risk this week when Bodycare calls in administrators, reports Sky News. And elsewhere, the FT reports that some 5% of staff at Lloyds Banking Group are to be deemed among the bottom 5% of performers and at risk of dismissal…

COMPANY NEWS:

Tasty yesterday reported that, at the General Meeting held earlier that day, all Resolutions were passed and, as a result, some 2.06bn new shares will be admitted to trading on AIM this morning. In addition, the acquisition of Ventnor Bay will complete….

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RedCat Hospitality, which is chaired by Rooney Anand, has increased sales by 6.7% across the group reports The Morning Advertiser….

Domino’s Pizza Group. DOM is under pressure from Browning West, an activist investor, to pause plans to acquire a second brand for the near term and to instead return more cash to shareholders. It mentions a figure of £100m.

F1 Arcade has announced that it is to open in Spain via a franchise agreement with Top Racing Iberia. The unit will open in Madrid in 2027.

Whyte & Mackay, the scotch whisky company owned by Philippines brandy company Emperador, has announced that CEO Bryan Donaghey is to retire at the end of the year. CFO Michael Sloan will become CEO in his stead.

JET2 – AGM TRADING UPDATE:

Jet2 reports that summer 2025 on sale seat capacity at 18.5m seats is 8.0% higher than Summer 2024 and consistent with our last update on 9 July. It says ‘since then the closer to departure booking trend has become more pronounced’. It says ‘to the end of August flown package holiday customers grew by 2%, with flight-only passengers rising by 17%, demonstrating the flexibility of our operating model and supporting our growth and market expansion.’

Visibility is lower and the company says ‘we currently expect EBIT to be towards the lower end of the consensus range, although it remains premature to provide definitive guidance as to overall Group profitability for the financial year ending 31 March 2026.’ The company says it will provide a further update at our interim results on 19 November 2025.

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HOLIDAYS & LEISURE TRAVEL:

Puy du Fou, the French company with historically-themed holiday parks in France and Spain, has submitted a planning application for a £600m attraction in Oxfordshire. The site, to be located near Bicester, would include four period villages….

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The Radisson Hotel Group has signed to open four new properties in France to take the group’s total in the country to 34.

In the US, accountant PwC has forecast that consumer spending over the Christmas period, much of which goes on shopping and leisure travel, will fall by 5.3%. This is the largest drop since Christmas 2020 when, in Covid’s first Christmas, spend fell by 7.6%….

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OTHER LEISURE:

The BBC has reported on the V11 campaign group, a group of 11 footballers who say they lost money after investing with Kingsbridge Asset Management in the 1990s and 2000s. Around 200 players in total may have been affected.

FINANCE & MARKETS:

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ autumn Budget will be presented to Parliament on 26 November.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey reports that there is ‘considerably more doubt’ about when interest rates in the UK can next be cut. Inflation, currently at 3.8%, is forecast to hit 4% later this year. He also cautions against ‘exaggerating’ the recent rise in bond yields saying ‘there is a lot of dramatic commentary on this but I wouldn’t exaggerate the 30-year bond rate.’ He adds ‘it’s a number that gets quoted a lot. It’s quite a high number. It is actually not a number that is being used for funding at all at the moment.’

S&P reports that UK private sector output growth has hit a one-year high. Its seasonally adjusted S&P Global UK PMI Composite Output Index registered 53.5 in August, up from 51.5 in July,…

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has mirrored comments made by Christine Lagarde at the ECB in saying that he is “very concerned” about President Trump’s threats against the US Federal Reserve.

Former PM Liz Truss has called for ‘institutional change’ in Britain. She has praised Donald Trump’s ‘revolution in the US’.

S&P reports that its data has signalled an increase in eurozone business activity. Its PMI ticked up to a one-year high of 51.0 in August, from 50.9 in July.

Sterling recovered slightly at $1.3425 and €1.1525. Oil lower at $67.16. UK 10 year gilt yield some 6 basis points lower at 4.74%. World markets better to mixed yesterday and London set to open around 12 points higher as at 6.30am.

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