London pre-open: Stocks to rise; Rightmove house prices in focus

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to gain at the open on Monday following a mostly positive Asian session, as investors mulled the latest house price data from Rightmove. The FTSE 100 was called to open around 20 points higher. At 0730 BST, Brent crude was down 0.1% at $88.41 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate was off 0.7% at $81.86.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said: "US and European futures are in positive territory heading into the weekly opening bell. In fact, Q2 earnings have been so strong that investors are not willing to jump off the back of the bull, conscious that the underlying economic and geopolitical issues are not necessarily bad for company earnings: higher - and volatile - energy prices have been a boon for global energy companies, while banks printed strong results thanks to increased trading activity and financing of the AI buildout."

Meanwhile, developments in the Middle East remained in focus as the US-Iran ceasefire was set to expire.

"Israel struck Lebanon over the weekend, while the US is preparing new sanctions on Iran and the interim US-Iran ceasefire expires today," Danske Bank said. "Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz show little progress, though reported crude shipments by producers in the Middle East continued through the waterway and Iran-Oman talks appear to be progressing without US participation."

On home shores, property portal Rightmove downgraded its forecast for asking prices this year as it reported a drop in August property prices.

Prices fell 1% on the year following a 0.4% decline in July. This marked the largest annual price fall since December 2023. On the month, prices were down 2% in August following a 1% fall a year earlier.

The average price of a home stood at £364,999, versus £372,359 last month.

Rightmove downgraded its national average 2026 price forecast to between flat and a 2% decline, having previously expected a 2% increase.

Colleen Babcock, property expert at Rightmove, said: "This month's larger-than-usual August price drop is a sign that many sellers are recognising the reality of the market and pricing much more competitively from day one. Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important.

"While no seller likes to come to market lower than they might have hoped, Rightmove analysis shows that those who price realistically are statistically proven to be giving themselves the strongest chance of finding a buyer and successfully completing a move. One tactic some sellers are using when considering lower offers on their home, is to also make a lower offer themselves on their onwards purchase, to see if they can make up the difference."

In corporate news, Telecom Plus - which trades as Utility Warehouse - said it was confident of meeting its guidance for FY27 and of delivering on its long-term goal of £175m of adjusted pre-tax profit by FY31 following an "encouraging" start to the year.

In an update ahead of its annual general meeting, the company reiterated full-year guidance for adjusted pre-tax profit of £80m to £90m.

Chairman Charles Wigoder said: "We have made an encouraging start to FY27, with early momentum from our new five-year plan clearly visible across the business. Multiservice customer growth is tracking ahead of our FY27 target, driven by the initial investments we have made in our customer proposition and the resulting strong performance of our Partner network, where both activity and recruitment are running at record levels."

Drugmaker AstraZeneca posted two contrasting lung‑cancer updates, discontinuing one Phase III study while reporting strong survival gains from another.

AstraZeneca said it will halt the eVOLVE‑Lung02 Phase III trial of volrustomig plus chemotherapy in first‑line metastatic non‑small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) with PD‑L1 expression below 50%.

Separately, AstraZeneca reported positive high‑level results from its SAFFRON Phase III trial, where Tagrisso (osimertinib) combined with Orpathys (savolitinib) delivered "statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements" in both progression‑free and overall survival versus platinum‑based chemotherapy.