Friday preview: Helical Bar to return to profit

If the weather holds, it might be a good day to take off unless you are a shareholder of commercial property firm Helical Bar, as there is not much else on the corporate agenda, and precious little economic data due out on Friday.

In its February interim management statement, Helical Bar said it had made further progress in operational and financing activities. The latter was a reference to £133m of new bank facilities which will provide the company with more firepower with which to bag a few properties.

"We have continued to make substantial progress in identifying and acquiring assets with the potential to provide future capital and income growth as well as with our drive to recycle capital from our existing portfolio," said the company's Chief Executive, Michael Slade.

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"Our development programme remains on course with planning consents achieved on a number of key projects," he added.

Shareholders will be looking for progress on those planning consents and an update on annual rental income, which had risen to £25.8m in February from £20.0m at the end of September 2011.

The market is expecting a return to profit for Helical Bar, with the median forecast for profit before tax being £6.4m. Earnings per share are tipped to be 6.30p and analysts are expecting the full year divi to rise to 5p from 4.90p the year before.

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