London pre-open: Stocks seen down after US losses

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to fall at the open on Friday following a downbeat session on Wall Street and a mixed performance in Asia, as investors continued to mull Jensen Huang's resignation as chief executive of Nvidia.

The FTSE 100 was called to open around 35 points lower.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said: "The biggest news yesterday was Jensen Huang's resignation from Nvidia and Colette Kress's appointment as interim CEO. Nvidia fell as much as 14% before paring its losses to end the session down around 4.3%, as dip buyers stepped in, trying to figure out what comes next for Nvidia without Jensen Huang, and for the broader AI industry without the man in the leather jacket.

"Let's start with Colette Kress, the new interim CEO. She has been the company's CFO since 2013. She knows the business, its customers and its finances, and helped oversee Nvidia's extraordinary expansion.

"No one knows exactly how Nvidia will manage the complex web of investments and business relationships built under Jensen Huang. But the base case is that Kress's immediate task will be to reassure investors that Nvidia can stay on the trajectory Huang set and deliver without him at the helm. And yes, a company of Nvidia's scale - worth around $4 trillion - had better be able to function without one person, no matter how brilliant that person is. To me, this is an opportunity for Nvidia to shift the focus from a one-man show to the company and its products.

"In the near term, there are risks that need to be priced correctly, meaning we could see further downside as more news emerges. On Thursday, Reuters reported that Huang had a relationship with a second Nvidia employee, bringing the total number of reported affairs to three. With Huang's departure, further revelations about personal relationships may have less impact on the share price, although any governance implications would still matter. The allegations involving external business relationships could have far-reaching consequences for the company and the broader AI complex."

Microsoft will also be in focus as it said attempts to fix a global outage were not going as expected. The outage is affecting Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, Teams, and Microsoft 365 for the web.

In UK corporate news, Land Securities reiterated full-year guidance after interim rental income rose by more than expected.

The commercial landlord said like-for-like net rental income increased 6.2% in the six months to 30 September, ahead of guidance for between 3% and 5%. Earnings per share were "effectively stable", LandSec added, at 25.9p per share, against 25.8p a year previously, while the interim dividend rose 2.1% to 19.4p. Pre-tax profits came in at £243m, up from £98m.

As a result, LandSec said full-year EPS remained on track to be stable compared to the previous year, in line with guidance, while EPS in the 2028 full year was set to see high single-digit percentage growth.

Aviva said it expected earnings per share to grow broadly in line with its 11% target this year after general insurance premiums grew 19% to almost £12bn in the first nine months of the year driven by Direct Line and the new home insurance partnership with Nationwide.