Pharma giants give FTSE 100 good injection

AFTER a set of results that show it is much more than the company behind one of the world’s most important vaccines at the moment, AstraZeneca joined fellow pharmaceutical giant Hikma as the best performer among London’s biggest firms.

Yesterday the FTSE 100 was pulled higher, reaching 6,969.81 points, an 8.33 point rise, up 0.1%.

Top of the pack was AstraZeneca. The company showed that a series of controversies around its Covid-19 vaccine was not going to hold the business back.

Its sales comfortably beat expectations, and as AstraZeneca has pleaded not to profit from the vaccine, potential problems on that front are unlikely to affect its financials. Its shares rose 4.3%.

Fellow pharma giant Hikma was close behind AstraZeneca has pleaded not to profit, after announcing it had won approval for an opioid overdose treatment in the US. Shares rose 3.2%.

It marks the end of an up-anddown week for the FTSE 100, which is still languishing just below the 7,000 point mark, which it breached for the first time in 15 months earlier in April.

“After a decent start to the month, the last two weeks have seen the FTSE 100 take a bit of a pause, and though we’ve struggled to maintain a

foothold above 7,000, the index is still up for the third successive month in a row,” said CMC Markets chief market analyst Michael Hewson.

But potentially more important than the pull of AstraZeneca and Hikma was the effect of a sharp drop in the value of sterling when measured against the dollar.

Just before markets closed, one pound would buy 1.3821 dollars, 0.9% less than a day earlier or 1.1491 euros, down 0.1%.

Rather than a weak pound, the reason for the fall was a strong dollar - the euro also lost 0.7% against the US currency.

“The US dollar appears to be benefitting from a little bit of month-end and week-end profit-taking in an April that has seen it slide around 2%, reversing all of its March gains against a basket of currencies,” Mr Hewson said.

In the US, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 were both trading down around 0.6% when markets closed in Europe. In Germany, the Dax dropped 0.1%, while in France the Cac index fell 0.5%.

The price of Brent crude oil dipped 2% to 67.21 dollars per barrel.

Alongside AstraZeneca, Friday morning’s big news was Barclays. The bank recorded £2.4 billion in pre-tax profit in the first three months of the year.