{"id":59244,"date":"2025-05-02T11:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T11:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/05\/02\/ftse-100-moderately-higher-shell-rises-sharply-after-announcing-share-buyback\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T11:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T11:59:20","slug":"ftse-100-moderately-higher-shell-rises-sharply-after-announcing-share-buyback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/05\/02\/ftse-100-moderately-higher-shell-rises-sharply-after-announcing-share-buyback\/","title":{"rendered":"FTSE 100 Moderately Higher; Shell Rises Sharply After Announcing Share Buyback"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div><p> \n<\/p>\n<div id=\"ctl00_CPI_dvBody\">\n<p> UK stocks are up in positive territory on Friday, in line with other major <span class=\"landLinks\">markets<\/span> in Europe, amid optimism over easing U.S.-China trade relations. Investors are also reacting to a slew of earnings announcements.<\/p>\n<p>The benchmark FTSE 100, moving in a tight range, was up 66.65 points or 0.79% at 8,563.45 a little while ago.<\/p>\n<p>Haleon is up 3.7% and Melrose Industries is gaining 3.3%. Rentokil Initial, Compass Group, Babcock International, Anglo American Plc and Persimmon are up 2 to 2.7%.<\/p>\n<p>Shell is up 2.7%. The oil and gas major announced a share buyback programme of $3.5 billion, despite reporting weak first-quarter results. Looking ahead, for the second quarter, the company projects Integrated Gas production to be approximately 890 &#8211; 950 thousand boe\/d. LNG liquefaction volumes are expected to be approximately 6.3 &#8211; 6.9 million tonnes. Upstream production is expected to be approximately 1,560 &#8211; 1,760 thousand boe\/d.<\/p>\n<p>BAE Systems, IAG, Entain, Intertek Group, Spirax Group, Mondi, Smiths Group, Glencore, Rio Tinto, Halma and Prudential are also up with strong gains.<\/p>\n<p>NatWest Group Plc is up 0.8%. The banking and insurance holding company reported a sequential rise in its first-quarter earnings, helped by improved total income and a decline in operating expenses. The earnings were also underpinned by continued growth across the company&#8217;s businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Standard Chartered Plc reported that its profit before taxation was $1.10 billion in the first-quarter, up from last year&#8217;s $1.91 billion. Earnings per share grew to 56.6 US cents from prior year&#8217;s 46.5 US cents. The stock is up by about 0.3%.<\/p>\n<p>Pearson is down sharply despite underlying group sales rose 1% in the first quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Kingfisher, Whitbread, Marks &amp; Spencer, JD Sports Fashion, Beazley, SSE, Sainsbury (J) and Lloyds Banking Group are down 1 to 2%. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n        window.fbAsyncInit = function () {\n            FB.init({\n                status: true,\n                cookie: true,\n                xfbml: true\n            });\n        };\n        (function (d) {\n            var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk'; if (d.getElementById(id)) { return; }\n            js = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true;\n            js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js\";\n            d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(js);\n        }(document));\n    <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<br \/>FTSE 100 Moderately Higher; Shell Rises Sharply After Announcing Share Buyback<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2025-05-02 11:59:20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UK stocks are up in positive territory on Friday, in line with other major markets in Europe, amid optimism over easing U.S.-China trade relations. Investors are also reacting to a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.unsplash.com\/photo-1531412501799-1b4c354ca957?ixid=MXwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHw=&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2734&q=80","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-euro-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/59245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}