Vodafone, CRH, Inland Homes

"The FTSE 100 drifted lower at the market open, taking its cue from weakness in the US and Asia overnight and with few macro drivers to provide direction heading into the weekend,” says AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.

"Mobile telecoms giant Vodafone beat expectations with a 2.2% increase in first quarter organic service revenue against consensus expectations for growth of 1.9%. The company is putting together some impressively consistent performance. This marks the eighth consecutive quarterly increase in its main growth metric and guidance is reiterated for the March 2017 financial year. The same metric is up 0.3% in Europe despite regulatory pressure on revenue from data roaming charges. The UK is the main laggard, down 3.2%, although there is no update on mooted plans to redomicile the business in the wake of Brexit.

"Investors are warming to Irish-headquartered aggregates business CRH after a brief trading update revealed group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation will be €100 million better than previous guidance at €1.1 billion. The improvement coming thanks to strong trading in the latter part of the second quarter. CRH is plugged in to a construction recovery in the US with North America accounting for more than half of its business.

"Specialist housebuilder Inland Homes is under pressure after reporting profit for the June 2016 financial year will fall short of expectations. The culprit is not the fallout from the EU referendum, with the company reporting ‘strong’ market fundamentals, but delays on a number of its development sites after a contractor went into administration.”

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