Stock prices in London closed lower on Thursday as the FTSE 100 broke its winning streak amid a sharp fall for British Gas owner Centrica, though oil majors climbed as Brent surged on uncertainty in Iran.

The FTSE 100 index closed down 59.14 points, or 0.6%, at 10,627.04, the FTSE 250 ended down 112.95 points, or 0.5%, at 23,573.49, and the AIM all-share closed down 0.60 points, or 0.1%, at 811.14.

In European equities, the Cac 40 in Paris closed down 0.4%, and the Dax 40 in Frankfurt ended 0.9% lower.

The pound slumped to 1.3455 dollars on Thursday afternoon from 1.3548 at the equities close on Wednesday.

“The [FTSE 100] index fell back as investors digest a number of earnings results. But the downside could prove to be short-lived,” said StoneX analyst Fawad Razaqzada.

“Supported by a weaker pound and expectations that the Bank of England will cut rates in March, and potentially again in June, investors have been piling into UK stocks lately. That trend is likely to stay for a while yet.

“Today, rising oil prices amid Middle East tensions are helping to cushion the falls, with energy names like BP providing support.”

Fears around developments in Iran were in focus on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump urged Tehran to strike a “meaningful” deal as a huge American military build-up takes shape in the Middle East amid US threats of action.

“It’s proven to be over the years not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran. We have to make a meaningful deal otherwise bad things happen,” he told the inaugural meeting of the so-called Board of Peace, his initiative to secure stability in Gaza.

He warned that Washington “may have to take it a step further” without any agreement, adding: “You’re going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.”

Brent oil was higher at 71.71 dollars a barrel on Thursday afternoon from 69.62 late on Wednesday. Gold barely budged, sitting at 5,003.14 dollars an ounce, against 5,002.90.

As a result, shares in BP and Shell ended up 2.0% and 0.5% respectively.

Stocks in New York were lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.5%, the S&P 500 index fell 0.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.2%.

The yield on the US 10-year Treasury was unchanged from Wednesday at 4.08%. The yield on the US 30-year Treasury widened to 4.71% from 4.69%.

Some Federal Reserve policymakers believe the central bank should not rule out rate hikes, minutes from its latest meeting showed.

“Several participants indicated that they would have supported a two-sided description of the committee’s future interest rate decisions, reflecting the possibility that upward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate could be appropriate if inflation remains at above-target levels,” according to the minutes released on Wednesday.

The Fed last month left the federal funds rate target range at 3.50%-3.75%.

In London, Centrica fell the most on the FTSE 100, losing 4.7% after the firm said it is pausing its share buybacks to invest in its infrastructure portfolio, including nuclear power. In addition, analysts said its 2026 guidance “appears weak”.

Centrica noted that it returned £1.1 billion in total to shareholders during 2025, including £800 million though share buybacks. It completed its overall £2 billion share buyback programme in January, repurchasing a quarter of its total share capital.

However, the company said: “We are now pausing the programme as we believe investment offers an opportunity to create more value for shareholders at this juncture. We will retain our capital discipline, the balance sheet will remain under constant review and excess capital will be returned to shareholders.”

Berenberg said the firm is guiding for a lower 2026, with improvements in the long term.

Analysts at UBS said guidance for 2026 “appears weak” as the centre of the ebitda range for the new retail and optimisation segments is £900 million, versus UBS’s £977 million.

“Centrica is hitting pause on buybacks so it can allocate spending to growth projects including the Sizewell C nuclear power. Executing on these ventures will be challenging and will put a dent in the company’s healthy cash position but could deliver more stable earnings if they ultimately prove successful,” said AJ Bell analyst Dan Coatsworth.

Mondi shares climbed 1.2%. It slashed its dividend as the packaging firm continued to grapple with “prolonged cyclical downturn” facing the industry.

The Weybridge-based packaging firm chopped its final dividend to 4.92 euro cents in 2025, down sharply from 46.67 cents in 2024, reducing the total payout for 2025 to 28.25 cents from 70 cents.

For 2025, Mondi reported a 29% slump in pre-tax profit to 269 million euros from 378 million in 2024.

But revenue was 7.66 billion euros, up 3.2% from 7.42 billion. Underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation were down 4.7% to 1.00 billion euros from 1.05 billion.

On the FTSE 250 index, Raspberry Pi retreated 6.9% after making sharp gains this week after a social media post said AI agents such as OpenClaw could drive demand for the firm’s single-board computers.

The stock is still up 36% over the last week.

On AIM, shares in Thruvision Group jumped 20%.

The Abingdon-based provider of walk-through people-screening technology said it has secured multiple new contracts at UK custodial facilities, worth £500,000 in total.

“These contract awards reflect the growing recognition of Thruvision’s technology across UK custodial settings and the clear operational value it delivers. The fact that institutions are selecting our solutions independently, on a site-by-site basis, demonstrates genuine demand pull and increasing confidence in our capability,” said chief executive Victoria Balchin.

The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were British American Tobacco, up 129.0p at 4,473.0p, Relx, up 59.0p at 2,293.0p, BAE Systems, up 53.0p at 2,163.0p, BP, up 9.5p at 479.0p, and Babcock International, up 21.0p at 1,397.0p.

The biggest fallers were Centrica, down 10.1p at 185.9p, Barclays, down 18.1p at 467.9p, Rio Tinto, down 271.0p at 7,118.0p, easyJet, down 16.8p at 475.5p, and Metlen Energy & Metals, down 1.2p at 34.9p.

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Walmart said Thursday that holiday-quarter sales rose nearly 6% and its quarterly earnings and revenue surpassed Wall Street’s expectations as gains in e-commerce, advertising and its third-party marketplace boosted its business.

For the full current fiscal year, Walmart said it expects net sales to increase by 3.5% to 4.5% and adjusted earnings per share to range from $2.75 to $2.85. That earnings outlook fell short of Wall Street’s expectations of $2.96 per share, according to LSEG. 

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said speedy deliveries from stores are helping Walmart attract more shoppers, particularly those with higher incomes. 

“Our ability to serve customers at the scale that we have, combined with the speed that we now have, is really translating into continued market share gains,” he said.

Rainey said the company’s market share gains cut across all incomes, but were larger among upper-income households. For example, with fashion, a category that grew by a mid-single-digit percentage in the fourth quarter, almost all of that increase came from households with an annual income over $100,000, he said.

In the coming months, Rainey said he expects price increases from inflation and President Donald Trump‘s tariff hikes to ease. Inflation at Walmart in the U.S. in the fourth quarter was just above 1%, with slightly lower inflation for food and slightly higher for general merchandise, he said.

“It seems to be a little bit more of a normalized price environment,” he said. “I think we have, largely as a retail industry, absorbed or seen the brunt of the impact from tariffs.”

While that comment is welcome news to many U.S. shoppers who buy at the country’s largest grocer, it may be too early to say what pricing trends at the retailer mean for the rest of the economy. Though Walmart is viewed as a key barometer for the wider retail industry, it traditionally has had more power than its competitors to keep prices low in part because of its scale.

Here is what the big-box retailer reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 74 cents adjusted vs. 73 cents expected
• Revenue:  $190.66 billion vs. $190.43 billion expected

Shares of Walmart were up about 2% in morning trading Thursday.

Yet as of Wednesday’s close, shares of the company have climbed about 22% over the past year and roughly 14% so far this year. That’s outpaced the S&P 500′s 12% gain over the past year and less than 1% rise year to date.

Walmart’s results Thursday also show an inflection point in the industry. For the first time, Amazon topped Walmart as the largest company by annual revenue, as the company posted $716.9 billion in sales for its most recent fiscal year compared with $713.2 billion for Walmart.

The companies aren’t an exact comparison, as Amazon gets a sizeable piece of its revenue from cloud computing and other tech services. Yet it underscores the competition between the two rivals, particularly as Walmart follows a similar playbook by growing revenue streams outside of brick-and-mortar retail, like from ads and its marketplace.

In the three-month period that ended Jan. 31, Walmart’s net income decreased to $4.24 billion, or 53 cents per share, compared with $5.25 billion, or 65 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Excluding one-time items like investment gains and losses, legal settlements and business reorganization, Walmart’s adjusted earnings per share were 74 cents.

Revenue rose from $180.55 billion in the year-ago quarter. 

Comparable sales jumped 4.6% for Walmart’s U.S. business and 4% for Sam’s Club in the fourth quarter, excluding fuel, compared with the year-ago period. The industry metric, also called same-store sales, includes sales from stores and clubs open for at least a year.

Walmart’s e-commerce sales in the U.S. rose 27% compared with the year-ago period, fueled by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery of online orders, along with the retailer’s third-party marketplace. That marked the company’s 15th straight quarter of double-digit digital gains. Global e-commerce sales increased 24% year over year.

For the company’s U.S. business, e-commerce accounted for 23% of sales – a record high for Walmart. The digital growth in the quarter included an approximately 50% gain in store-fulfilled deliveries and a roughly 41% increase in sales from Walmart Connect, its advertising business, the company said.

While Walmart is gaining ground, its growth is not evenly distributed across income groups.

In the interview with CNBC, Rainey said the company does “see some pressure on the lowest income cohort.” He said Walmart has tracked year-over-year spending trends by income group. Like in the prior quarter, he said it saw that spending among the highest earners compared to lower-income groups “had gapped out a little bit.”

The trend he described reflects what some economists have called the “K-shaped economy.”

Walmart’s quarterly report marked the first under its new CEO, John Furner. Furner, the former Walmart U.S. CEO and a more than three-decade company veteran, succeeded Doug McMillon as Walmart’s top executive on Feb. 1.

Investors largely expect Furner to focus on similar priorities as his predecessor McMillon, such as increasing Walmart’s online business, attracting more customers across incomes, and ramping up higher-margin businesses like its third-party marketplace and advertising.

Along with getting a new CEO, Walmart has hit other milestones lately. Its stock switched to the tech-heavy Nasdaq in December and its market value hit $1 trillion earlier this month.

Along with its results Thursday, Walmart also announced a new $30 billion share repurchase authorization, replacing a $20 billion buyback program approved in 2022.

Tata Punch EV facelift launch updates: The facelifted Tata Punch EV is all set to launch tomorrow, February 20. With this update, Tata Motors’ smallest electric SUV will get a sharper design, more features and possibly improved range. Here are five key things you might want to know about the new Punch EV.

Exterior

The design update is subtle but noticeable. At the front, the Punch EV gets a new bumper with a cleaner look, a larger air dam and bigger headlamp clusters with black surrounds. The connected LED DRL has been removed, but the slim DRLs and nose-mounted charging flap remain. A new textured faux silver skid plate adds a fresh touch.

From the side, the silhouette stays the same. You still get the ‘Tata.ev’ badge on the doors and 16-inch dual-tone aero alloy wheels. The C-pillar-mounted rear door handles also continue, giving it a quirky appeal. The rear design is yet to be fully revealed, but it is expected to get connected LED tail lamps and a revised bumper.

Interior 

Inside, the updates are expected to be small but useful. New upholstery, a refreshed cabin theme and better seat comfort with improved thigh support are likely. The two-spoke illuminated steering wheel, floating infotainment screen and rotary gear selector will remain. A larger 12.3-inch touchscreen may replace the current unit to boost the tech feel.

Features and safety

The updated model could add a powered driver seat, a bigger infotainment screen and new graphics for the 10.25-inch digital cluster. Existing features like a voice-enabled sunroof, ventilated seats, wireless charger, ambient lighting and air purifier will continue. 

On the safety side, six airbags, ESC, electronic parking brake with auto-hold, hill hold, 360-degree camera and rear sensors will remain. ADAS features may also be introduced.

Powertrain options

The facelift is expected to continue with the 25kWh and 35kWh battery packs. Tata may retune the powertrains for better efficiency. A larger 40kWh battery pack, borrowed from the Nexon, is also likely.

Expected price and rivals

Prices are likely to range between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 15 lakh (ex-showroom), slightly higher than the current model. It will mainly rival the Citroen eC3. It can also be seen as an alternative to the MG Windsor EV, Mahindra XUV 3XO EV and its bigger sibling, the Tata Nexon EV.