Next week on the stock market

Like all housebuilders, Barratt Developments has had to wrestle against some tough conditions in recent times. In a first-quarter update, we heard that reservations had taken a hit as buyers struggled with mortgage affordability, and the scrapping of the Help to Buy scheme hasn’t helped the sector either.

In next week’s half-year results, we expect to hear a slightly more upbeat tune from Barratt, as the outlook for the sector is showing some early signs of improvement. Lenders are becoming more competitive, which should stimulate buyer demand and help prop up the group’s order book. And build cost inflation is easing, which should provide some welcome relief to the group’s margins. We expect this to keep Barratt’s full-year guidance of 13,250-14,250 new homes well within reach. But it will take time for all of these tailwinds to feed through to the income statement, so markets still expect half-year revenue to be down by around a third at £1.8bn.

The market expects revenue to have nudged up around 0.8% in next week’s results, while operating profit’s anticipated to show close to 28% growth. Given the group’s valuation has seen a roughly 7.5% uplift since the start of the year, there’s clearly growing optimism that Disney can deliver.

All eyes will be on streaming subscriber growth over at Disney+. Competition remains fierce, and the group’s other big brands like ESPN+ and Hulu are also up against stiff competition. It’s upset on this front that’s likely to move the dial.

Finally, it’s cost savings that investors will be watching. Disney expects to reduce costs by a further $2bn, but this won't be coming from further widespread job cuts. Stemming losses in streaming is the right play to make, but it’s a difficult balance to get right when competitors are snapping at your heels.

All eyes are on price hikes at brand powerhouse Unilever. Last quarter, Unilever reported third-quarter sales of €15.2bn, reflecting underlying sales growth of 5.2% - in line with expectations. Price hikes of 5.8% more than offset a 0.6% drop in volumes.

With inflation easing, we wonder how pronounced price increases are nowadays. We’d also like to see volumes picking up some more slack.

New CEO Hein Schumacher has announced a renewed focus on gross margin improvement, and we’d like some more information on how this is going. A focus on the group’s 30 biggest brands is on the cards, and we should get some details on further plans to streamline the portfolio.