London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.5% at 7,151.32 in afternoon trade on Wednesday.
British American Tobacco was under the cosh after a downgrade to ‘neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
Ocado was also in the red after JPMorgan Cazenove downgraded its stance on the online supermarket to ‘underweight’ from ‘neutral’ as it argued that the customer fulfilment centre (CFC) pipeline rollout was likely to remain slow.
On Tuesday, Ocado announced that it had signed a partnership between Ocado Solutions and Lotte Shopping, one of the largest business conglomerates in South Korea, to develop Lotte’s online business with the Ocado Smart Platform.
JPM noted that this includes six new CFCs by 2028 and an additional in-store fulfilment solution across Lotte’s store estate.
“In light of the current debate around Ocado’s ability to sign new partnership deals, this was clearly a welcomed step, though we emphasise that still a large number of additional CFCs are required to justify current valuation in our view,” JPM said.
Corrugated packaging group Smurfit Kappa was weaker even as it said that revenues in the nine months to 30 September grew 33%, while EBITDA was up 43% from the same period a year earlier.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,131.28 -0.76%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 18,220.47 0.14%
techMARK (TASX) 4,281.54 0.08%
FTSE 100 – Risers
Dechra Pharmaceuticals (DPH) 2,706.00p 2.58%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 4,767.00p 2.45%
Airtel Africa (AAF) 118.80p 2.41%
B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI) (BME) 346.00p 2.37%
Next (NXT) 5,046.00p 1.67%
Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI) (CCH) 1,922.00p 1.67%
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) 7,744.00p 1.63%
AstraZeneca (AZN) 10,478.00p 1.28%
Bunzl (BNZL) 2,869.00p 1.24%
Rentokil Initial (RTO) 527.40p 1.23%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
British American Tobacco (BATS) 3,283.50p -5.24%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 625.00p -4.52%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,181.50p -4.02%
Smurfit Kappa Group (CDI) (SKG) 2,802.00p -3.35%
Anglo American (AAL) 2,682.50p -3.04%
Croda International (CRDA) 6,502.00p -2.90%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 4,605.00p -2.75%
Informa (INF) 552.40p -2.37%
Melrose Industries (MRO) 117.20p -2.21%
CRH (CDI) (CRH) 3,070.50p -2.09%
