London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.2% at 7,561.25 in afternoon trade on Thursday.
Next was under the cosh after disappointing first-quarter results from H&M and as Deutsche Bank slashed its price target on the ‘buy’ rated stock to 7,850p from 9,250p.
Vodafone was knocked lower by a downgrade to ‘underperform’ at Exane.
Phoenix Group and Taylor Wimpey were both down as they traded without entitlement to the dividend.
Going the other way, Pearson was a high riser, having tumbled on Wednesday after US investment manager Apollo said it would not make a takeover offer for the educational publisher.
Barclays reinstated coverage of Pearson on Thursday with an ‘equalweight’ rating and 725p price target.
It said: “The Pearson story has been significantly complicated by the macro backdrop and by the bid from Apollo (now withdrawn).
“We had based our prior ‘underweight’ on the view that Pearson required exceptional execution to turn the business around and drive the growth and margins that they expect by 2025 while hope in the market was pretty high.”
Barclays said that despite an uncertain macro situation, it thinks the company is well placed to at least approach its profit guidance for 2022, “and that has scarcity value now”.
Halma was also in the black after an upgrade to ‘hold’ at HSBC.
FTSE 100 – Risers
Pearson (PSON) 759.20p 2.71%
Intermediate Capital Group (ICP) 1,809.50p 2.17%
Halma (HLMA) 2,531.00p 1.69%
Prudential (PRU) 1,140.00p 1.47%
Sage Group (SGE) 708.00p 1.20%
Severn Trent (SVT) 3,076.00p 1.18%
M&G (MNG) 224.20p 1.17%
3i Group (III) 1,397.00p 1.16%
Electrocomponents (ECM) 1,090.00p 1.11%
Relx plc (REL) 2,401.00p 1.09%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
Royal Mail (RMG) 332.40p -3.79%
Next (NXT) 6,078.00p -3.12%
Vodafone Group (VOD) 125.84p -2.77%
Phoenix Group Holdings (PHNX) 617.00p -2.71%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,665.00p -2.43%
WPP (WPP) 1,027.50p -2.42%
Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 3,755.00p -2.42%
Associated British Foods (ABF) 1,689.00p -2.40%
BT Group (BT.A) 183.05p -2.27%
Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 132.10p -2.08%
