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Barclays (BARC) has launched a fresh £1bn share buyback as part of a larger plan to return at least £15bn in cash over the next three years, as the FTSE 100 bank delivered better than expected profits in the final quarter of 2025.

The group pulled in pre-tax profit of £1.9bn for the final quarter, £200mn ahead of what analysts had predicted. The investment bank arm was the biggest surprise, with profits up 44 per cent as the fixed income and equities units delivered double-digit income growth. 

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Bellway (BWY) said it is seeing “clear signs of improvement” in customer demand in recent weeks, following a quieter patch in the autumn. Its net private reservation rate per outlet per week, a key measure of activity, rose 2 per cent year on year to 0.46, excluding bulk deals. 

The housebuilder completed 4,700 homes in the six months to January, just over half of its full year guidance of 9,200, and a 3 per cent increase on last year. It confirmed its underlying operation margin guidance of 11 per cent. 

Chief executive Jason Honeyman also reiterated his previous calls for the government to introduce “essential financial support for first-time buyers”.

The shares rose 3 per cent in early trading, partly erasing the previous week’s losses due to rising gilt yields as a result of political uncertainty in the UK.

BT Group (BT.A) is promoting Katie Mulligan to become chief executive at Openreach. She is currently deputy chief executive at the business, which provides the digital infrastructure for much of the country’s broadband.

Current Openreach head, Clive Selley, is moving to head the group’s international division. He replaced Bas Burger, who is set to leave the company after 18 years.

The changes provide Openreach with “continued commercial and customer momentum in the UK”, and will speed up BT’s overhaul of its international arm, chief executive Allison Kirkby said. The moves will take place from April.

Last week, BT Group reported a 4 per cent decline in revenue and a 1 per cent fall in adjusted cash profit for the three months to December.

Ryanair (IE:RYA) has signed a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar” agreement with engine maker CFM to buy engines and spare parts.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said that the agreement, which will run from 2029 when the airline brings its maintenance in-house, “will be worth in excess of $1bn (£732mn) annually” to CFM, which is a joint venture between France’s Safran (FR:SAF) and GE Aerospace (US:GE).

Ryanair currently has a “power by the hour” contract which has protected it from surging costs for new engines and spare parts, but this is set to expire within the next few years. It is currently in the process of setting up two engine maintenance facilities to support its fleet of almost 2,000 B737 engines.

Speaking on the company’s most recent earnings call, O’Leary said engine costs “are completely out of control” given post-pandemic constraints in the aerospace supply chain. 

AstraZeneca (AZN) is such a reliable performer these days that the full-year results had a routine feel to them, with no sense that the early year imbroglio over tariffs had any measurable impact on its performance. The shares rose by a modest 1.5 per cent in early trading.

The standout result was again the drugmaker’s oncology portfolio, which produced revenue growth of 17 cent per cent at constant currency to end the year at $25.6bn (£18.7bn).

That performance was led by Astra’s ‘Big Five’ medicines in the category, with lung cancer treatment Tagrisso rapidly turning into one of the most successful targeted oncology medicines in global pharma. Tagrisso sales grew by 10 per cent at constant currency to $7.25bn.

Importantly, this did not come at the expense of profitability and management’s defined measure of core margin breached a psychologically important threshold by coming in at 31 per cent. This was helped by sedate growth in overall costs, with general expenses falling by 1 per cent to $19.9bn, while R&D expenses grew by a modest 5 per cent to $14.2bn.

Management’s guidance for 2026 is that total revenue is expected to increase by a mid-to-high single-digit percentage, while core earnings per share is expected to increase by low double-digits.