Corporate diary: May 11 - May 15

Diary commentary from FT reporters; data and company announcements, unless otherwise stated, from Thomson Reuters. Company announcements are of information publicly available before last week. <

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If easyJet's half-year results are as forecast, the budget airline could make its first profit during the period for more than a decade.

The last time the Luton-based airline turned a pre-tax profit in its first half was in 2002. Last year it made a pre-tax loss of £53m, during what is traditionally a slower winter trading period for airlines.

However, chief executive Carolyn McCall expects easyJet's performance to come in somewhere between a pre-tax loss of £5m and a pre-tax profit of £10m.

Analysts will be keeping an eye out for any information about forward bookings as a guide to full-year performance - the summer holiday season being when airlines make the most money.

Load factors, a measure of how full planes are, will also be in focus. "We had a bit of a surprise in January when it came down 0.3 per cent, but in the last few months it's been going up again," said Gert Zonneveld, analyst at broker Panmure.

The broader outlook for budget airlines has been good, , with carriers including Budapest-based Wizz and Norwegian Air Shuttle recently reporting growth in passenger numbers. Jane Wild

EARNINGS

EasyJet H1 -1.64p (-10.40p)

ThyssenKrupp Q2 €0.28 (€0.45)

RWE's earnings from conventional power generation - gas, coal and nuclear - dropped by nearly a third to €979m last year.

There is little prospect of brighter news with first-quarter results, as German utilities suffer from the country's shift to renewables.

Last week, Eon, Germany's biggest utility by market value, reported a fall of 15 per cent in underlying net income for the first quarter.

Germany's push into renewables has led to a glut of power that has pushed wholesale prices down. For both businesses, decisions being made by politicians and the courts in coming months will be crucial.

RWE's chief executive Peter Terium said last month that the company's existence was under threat from government plans to force older coal-fired plants to pay more for emissions.

If the proposals go through without being diluted, they would force the closure of all RWE's lignite-fired plants, which accounted for 37 per cent of its electricity generation in 2014.

Meanwhile, the EU's Court of Justice is due to rule this year on whether Germany's nuclear fuel tax violates EU rules. An advocate-general, an adviser to the court, sided with the German government in an opinion published in February. Both Eon and RWE have challenged the legality of the tax.

RWE has been praised by analysts for skilful management of a difficult situation. Its efficiency programme, which made savings in administration and IT, reduced costs by €400m compared with a planned €150m last year.

The utility has sold its oil and gas exploration arm Dea to Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's LetterOne Group. The sale will reduce RWE's net debt this year. RWE's stake in Urenco, a nuclear fuel processor, is also up for sale.

RWE's management says there are no plans to follow the example of Eon, which is spinning off its fossil fuel power plants to focus on renewables. Jeevan Vasagar

Is the world ready for more gigantic cargo ships built from the equivalent quantity of steel contained in eight Eiffel Towers?

AP Moller-Maersk, which reports its first-quarter results, this summer will receive the last of 20 of the mighty Triple E behemoths which it ordered in 2011. The company, closely watched as a bellwether for global trade as it transports 15 per cent of all seaborne freight, has said it is about to order more of the world's largest vessels, which are capable of transporting 18,000 containers in one go - or 182m iPads.

But in March the boss of Maersk's shipping operations warned that global trade volumes were "sluggish" and growth could slow this year, with his own personal estimate "towards the lower end" of 3 to 5 per cent. Maersk has said it needs new ships to help it maintain its market leadership up until the end of the decade.

In recent years the company has tried to focus its once sprawling operations on four main areas: container shipping, oil production and exploration, port terminals, and drilling rigs. Maersk Oil, once the main profit contributor of the group, has suffered from the falling oil price, resulting in big writedowns and a $860m net loss last year.

Maersk Line, the world's biggest container shipping line, saw net profits grow to $2.3bn in 2014, up from $1.5bn in 2013. David Crouch

EARNINGS

AP Moller-Maersk Q1 $53.33 ($48.14)

RWE Q1 (FY estimate) €1.98 (€2.09)

SABMiller FY $2.36 ($2.39)

Japanese industrial conglomerate Hitachi appears likely to achieve a second straight year of record high operating profit when it reports its annual earnings.

Armed with robust financial results and harbouring ambitions for global expansion, investors will be looking for signs of further acquisitions by the Japanese company, which makes everything from nuclear power plants, rail systems to elevators.

In February, Hitachi reached a €809m cash deal to acquire Finmeccanica's rail assets, bringing its position closer to the global rivals of Bombardier, Alstom and Siemens.

Analysts forecast that Hitachi will report a 10 per cent growth in operating profit to Y586.83bn ($4.9bn) and flat sales of around Y9.6tn for the fiscal year that ended in March, according to Bloomberg consensus figures. For the current financial year through March 2016, they project the company to generate an operating profit of Y686.8bn.

Despite the stable earnings outlook, analysts say risks include slowing automotive-related sales in China.

JPMorgan analyst Hisashi Moriyama has also noted the difficulty of sustaining the growth of the social infrastructure market, urging Hitachi to consider long-term strategic moves. "One possibility might be a business swap that involves selling Hitachi's currently unprofitable nuclear power equipment business to Toshiba," he added. Kana Inagaki

Analysts expect Telefonica to unveil a notable rise in first-quarter earnings, amid hope that the economic recovery in the group's Spanish home market and a recent whirlwind of deals is starting to pay off. Consensus estimates are for earnings per share to rise from €0.603 last year to €0.802.

The Spanish economy is set to grow by as much as 3 per cent this year, prompting analysts at Citigroup to speak about an "inflection" moment also for the Madrid-based operator. "Having lost 42 per cent of its revenues…since the peak in 2007, Telefonica has now repriced and repositioned for growth," the bank said ahead of the results.

Spain aside, investors will be looking for guidance on Telefonica's recent series of acquisitions and disposals. The group has bulked up in Germany and Spain, while selling its O2 business in the UK. In Brazil, which accounts for more than a fifth of group revenue, Telefonica recently bought broadband provider GVT, in a bid to cement its position in Latin America's biggest market. Tobias Buck

EARNINGS

Hitachi FY Y57.35 (Y54.86)

Telefonica Q1 (FY estimate) €0.802 (€0.603)

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