Companies reporting next week

MORE clues about the effects of September 11 and consumer confidence will be sought next week - with comments from holiday giant

Travel and tourism has been hit hard by the current political and economic situation, but specialist operator Holidaybreak is expected to prove more robust than many of its mainstream competitors.

Over recent years it has seen a steady growth in profits and turnover and this year is unlikely to prove the exception - final pre-tax profits reported on Monday are forecast to come in at £24.6m, a 24% hike on last year.

The City will be keen for an update from tour operator First Choice on its future bookings, when the firm reports full-year figures on Tuesday. First Choice said in October it would cut more than 1,000 jobs in the wake of the September 11 tragedy, and scaled back its winter programme. It added the immediate cost of the disruption caused by the US attack would be around £10m.

Analysts are forecasting the group to show pre-tax profits, stripping out exceptional items and goodwill for the year to October 31 of £80m, against a comparable figure of £74.8m last time.

Catering group Compass has won a string of high-profile contracts in recent months, from the BBC to the Pentagon in the US, and final results on Wednesday are likely to reflect its good health.

Since de-merging from Granada in February, the group has sold the former Forte hotels and rebranded its motorway service areas Moto as the first step in a potential expansion of the brand into Europe. Fund manager Gerrard predicts full-year pre-tax profits of £580m, up from a pro-forma £518m last time.

A further update on the outlook for the housing market will be sought from Berkeley Group, a housebuilder that generates around 40% of its earnings from London, on Thursday.

So far the housing sector has held up to the economic uncertainty relatively well and analysts will be keen to see if Berkeley believes the market will continue to buck the trend elsewhere in the economy. Gerrard predicts interim pre-tax profits of £89.1m, up 11%.

Newspaper publisher Daily Mail & General Trust, which owns this website, is likely to show the effects of the well-documented advertising slowdown on Thursday, with final pre-tax profits due to fall to £165m from £187m before one-off costs.

Belhaven Breweries posts its half-year figures on Wednesday after a busy year for the Scottish brewing and pubs group. Belhaven has bought 15 pubs from Alloa-based Maclay and has also achieved a notable degree of organic growth.

In-house broker ING Charterhouse is predicting pre-tax profits of £4.8m - a marginal improvement on last year's £4.3m.