(Reuters) – British shares rose on Thursday on a global wave sparked by a series of positive company reports and strong quarterly results from AI darling Nvidia, but gains were capped by a decline in AstraZeneca.
As of 0819 GMT, the blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.1% and the mid-cap FTSE 250 index was up 0.4%.
Sentiment rose across markets in Asia and Europe after chip designer Nvidia predicted higher quarterly sales and its Frankfurt-listed stock soared more than 10%.
In the UK, Beasley rose 8.2% to top the blue-chip index after the company returned about $300 million to shareholders.
Rolls-Royce rose 7.2% as the engineering company said its profits more than doubled last year and are expected to rise further this year.
Anglo American rose 3.9% after the mining company said it would review its assets after a 94% drop in annual profits.
However, the gains in the FTSE 100 index were limited as the shares of major AstraZeneca fell by 1.8% as they traded ex-dividend.
The focus will be on the preliminary domestic S&P Global/CIPS UK Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for February, which will be released later in the day as an indicator of the health of the economy.
Meanwhile, London Stock Exchange Group’s various news and currency trading platforms around the world suffered brief outages as European markets opened on Thursday.
(Reporting by Shristi Achar A in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)