Canada has suspended passenger flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days amid surging cases in the south-Asian countries and fears over coronavirus variants. Omar Alghabra, Canada's minister of transport, pointed to the “high number of cases detected in air passengers from India and Pakistan” and the “continuing spread of variants of concern” in an announcement on Thursday evening. The Canadian government has received criticism for imposing tight controls at the border to halt the entry of overseas variants. India reported a world record 315,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday with its hospitals buckling under the strain and running out of oxygen to treat patients.  Officials in India are concerned about the spread of the B.1.617 strain that was first detected in the country last month and which is thought to be more infectious and vaccine evasive. Passengers who travel from India and Pakistan to Canada via other countries must produce a negative coronavirus test. Cargo flights from India to Canada will continue to allow the arrival of vaccines and personal protective equipment. Canada is battling its own resurgence in coronavirus cases, many of which are infections from variants, pushing up Covid-19 hospitalisation in some provinces to the highest levels since the pandemic began.

UK consumer confidence to its highest level since the first Covid-19 restrictions and boosted consumer spending to above pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that the economy rebounded at the start of the second quarter.  The UK consumer confidence index, a closely watched measure of how people view the state of their personal finances and wider economic prospects, rose one point to minus 15 in April, according to research company GfK.  The reading, based on data collected between April 1 and April 13, largely before the reopening began in England on April 12, was the highest level since February 2020, before the first Covid-19 restrictions started.  Joe Staton, client strategy director at GfK, predicted further improvements in confidence as the recovery gains momentum. “Confident consumers will continue to spend and drive the wheels of UK finances into the summer and beyond,” he said. Read more here

Intel comfortably beat Wall Street expectations in its latest quarter as continued strong sales of PCs during the pandemic made up most of the lost ground from weaker data centre demand, according to figures released late on Thursday. Despite modestly raising its financial projections for the rest of this year, however, the US chipmaker’s outlook still pointed to a challenging year ahead as it tries to accelerate a turnaround plan, and its shares slipped more than 1 per cent in after-market trading. The results are the first under new chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger, who laid out an ambitious plan last month to put Intel back at the forefront of chip manufacturing, in the process weighing on its near-term profit margins and pointing to a big jump in capital spending. The solid financial performance in the first quarter came despite supply constraints that have weighed on the entire industry in recent months, as well as inroads that rival AMD has been able to make into the CPU market as a result of Intel’s slips. Excluding $1.1bn of revenue from its NAND memory business, which is in the process of being sold to SK Hynix, Intel reported pro forma revenue of $18.6bn for its latest quarter, unchanged from the year before. Pro forma earnings, before the effect of a $2.2bn charge stemming mainly from a recent jury award against the company in a patent trial, reached $1.39 a share. Wall Street had forecast pro forma revenue of $17.8bn and earnings of $1.15 a share. Based on formal accounting principles, Intel’s net income fell 41 per cent, to $3.4bn, with earnings per share down 37 per cent at 82 cents. Intel and Nvidia had both signaled that business in their latest quarters was running ahead of their earlier expectations, thanks to continued strong demand for PCs and gaming as a result of the pandemic. Intel said revenue from its PC division rose 8 per cent in the quarter, to $10.6bn, while revenue from data centre customers fell back 20 per cent to $5.6bn.

Snap’s chief executive Evan Spiegel said that the easing of coronavirus lockdowns would boost engagement on his platform as users increasingly co-ordinate socialising, as the company posted bumper first quarter results.  Sales at Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, rose 66 per cent year on year to $770m in the first quarter of last year, beating analyst expectations of $742m, it said on Thursday. Daily active users reached 280m, up 22 per cent. “We are optimistic about the engagement trends we are seeing as the world is beginning to open up,” Spiegel said, adding that as restrictions eased in the US in February, the company saw “inflection points” with users posting short video-clip “Stories” about their lives and using its Snap Map feature to share their whereabouts and activities.  “More recently, we saw a rise in the rate of new friendships and bi-directional communication on Snapchat in late March as people have begun to socialise in broader groups,” he added.  The upbeat set of results benefitted from delays to privacy changes to Apple’s iOS 14 operating system, which will ban app developers from collecting data on iPhone users without their explicit consent in a bombshell update that is expected to be painful for the online ads industry.  The changes were expected to come into force towards the end of last year, but will now arrive next week. Snap, which explored frowned-upon ways to circumvent the rules according to a Financial Times report, said it was “not clear yet” what the longer-term impact of the changes would be.  The company guided year-on-year revenue growth of between 80 to 85 per cent in the second quarter of the year despite the changes – albeit coming from a lower base after the pandemic put a squeeze on Snap’s advertising clients in the second quarter of 2020. After a troubled 2019, Snap has undertaken a successful turnaround, with investments in its product upgrades and its offering to advertisers paying off. In March, Spiegel told a conference that a previous company forecast of multiple years of at least 50 per cent revenue growth was a baseline achievable even with further growth in user or engagement numbers.

Mattel booked its strongest first-quarter revenues in six years, lifted by demand for Barbie dolls and Jurassic World action figures as a pandemic-fuelled boom in toy sales carried into 2021.  France will reopen schools for younger students from Monday and a week later for older ones despite persistently high new daily infections and continued pressure on hospitals. The country has been in its third lockdown since late March with a nationwide curfew, strict limits on travel and all non-essential stores and establishments closed.  Sales of previously owned homes in the US slowed for a second straight month in March. Existing home sales fell 3.7 per cent from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6m units, the lowest level since August, according to the National Association of Realtors on Thursday.  The luxury sector is on track to shrug off the hit from Covid-19 as early as this year as eager shoppers in the US and China help push sales above pre-pandemic levels. Hermès on Thursday blew past analyst forecasts with the highest industry growth so far, delivering first-quarter revenue of €2bn that was 33 per cent higher than the same period in 2019. Initial applications for unemployment benefits in the US have fallen to a pandemic-era low for a second straight week. The labour department recorded 547,000 initial jobless claims on a seasonally adjusted basis, down from 586,000 the previous week.  PizzaExpress in the UK is to recruit 1,000 new staff as it emerges after months of lockdown and a major financial restructuring that led it to close almost 100 restaurants. Hospitality businesses across the UK are rushing to bring back furloughed employees and recruit new ones in anticipation of a bump in demand as lockdowns end.  American Airlines said it reduced its cash burn in the first quarter and sees demand recovering, which pushed shares up 3 per cent in early trade. The Texas-based airline predicted capacity will be down between 20 to 25 per cent in the latest quarter from the second quarter of 2019. Singapore is to tighten restrictions on travellers from India and introduce tighter safety measures on migrant worker dormitories after several residents tested positive for coronavirus. This week, 17 workers living in a dormitory in Singapore tested positive.

Intel comfortably beat Wall Street expectations in its latest quarter as continued strong sales of PCs during the pandemic made up most of the lost ground from weaker data centre demand, according to figures released late on Thursday.   Despite modestly raising its financial projections for the rest of this year, however, the US chipmaker’s outlook still pointed to a challenging year ahead as it tries to accelerate a turnaround plan, and its shares slipped more than 1 per cent in after-market trading. The results are the first under new chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger, who laid out an ambitious plan last month to put Intel back at the forefront of chip manufacturing, in the process weighing on its near-term profit margins and pointing to a big jump in capital spending. The solid financial performance in the first quarter came despite supply constraints that have weighed on the entire industry in recent months, as well as inroads that rival AMD has been able to make into the CPU market as a result of Intel’s slips. Excluding $1.1bn of revenue from its NAND memory business, which is in the process of being sold to SK Hynix, Intel reported pro forma revenue of $18.6bn for its latest quarter, unchanged from the year before. Pro forma earnings, before the effect of a $2.2bn charge stemming mainly from a recent jury award against the company in a patent trial, reached $1.39 a share. Wall Street had forecast pro forma revenue of $17.8bn and earnings of $1.15 a share. Based on formal accounting principles, Intel’s net income fell 41 per cent, to $3.4bn, with earnings per share down 37 per cent at 82 cents. Intel and Nvidia had both signaled that business in their latest quarters was running ahead of their earlier expectations, thanks to continued strong demand for PCs and gaming as a result of the pandemic. Intel said revenue from its PC division rose 8 per cent in the quarter, to $10.6bn, while revenue from data centre customers fell back 20 per cent to $5.6bn.

Snap’s chief executive Evan Spiegel said that the easing of coronavirus lockdowns would boost engagement on his platform as users increasingly co-ordinate socialising, as the company posted bumper first quarter results.  Sales at Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, rose 66 per cent year on year to $770m in the first quarter of last year, beating analyst expectations of $742m, it said on Thursday. Daily active users reached 280m, up 22 per cent. “We are optimistic about the engagement trends we are seeing as the world is beginning to open up,” Spiegel said, adding that as restrictions eased in the US in February, the company saw “inflection points” with users posting short video-clip “Stories” about their lives and using its Snap Map feature to share their whereabouts and activities.  “More recently, we saw a rise in the rate of new friendships and bi-directional communication on Snapchat in late March as people have begun to socialise in broader groups,” he added.  The upbeat set of results benefitted from delays to privacy changes to Apple’s iOS 14 operating system, which will ban app developers from collecting data on iPhone users without their explicit consent in a bombshell update that is expected to be painful for the online ads industry.  The changes were expected to come into force towards the end of last year, but will now arrive next week. Snap, which explored frowned-upon ways to circumvent the rules according to a Financial Times report, said it was “not clear yet” what the longer-term impact of the changes would be.  The company guided year-on-year revenue growth of between 80 to 85 per cent in the second quarter of the year despite the changes – albeit coming from a lower base after the pandemic put a squeeze on Snap’s advertising clients in the second quarter of 2020. After a troubled 2019, Snap has undertaken a successful turnaround, with investments in its product upgrades and its offering to advertisers paying off. In March, Spiegel told a conference that a previous company forecast of multiple years of at least 50 per cent revenue growth was a baseline achievable even with further growth in user or engagement numbers. 

Mattel booked its strongest first-quarter revenues in six years, lifted by demand for Barbie dolls and Jurassic World action figures as a pandemic-fuelled boom in toy sales carried into 2021. The toy maker’s net sales surged 47 per cent year on year, blowing past analysts’ expectations, with everything from American Girl dolls to Hot Wheels cars, Mega building sets and Uno card games flying off the shelves. In North America, gross sales of Barbie toys alone more than doubled. Ynon Kreiz, chief executive, said Mattel also had a strong start to the second quarter, including Easter week, despite the effects of inflation in ocean freight and some materials. While some of Mattel’s rapid growth in the first quarter can be attributed to weaker Covid-related comparisons, the company gained market share and recorded double-digit sales gains in each of the last three quarters. “It shows we didn’t just ride the wave,” Kreiz said. Toy sales have been on a tear during the pandemic, as parents scoop up dolls, plush animals and outdoor games to entertain their kids at home. Fifty-two percent of US parents spent more on holiday gifts in 2020, led by toys and games, according to Kidz Global research cited by the Toy Association, a trade group. Mattel had a particularly strong fourth quarter, reporting its strongest holiday sales in four years. Mattel continued to experience robust demand in the first three months of this year, in a sign of enduring demand at a time when economies are reopening and authorities are easing restrictions on social activity. Demand in retail stores has picked up, while Mattel’s ecommerce business grew by more than half in the quarter, according to Kreiz. Global doll revenues and sales of action figures, building sets, games and other items rose 69 per cent year on year. Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends toys drove sales of infant toys 31 per cent higher. Toy car sales gained 16 per cent. Overall, Mattel registered net sales of $874m, up from last year’s $594m. Analysts were looking for $684m. Mattel reported a net loss of $115m, compared with a $211m loss a year ago. The company lost 10 cents per share on an adjusted basis, better than the 35-cent loss that analysts expected.

UK government officials complained they were “drowning” in requests from MPs, ministers and other “VIP” contacts as they scrambled to source personal protective equipment at the start of the pandemic, the High Court heard on Thursday.  The existence of the “VIP lane” for PPE providers only emerged in November after an investigation by the National Audit Office, Whitehall’s spending watchdog, which revealed that those companies were 10 times more likely to be awarded contracts than other businesses.  Suppliers channelled through the VIP lane included those recommended by either health officials, ministers or MPs, prompting the NAO to conclude that “standards of transparency” had not been consistently met. Evidence disclosed to the High Court on Thursday suggested that the creation of the channel had in some cases hindered rather than helped the rapid procurement of safety equipment. An unnamed civil servant wrote in an email that officials were “drowning in VIP requests and high priority contacts” which “do not hold the right certification or do not pass due diligence”.  The same official on the Covid-19 Emergency PPE Sourcing Team also wrote: “This contact has already been allocated a team member — unfortunately if he jumps to the front of the queue it then has a knock-on effect to the remaining offers of help.”  The email was disclosed as part of a legal challenge brought by the Good Law Project, a not-for-profit campaign group which is suing the government over its decision to award nine PPE contracts worth £650m to three companies. A substantial proportion of the PPE procured under the contracts is unsuitable for use by the NHS, the Good Law Project claims. Read more here

France will press ahead with reopening schools for younger students from Monday and a week later for older ones despite persistently high new daily infections and continued pressure on hospitals. The country has been in its third lockdown since late March to curb the spread of Covid-19 with a nationwide curfew, strict limits on travel and all non-essential stores and establishments closed. Yet with the more transmissible variant that was first discovered in the UK now the dominant strain in France, the restrictive measures have not proven as effective as earlier lockdowns. Prime minister Jean Castex said the decline in new infections was “twice as slow” as during previous lockdowns but he defended the choice to reopen the schools. “We believe that the damage from keeping the schools closed for an extended period is catastrophic and can have long-term consequences.” He also confirmed the government’s current roadmap to progressively reopen the economy and public life starting in May. Earlier it had floated the idea of ending travel restrictions and extending the curfew in early May, and the reopening of outdoor terraces and museums from mid-May. But Castex cautioned that such plans would be conditional on the continued improvement of health indicators. On Thursday, 5,981 people were in intensive care units with Covid-19, the second highest total this year and higher than the autumn second wave. France is still reporting an average of more than 30,000 new infections a day, but its vaccination campaign has picked up pace in recent weeks as more supply has arrived. Almost 20 per cent of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine, and 7 per cent has now been fully inoculated.

The Financial Times has been your guide to the pandemic since the first outbreak was detected. Here are some of the developments we reported a year ago today: The US saw its highest daily increase in coronavirus deaths over a 24-hour period, pushing the total number of fatalities since the outbreak began to just shy of 40,000. Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan underwent a test for coronavirus after he met with the head of a charity who later tested positive for the virus. Mexico’s central bank provided a 750bn peso ($31bn) shot in the arm for the ailing economy — equivalent to 3.3 per cent of last year’s GDP. Spain said it would allow children to go for walks. The government shifted course after a torrent of criticism and ended what would have been six weeks of confinement at home. The Dutch government announced a gradual relaxation of the country's lockdown, beginning with the partial reopening of primary schools. The top US independent oil and gas producers asked senior White House officials to hold China to its commitments to buy crude oil in the trade deal struck in January to alleviate pressure on the sector, saying Beijing was giving preference to energy purchases from Saudi Arabia and Russia instead. The most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office said that the UK made a “political decision” not to take part in an EU-wide procurement scheme for PPE and ventilators. Donald Trump said Harvard must pay back $9m in coronavirus federal aid, days after the Ivy League college received rescue funds despite having the world’s largest endowment with more than $40bn in assets. For all the latest on the pandemic, visit the FT’s coronavirus home page

Sales of previously owned homes in the US slowed for a second straight month in March, as record-high prices and higher mortgage rates put a dampener on a surging housing market. Existing home sales fell 3.7 per cent from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6m units, the lowest level since August, according to the National Association of Realtors on Thursday. Economists were looking for a smaller decline to about 6.2m. The drop in sales came as the median price climbed to a historical high of $329,100, up 17 per cent year on year, reflecting strong demand during the pandemic and a limited number of homes listed for sale. Mortgage rates have also risen since plumbing record lows early this year, although they remain historically favourable for borrowers. The average rate on a 30-year loan was 3 per cent last week, compared with 2.65 per cent in the first week of January, according to Freddie Mac. “Consumers are facing much higher home prices, rising mortgage rates, and falling affordability, however, buyers are still actively in the market,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR. “The sales for March would have been measurably higher, had there been more inventory.” Demand was still robust last month. Properties typically remained on the market for 18 days, down from 20 days in February and 29 days a year earlier, according to the NAR. It said 83 per cent of homes sold in March were on the market for less than one month. Overall, sales were up 12.3 per cent compared with March 2020, when coronavirus shutdowns began in the US.

European bond markets strengthened after the European Central Bank held its policy in place, as the latest wave of Covid-19 sweeps across the continent. The ECB on Thursday reaffirmed its determination to keep borrowing costs low in the eurozone, saying it would maintain its recently increased pace of bond purchases. In response there was demand for German bunds, with yields moving 0.02 percentage points lower to minus 0.28 per cent. Italian government debt moved in tandem following a press conference by ECB president Christine Lagarde. “In a limited fashion, we are breathing a sigh of relief that this meeting went well and that Lagarde didn’t rock the boat,” said Antoine Bouvet, senior rates strategist at ING. He said Lagarde avoided the “main communication trap” by refusing to be drawn on the future of the ECB’s faster asset purchases under its pandemic emergency purchase programme. The ECB quickened the pace of purchases at its previous meeting in March to combat a rise in bond yields which the central bank warned could cause a “premature” rise in borrowing costs and stunt the bloc’s recovery. Peter Schaffrick, chief European macro strategist at RBC, said the strengthening of haven bonds should be seen in the context of increasing risks from Covid-19 cases and mutations globally. “There are bigger fish to fry here,” he said. “For the ECB, it will probably take a while before it really becomes interesting to markets again,” he added, noting that the future of the PEPP programme will need to be decided towards the end of the year.

The luxury sector’s biggest groups are on track to shrug off the hit from Covid-19 as early as this year as eager shoppers in the US and China help push sales above pre-pandemic levels. Hermès on Thursday blew past analyst forecasts with the highest industry growth so far, delivering first-quarter revenue of €2bn that was 33 per cent higher than the same period in 2019. Sector leader LVMH had set the tone last week with first-quarter revenues up 8 per cent like for like from the same period in 2019 before the pandemic gored the global economy with lockdowns and travel curbs. The revival at Kering was less pronounced with a 5.5 per cent rise, as its star brand Gucci is in the middle of a makeover.  While none of the groups give annual guidance, analysts forecast that revenues at all three this year will match or exceed those of 2019, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data. LVMH and Hermès are also expected to report higher net profit than in 2019. Read more here.

There are early signs that the latest wave of Covid-19 infections in the EU may have peaked, with the number of new cases across the bloc as a whole declining over the past week according to the FT vaccine tracker. In mid-April there were around 35 new cases per 100,000 people but that has declined to just under 30 cases this week as infections in Germany levelled out and there were slight declines in Italy and Spain. Infection numbers in France and the Netherlands remain well above the EU average, however. The spread of a third wave of infections in France triggered another nationwide lockdown, which included travel restrictions, school closures and an extension of a 7pm-6am curfew. French prime minister Jean Castex told parliament earlier this month that the number of recorded new cases in France had risen 55 per cent to about 38,000 a day. In the Netherlands, the number of new cases is still rising. Daily cases fell in every age group in February, but began rising in March and April. The government advised citizens to continue to follow guidelines on hygiene and social distancing: “If everyone follows the basic measures, even if you just tested negative for Covid-19 or have been vaccinated, then fewer people will be infected and it will be possible to relax the measures sooner.”

Initial applications for unemployment benefits in the US have fallen to a pandemic-era low for a second straight week, the latest sign that the coronavirus vaccine rollout and relaxed restrictions are boosting the labour market. The labour department recorded 547,000 initial jobless claims on a seasonally adjusted basis, down from 586,000 the previous week. Economists had expected an increase in weekly claims, to 617,000. US hiring has picked up this year as states roll back restrictions on businesses and social activity, encouraged by a slowdown in coronavirus infections and the vaccination campaign. The economy, which also received a boost from two rounds of fiscal stimulus since December, has now recovered almost two-thirds of the number of jobs lost during the pandemic. Employers added 916,000 jobs in March. However, jobless claims remain above pre-pandemic levels. Before the pandemic struck, the labour department reported a little more than 200,000 claims each week. The latest report showed that the number of Americans actively collecting state jobless aid fell from 3.71m to 3.67m in the week that ended on April 10. The insured unemployment rate edged down to 2.6 per cent from 2.7 per cent. Another 133,319 people sought aid through the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programme, which provides benefits to the self-employed and others who would not qualify for regular benefits. That reflected an increase of about 1,600 compared with a week earlier on an unadjusted basis. All state and federal unemployment programmes had a combined 17.4m people claiming benefits, according to unadjusted figures that are reported on a two-week delay.

Blackstone has reported its largest ever quarterly profit, as the prospect of an economic recovery buoys asset markets already lifted by emergency government support. The world’s biggest alternative asset manager reaped $8.1bn from asset sales in its private equity portfolio in the three months to March, helped by rising stock prices, a resurgent market for initial public offerings and the proliferation of blank-cheque acquisition companies. UK fintech group Paysafe, which Blackstone acquired in 2017 alongside European rival CVC Capital Partners, completed a $9bn merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Bumble, the online dating business that Blackstone bought in 2019, attained a valuation of $13bn in an initial public offering in February. At the same time as it sold assets, Blackstone deployed $18bn in new investments. Roughly one-third of the total went towards investments in real estate, including 2.3m square feet of specialist office space in the booming life sciences district of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm’s net income of $1.75bn in the first quarter marks an extraordinary turnround from the $1.07bn loss posted in the same period last year, as the economy shut down, credit markets seized up, and lenders braced for widespread defaults — especially among companies backed by private equity firms, which are typically more reliant on debt.

PizzaExpress is to recruit 1,000 new staff as it emerges after months of lockdown and a major financial restructuring that led it to close almost 100 restaurants. Hospitality businesses across the UK are rushing to bring back furloughed employees and recruit new ones in anticipation of a bump in demand as lockdowns end. Many fear staff shortages as a result of workers who have left the industry. PizzaExpress said that 300 of the 1,000 staff it hires would be supported by the government’s Kickstart scheme, which provides six months of funding to cover wages of new jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds. The company made 2,400 staff redundant in 2020 as it underwent a financial restructuring, through which the chain changed ownership and cut a £1.1bn net debt pile. Read more here

American Airlines said it reduced its cash burn in the first quarter and sees demand recovering, which pushed shares up 3 per cent in early trade.  The Texas-based airline, which is struggling from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, predicted capacity will be down between 20 to 25 per cent in the latest quarter from the second quarter of 2019 before the pandemic hit, the company said in a statement on Thursday. American forecast a revenue decline of 40 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2019. “The pandemic is far from over,” said chief executive Doug Parker. “We have to continue to fight like never before and ensure that, when the green flag drops, American is out in front.” Parker added: “But as our world makes daily strides in Covid-19 vaccination efforts, customers are returning to travel and there is no doubt the pace of the recovery is accelerating.” American previously said it expects air travel to rebound strongly over the summer, as an acceleration in vaccinations and easing coronavirus restrictions have spurred demand. It expects to fly over the summer months more than 90 per cent of its domestic seat capacity and 80 per cent internationally, as compared with 2019. The airline plans to operate more than 150 new routes. Revenues fell 53 per cent from a year ago to $4bn in the first quarter, in line with Wall Street expectations, according to a Refinitiv survey, and on the back of a 39 per cent reduction in capacity.  American reported average cash burn of about $27m per day in the first quarter, compared with $30m the previous quarter. In March, the carrier burnt through about $4m a day on average, excluding about $8m of debt and severance payments. The rate turned positive last month, it said. The carrier has incorporated more than $1.3bn in cost reductions into its plans for the year, including a voluntary buyout plan it launched in February that will result in the exit of 1,600 employees.  American agreed with Boeing to defer and convert five 787-8 aircraft to 787-9 aircraft, with deliveries expected in 2023. Its remaining 14 787-8 aircraft will be delivered by the end of the first quarter of 2022. American reported a net loss of $1.3bn or $1.97 share, compared with a loss of $2.2bn or $5.26 a share in the year ago quarter. Adjusting for one-time items the company reported a loss of $4.32 a share, compared with analyst expectations for a loss of $4.31 a share.

The UK’s Brit awards event, which highlights the pop industry, plans to welcome as many as 4,000 people next month for the first live music show at London’s O2 arena since coronavirus-related restrictions kept attendees away more than a year ago. Organisers will offer 2,500 tickets to London-based frontline workers such as NHS staff for the May 11 show in a ballot on Thursday as the UK paves its way back to live events. The show is part of a government scheme that aims to attract more attendees and test how to hold sport competitions, theatre shows and gigs safely and without social distancing or masks. Local authorities and organisers will work with health authorities on the pilot events that will aim to encourage crowds safely back this summer. The scheme, which will test specific settings, began last weekend with up to 1,000 people a day watching the world snooker championship indoors at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield, 300 in a comedy club in Liverpool and the Football Association Cup semi-final at Wembley with 4,000 people seated outdoors. Participants will be tested for Covid-19 before and after the events. A live gig in Liverpool is expected to attract 5,000 on May 2 while a business conference and a cinema screening are planned in the city. Evidence from the pilots will be used to shape government events policy in England on events.