The FTSE 100 slipped on Thursday, pulled lower by energy price anxiety and a disappointing start to the US technology earnings season. The index fell 0.2% to 10,696.
Brent crude pushed above $97 a barrel, edging towards the $100 mark as escalating Middle East tensions stoked fears over supply disruptions through key arteries including the Strait of Hormuz. Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, said investors were in ‘a wary mood, with London’s FTSE slipping into the red in early trade, as fresh jitters of worry about the ongoing energy crunch hit sentiment.’
FTSE 100 Slips as Tech Earnings Disappoint
Alphabet and Tesla reported after the US close on Wednesday. Both fell in premarket trading, with Alphabet down around 4% before the open and Tesla off by a similar margin. Nasdaq futures also declined.
Alphabet posted total Q2 2025 revenues of $96.4 billion, up from $84.7 billion a year earlier, according to the company’s Alphabet Q2 2025 SEC filing. Google Cloud revenue rose 32% year-on-year to $13.6 billion, with the segment’s operating margin expanding from 11.3% to 20.7%.
The snippet circulating in markets cited an 82% Cloud revenue growth figure and a backlog of $514 billion; both differ from Alphabet’s own filings. The Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings call puts the Google Cloud backlog at $106 billion, and the company reported a 2025 full-year capital expenditure guidance of approximately $85 billion, raised from a prior estimate of $75 billion. The $205 billion capex figure cited in initial market commentary does not appear in any Alphabet filing or earnings call.
Quarterly capex hit $22.4 billion in Q2 2025, a 70% increase year-on-year, according to Futurum. Alphabet said it expects to remain in a tight demand-supply environment going into 2026.
Global market strategist Lale Akoner at eToro said Alphabet and Tesla illustrated ‘two very different stages of the AI investment cycle.’ On Alphabet, she said investors ‘can already see some return’ from heavy spending. The central concern pulling shares lower was rising capex, which investors fear could pressure cash flow.
Tesla’s position was more cautious. Vehicle deliveries recovered to 384,122 units in Q2 2025, according to the company’s Tesla Q2 2025 SEC filing. But Akoner said discounts weakened profitability, free cash flow turned negative, and spending on AI, robotaxis and robotics was rising before those businesses generate meaningful revenue. She described Tesla’s investment case as ‘more dependent on future execution than current earnings.’
London Movers: Centrica Falls, 3i and SEGRO Rise
Centrica was the session’s biggest FTSE 100 faller, shedding 7% after flagging that its outlook would be ‘subject to the usual uncertainties.’ The company reported group EBITDA of £900 million for the six months ended 30 June 2025, with a proposed interim dividend of 1.83p per share, a 22% increase, payable on 30 October 2025, according to DirectorsTalk’s report on Centrica’s H1 2025 interim results.
AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said the energy price spike was ‘not untrammelled good news’ for Centrica. ‘The volatility in energy markets is creating some headaches for Centrica although the company still allowed for a generous increase in the dividend,’ he said. ‘Centrica’s results reveal a more complicated picture.’
3i topped the leaderboard, rising 6% after reporting strong portfolio performance in its first quarter. SEGRO also gained 6% after its board said it would be minded to accept the latest takeover offer.
RELX provided another bright spot. Senior equity analyst Matt Britzman at Hargreaves Lansdown said the company ‘delivered the kind of result investors needed to see,’ with underlying growth of around 6% in Scientific, Technical and Medical and 10% in Legal. Britzman said the results ‘strengthen the case that AI is enhancing RELX’s valuable data and tools rather than undermining them,’ and that improved guidance for the scientific publishing business pointed to momentum holding through the rest of the year.
Alphabet’s warning of a tight supply-demand environment in AI infrastructure through 2026 sets the tone for the remainder of the US tech earnings season, with results from other major platform companies still to come this week.
