Business news live: FTSE 100 reaction to Rolls Royce and Shell profits plus Microsoft and Meta shares surge

Let’s start getting around the FTSE 100 firms for the morning then, starting with Shell.

The energy giant has posted $4.3bn (£3.2bn) adjusted earnings, which despite being 24 per cent down from last year, has actually beaten analyst expectations.

As a result, another $3.5bn share buyback has been announced – their 15th consecutive quarter-year of spending at least $3bn on their own shares.

Shell CEO Wael Sawan said Shell’s “continued focus on performance, discipline and simplification helped deliver $3.9 billion of structural cost reductions since 2022” and cited a first cargo shipment of LNG from Canada, plus focus in Nigeria and Brazil as being key operations.

Worth noting that we’ll also bring some commentary and updates on some of the biggest names from the US stock market this morning too.

Meta and Microsoft both reported the financials last night, with Amazon and Apple following suit tonight.

More on them shortly but they are key in terms of jobs and expenditure on a global scale right now, particularly with AI taking so much focus on both fronts – as well as in the stock market.

It’s been a big week of financials among the FTSE 100 firms and that theme continues today.

We’ll hear very shortly about the likes of Rolls Royce, Shell, Unilever and the London Stock Exchange Group among others.

Speaking before Unilever’s reveal – currently going on right now – Diana Radu, equity analyst at Morningstar, pointed out that the consumer products firm’s results will be a bellweather of sorts for the overall spending power of the people.

“The results are likely to give us a good insight into the health of the global consumer,” she said.

“We expect that, following a prolonged period of high inflation, with rising market share for private label goods and persistent macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty across regions, consumer spending will remain cautious, and Unilever’s volume growth will be subdued, falling short of the company’s midterm ambitions.”

First up today, let’s catch you up with the main headlines from yesterday’s business and money news:

Good morning and welcome to our rolling live blog coverage for everything business, companies, stock markets and personal finance.

Coming up today we’ve got the Nationwide House Price Index, financial results for the likes of Rolls Royce and the London Stock Exchange Group, plus plenty more.