THE WEEK AHEAD

The supermarket group WM Morrison is due to publish first-half results on Thursday and analysts are anticipating news of steady growth in like-for-like (LFL) sales.

Citigroup, for example, anticipates second-quarter LFL sales growth excluding petrol of between 7 and 7.5 per cent, while Dresdner Kleinwort expects summer market share gains to translate into 8 per cent growth, a neat improvement on the 7 per cent delivered in the first quarter.

"In our view, the Morrison story is hard to fault at the moment," Citi said in a recent preview note. "Sales growth is impressive, delivering steady market share growth despite limited new space coming on stream. Margins continue to expand nicely and cash flows are strong."

Today: Analysts do not anticipate any surprises from Associated British Foods, the food ingredients and retail group which is due to publish a year-end update today.

"The third quarter update in July was broadly as expected and we see no reason why there should have been any material change in the fourth quarter," UBS said, forecasting 635m in adjusted pre-tax profits for 2008.

Beyond the numbers, recent speculation linking the company to Ebro's Spanish sugar operations is likely to be among the key areas of investor interest.

"We can see a rationale," the broker said. "ABF has already secured agreement to use Ebro's new Cadiz cane refinery as a route to market for its African sugar ... but the speculated price tag (500m) is a bigger scale of investment than we would have expected."

Also today, Kofax is due to publish preliminary results and, given the indications in the company's interim management statement in July, Panmure Gordon anticipates the figures to be in line with market expectations, forecasting adjusted pre-tax profits of 17m on revenues of 155.1m.

"The bad news is that software licences will have lower growth, which endorses our view of lower growth in the data capture market and a difficult competitive environment," the broker said. "In addition, given the business mix (this is a blended software- services-hardware business) we continue to dispute the takeover story which has propped up the share price."

Looking ahead, Panmure expects the company to reiterate its confidence in achieving 10 per cent revenue growth (in constant currency terms) in the software business in 2009.

Results/updates: Kofax, Associated British Foods.

Tomorrow: Morse, the IT services and technology group, is due to publish full-year results and the focus is likely to be on the executive chairman Kevin Loosemore's plans to rebuild the company.