British American Tobacco went up in smoke, as poor sales and revenues encouraged investors to quit.
A shaky economic recovery in Europe and the strong pound are continuing to cause problems, with the cigarettes giant revealing a 1% drop in volumes for the nine months to the end of September and a 9.6% dip in revenue at current exchange rates.
The biggest drop in sales came from western Europe, where five billion fewer BAT cigarettes were smoked compared with the same period last year.
The Dunhill and Lucky Strike maker was also downbeat on future prospects, warning that conditions remain “challenging” because of the slow economic recovery in much of Europe and pressure on disposable income worldwide.
With Stoptober in full swing, many investors decided that today was the day to give up their BATs habit, sending shares down 146p to 3320.5p.
The tobacco giant’s decline contributed to a drift lower for the Footsie, down 12.91 points at 6359.42.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch isn’t taking any chances with Jimmy Choo’s float in this choppy market.
It was revealed after markets closed last night that the bank, which was joint bookrunner on the offer, has snapped up around 10% of the shares issued in the float and also has a call option on a further 15% of the shares issued, as part of “arrangements for stabilisation”, Cityspeak for keeping the price up.
The efforts are working: Jimmy Choo, which floated last week and began unconditional trading, climbed 0.5p to 154p, comfortably above its 140p offer price.
Another recent float is faring well. Retail analyst Nick Bubb pointed out that Game Digital, down 1p at 305p, yesterday closed above 300p for the first time since floating at 200p in June.
The video games retailer, resurrected from administration two years ago, had its sceptics, falling on its market debut.
Fitbug, which makes gadgets that keep track of your sleep and exercise, more than quadrupled in value on AIM, climbing 1.22p to 1.6p after Sainsbury’s and US retailer Target agreed to sell its products in their stores.
Surgical Innovations Group said redundancies will contribute to higher-than-expected one-off costs. The medical instruments maker slipped 0.75p to 1.62p.
