BUSINESS LIVE: UK wage growth maintains record pace

AB Foods has raised its full-year profit outlook for the second time in four months, boosted by strong performance from both its Primark clothing business and its food operations.

The group now expects full-year adjusted operating profit, its key profit measure, to be “slightly better” than its previous expectations of “moderately ahead” of last year’s profit of £1.44bn.

Shares in an online gaming group co-owned by David Beckham rose after it signed another deal with Sky.

Guild Esports, whose teams of gaming professionals compete against rivals for money, has named Sky Glass as its official television partner.

Sky Glass is Sky’s TV streaming service that doesn’t require a satellite dish.

British wages, excluding bonuses, were 7.8 percent higher than a year earlier in the three months to July, unchanged from the three months to June, but new data from the Office for National Statistics shows signs that The British labor market is finally cooling.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent in the three months to July from 4.2 percent the previous month, its highest level since the three months to September 2021.

The unemployment rate is already higher than the 4.1 percent that the Bank of England had forecast for the third quarter as a whole, when it published its last set of forecasts in early August.

The figures will be analyzed ahead of the Bank of England’s next interest rate decision, with the bank likely to be encouraged by a weakening labor market but cautious about still high wage growth.