By Patrick Munnelly, Market Strategist, Tickmill
On Tuesday, the London stock market experienced a modest decline with the blue chip FTSE 100 down 0.20%, with the biggest hits seen in the retail and personal goods sectors. This drop in share prices came as a result of a slew of data releases that raised concerns about future demand prospects. Additionally, equipment rental firm Ashtead’s shares also took a hit due to a less favourable outlook.
Ashtead Group LON:AHT, a rental equipment provider, saw its shares decline by as much as 5% during the day, making it one of the top losers on London’s blue-chip index. This drop followed the company’s decision to revise its annual UK rental revenue outlook. Ashtead Group has lowered its guidance for full-year UK rental revenue growth, now expecting it to be in the range of 6% to 9%. This is a downward adjustment from their previous outlook, which had projected growth between 10% and 13%. The revision is attributed to a softening of market conditions.
It’s worth noting that Ashtead Group is maintaining its previous guidance for group rental revenue growth, indicating that their overall business performance remains on track. In addition to the outlook update, the business reported an 11% increase in adjusted pretax profit, totaling $615 million for the first quarter. Despite this setback in their UK rental revenue outlook, Ashtead Group has experienced a year-to-date rise of 10.5%, indicating overall positive performance in the market.
In August, the UK retail sector faced challenges due to sluggish consumer spending growth: The FTSE retailers’ index experienced a 1.53% decline, marking its third consecutive session of losses.
Data from Barclays highlighted a deceleration in British consumer spending growth last month, contributing to concerns about a weakening economy. The annual growth rate in consumer spending, as measured by credit and debit card transactions, dropped to 2.8% in August, down from the 4.0% recorded in July. Barclays attributed this slowdown to the persistently rainy weather from the previous month. Among the retailers, discount store B&M European Value Retail LON:BME saw the most significant decline, with a 3.4% drop in its share price.
On the positive side of the ledger BP LON:BP. is showing gains of 1.85% on the session likely driven by Saudi and Russian extensions of their voluntary production cuts which has seen Brent Crude trade above $90 a barrel printing new highs for the year.
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