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London equities were modestly in the black on Tuesday, helped by mining stocks, but shares of Ocado Group plunged on its earnings results and shares in the London Stock Exchange dropped after a $40 billion deal for Arm Holdings fell apart.
The FTSE 100 index UKX, -0.01% again outperformed the Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -0.09%, but just barely, as another choppy day was building for Wall Street. The pound GBPUSD, +0.02% was about 0.1% weaker.
Ocado stock tumbled 12% after the online grocer reported a much wider pretax loss for fiscal 2021, and said it would return to mid-teens percentage revenue growth in 2022. Revenue was in line with forecasts, and driven by a 22.4% rise in customer numbers.
The company flagged rising costs, due to investments including its “Re:Imagined” technology, and expects international losses to remain at the same level, said Citi analysts Nick Coulter and Viraj Brahmbhatt.
As a consequence, we expect FY22E consensus EBITDA to move toward £55-60m from £92m. While we expect the unit economics of the ‘Re:Imagined’ technology (carbon printed robots) to be an unequivocal positive, we expect the shares to react negatively to the near-term downgrade,” the pair said.
Shares of Oslo-based rival AutoStore Holdings AUTO, +4.05% rose 3.8%.
Elsewhere, miners were up a second day, with Anglo American AAL, +2.97%, Rio Tinto RIO, -0.08% RIO, +1.49%, Evraz EVR, +1.45% and Glencore GLEN, +1.59% all rising by 1% or more.
Another mover was the London Stock Exchange LSEG, -2.73%, with those shares down 2.5% after Nvidia’s planned $40 billion acquisition for Softbank’s chip designer Arm Holdings fell apart.
Softbank said it would instead seek an initial public offering of Arm, and speculation that listing will take place in New York instead of London hit LSE shares.
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