The oil major announced plans for share buybacks of $1.75 billion before its first-quarter 2024 results and committed to $3.5 billion in buybacks for the first half of 2024. BP Plc reported a fourth-quarter profit above estimates and increased its dividend by 10% to 7.27 cents per share, sending the stock up by 6%.

Yesterday, a stronger than expected US ISM services in January renewed concerns about inflation. Prices in the sector rose at the fastest pace for a year. This comes after Fed chair Jerome Powell, spoke on CBS on Sunday. He said the Fed doesn’t expect a rate cut next month, or more than three this year.

Among other corporate results, cleaning firm React Group reported a swing to a pretax profit of GBP 50,000 for the financial year 2023, up from a GBP 701,000 pretax loss the previous year. Revenue jumped 70% to GBP 19.6 million, driven by acquisitions and organic growth. The company cited strong momentum going into financial 2024.

Renishaw reported a 27% fall in pretax profit to GBP 56.5 million for the first half of the financial year, with revenue declining 4.9% to GBP 330.5 million. The company expects market conditions to improve in the second half.

Virgin Money UK retained its annual profit margin forecast and saw improvement in the mortgage market.

In other news, The US FDA has accepted for priority review GSK's application to extend the RSV vaccine indication to adults aged 50 to 59 years.

Lloyds Banking Group is nearing a settlement of a GBP 1.3 billion lawsuit accusing the bank of manipulating Libor interest rates. Meanwhile, Anglo American's CEO signaled further cost cuts and job losses.

In terms of macro data, today we have the release of the S&P Global Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the UK's economic output in January, along with UK construction PMI.

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