CITY WHISPERS: Greggs gets a buy rating on shares… and its pizza

Greggs will reveal just how much the rising cost of ingredients is eating into profits and – crucially for Britain’s pastry lovers – whether the prices of its baked goods will have to rise too when it reports its annual results on Tuesday.

City forecasters reckon revenues rose by a fifth or so last year, but that profits stayed virtually flat.

Analysts at one firm, however, seized the chance to do their own quality control check on Greggs’ new takeaway dishes, sold through JustEat. 

Jefferies brokers sampled the ‘Pizza Box, Large Wedges & 2 Drinks’ sharing deal at their offices, which according to a recent note ‘went down a treat’ and ‘represented strong value for money’ at £10.70 plus 50p service charge.

Along with a candid snap of the takeaway, analysts reiterated their ‘buy’ rating on the budget baker’s shares – or is that on their dinners?

Virgin UK boss wants Best for Britain

Who should pop up as a signatory on the latest release from pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain than Peter Norris, chairman of Virgin UK. 

He may now rank among the Remain-ocracy with the likes of Dragons’ Den hotshot Deborah Meaden and former BT chairman Sir Mike Rake. 

But older readers will remember him as the boss of Barings when rogue trader Nick Leeson destroyed the centuries-old bank. 

Norris was subsequently banned for holding any directorships for four years. 

But the world turns – and we believe in second chances.

Schreyer puts pedal to the metal at Go-Ahead

Go-Ahead boss Christian Schreyer certainly put the pedal to the metal in his first nine months at the transport group. 

The German took home a pay packet of £976,000 in the year to July 2022, according to the latest annual report, including 98.2 per cent of his possible performance-related bonus.

As well as being linked to humdrum measures such as profits, it included starting train operations in Bavaria, which is incidentally where he went to university.

The 55-year-old is a keen cyclist, but perhaps he could use some of his bumper pay packet to take advantage of UK single bus fares outside of London being capped at £2 until the end of June.

There’s never a bad time for a staycation, Christian.

Serbian boost for Rio Tinto? 

Rio Tinto suffered a big setback last year when Serbian officials revoked the mining licences for a huge lithium project.

The decision by the government – which was gearing up for an election at the time – followed environmental protests which drew support from Serbia’s native tennis whizz Novak Djokovic.

The Jadar mine received scant mention in the FTSE 100 miner’s recent annual report and results. 

What was there was mostly limited to saying Rio Tinto was in talks with ‘all stakeholders’ to get the project going again.

But are things looking up in Belgrade? US engineer Bechtel recently listed a series of job ads for roles such as ‘mine shaft access specialist’… at none other than the Jadar mine.