FTSE 100 movers: Festive spending spirit boosts supermarkets; utilities hit by bond yields
Supermarket shares were the toast of the FTSE 100 as new figures showed they notched up the busiest shopping day ever recorded on the Friday before Christmas, selling £1bn more groceries than the year before.
In the 12 weeks to 31 December, overall supermarket sales values increased 3.8%, figures from Kantar Worldpanel showed on Tuesday, as £747m was spent on 22 December alone and the average household spent a record £1,054 on groceries over the three months including the Christmas period.
Shares in Morrisons got an extra boost as the company reported on a much stronger than expected Christmas period, boosted by the roll-out of its new wholesale operations.
Like-for-like sales excluding fuel rose 2.8% in the 10 weeks to 7 January, with the retail business growing 2.1% and 0.7% coming from a trial wholesale operation to supply convenience store partner McColl's. The consensus had been for like-for-like group sales growth of 1.8% against what was a very strong comparative in the festive period the preceding year.
Sector peers Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer were also up on the news. The odd one out was Tesco, which fell, despite industry data suggesting that it was the best performer of the ‘big four’ over the festive period.
“Tesco enjoyed the largest sales growth amongst its peers during December according to figures from Kantar Worldpanel and today’s decline is likely to be simply a case of profit taking after a strong run higher of around 25% in the past six months,” said David Cheetham, chief market analyst at XTB.
British American Tobacco was in the black as it said 2018 earnings would get a 6% boost from the recent US tax cuts “supporting our commitment to high single digit earnings growth and increased investment in the roll out of next generation products”.
On the downside, the utilities sector suffered the most, in line with a trend across European bourses, with United Utilities, Severn Trent, Centrica, National Grid and SSE leading the FTSE 100 fallers.
Housebuilder Persimmon slipped after saying it expected full year pre-tax profits would be “modestly ahead” of market consensus.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,727.62 0.40%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 20,882.37 0.12%
techMARK (TASX) 3,542.44 0.46%
FTSE 100 - Risers
Anglo American (AAL) 1,677.80p 3.12%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 247.80p 2.82%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 233.10p 2.73%
Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 318.60p 2.51%
Micro Focus International (MCRO) 2,197.00p 2.42%
Ferguson (FERG) 5,500.00p 2.42%
Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) 2,482.00p 2.31%
Carnival (CCL) 4,924.00p 2.22%
Informa (INF) 751.40p 2.09%
BT Group (BT.A) 273.55p 2.09%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
United Utilities Group (UU.) 782.20p -3.67%
Severn Trent (SVT) 2,062.00p -3.24%
Centrica (CNA) 141.20p -2.65%
SSE (SSE) 1,305.56p -1.80%
National Grid (NG.) 849.50p -1.75%
Persimmon (PSN) 2,706.00p -1.53%
Just Eat (JE.) 793.00p -1.42%
Bunzl (BNZL) 2,021.00p -1.37%
easyJet (EZJ) 1,510.00p -0.95%
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 1,343.80p -0.71%