Companies reporting next week

FOLLOWING the traditional festive lull, company announcements are set to pick up, with several updates on Christmas trading.

Analysts say that anecdotal evidence suggests most of the UK retailers have traded strongly over the festive period, with less stock going into the January sales. And a survey this week from the CBI showed that retailers had a bumper Christmas with sales growth the highest since the 1980s boom.

Among areas of particular strength this Christmas are thought to be clothing and white and brown goods (such as kitchen equipment and electronics), especially digital products and household goods, said fund manager Gerrard. Clothing retailers issuing trading updates next week include fashion chain Next on Tuesday, Top Shop-to-Dorothy Perkins group Arcadia on Wednesday and department store group Selfridges on Thursday.

Rowan Morgan, analyst at Teather & Greenwood, said Arcadia had brought forward its statement by a week, adding the only implication was that the news must be good.

He is also expecting good news from Next, and said of Selfridges, that it had an uneasy few weeks after September 11 but that it should have seen business pick up in December.

Of those issuing statements on Wednesday, Dixons is set to claim the limelight as it reports its interims - expected to show a drop in pre-tax profits to £87.4m, against £91.2m. Among its chains, the Dixons and Currys outlets are expected to have performed well because of strong demand for digital products, games and household goods. But PC World and The Link will not have performed so well, given the weak PC and mobile phone markets, Gerrard said.

The robust evidence on the high street has fuelled expectations that the Bank of England will leave interest rates on hold when its Monetary Policy Committee announces its next decision on Thursday. Rates were cut from 6% to 4% last year as the Bank moved to ward off the effects of the global downturn but the long-term outlook from some economists is for interest rate rises by the year end.

Among other announcements, investors will be gearing up for a robust set of figures on Wednesday when car dealership Reg Vardy publishes its interim results.

In September, chairman Sir Peter Vardy told shareholders that new vehicle registrations had enjoyed continuous growth over the previous 11 months, with falling prices and low interest rates encouraging people to splash out on a new car.

House broker Dresdner Kleinwort is forecasting interim pre-tax profits of £14m, a huge gain over last year's figure of £4.9m. The 2000 profits were affected by customers looking outside the UK for cheaper deals.

It is likely to be the US that is of most interest to Pace Micro Technology shareholders when the group posts interim figures on Tuesday. With a maturing UK market, Pace - which makes set-top boxes for digital and interactive TV - has turned its sights to the US. It has secured some key deals but with America having its current economic troubles, investors will be keen for an update on how Pace is doing.

House brokers CSFB and ABN Amro are predicting interim pre-tax profits of £19.3m, an improvement on last year's figure of £18.4m.