FTSE 100 movers: Investors not happy with Kingfisher's transformation programme

The FTSE 100 started the week in the red, with the blue chip market down 21.22 points (0.36%) to 5,878.79 by mid-afternoon Monday.

Shares in Kingfisher dropped after the B&Q owner announced a five-year transformation programme on Monday, saying it plans to deliver a £500m sustainable annual profit uplift by the end of the process. However it warned that profits were likely to take a take a £50m hit in the first year of the plan and a hit of between £70m and £100m in the second year.

The company said it also plans a capital return of £600m over the next three years – most likely via a share buyback – in addition to the annual ordinary dividend.

In a statement ahead of the group’s capital markets day, chief executive officer Veronique Laury said “we do acknowledge the challenges ahead, however having already made good progress since March last year, and with 80,000 committed colleagues, we feel confident about our plan and look forward to moving on to the first year of our transformation".

Bankers were also some of the biggest fallers after a report from Sky News on Saturday they are preparing to set aside billions of more pounds for provisions against the payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal.

Insiders from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK told the broadcaster that banks would reveal at least £5bn in fresh provisions alongside their full-year 2015 earnings. That would come on top of the £27bn already incurred in costs for PPI mis-selling. Sources also told Sky News the eventual tally for new provisions could be even higher than £5bn.

In the case of Lloyds, which took the biggest hit of the sector and had roughly half the market for PPI insurance, the new provisions could reach a further £2.5bn, on top of the £13.9bn already paid out, the report said.

Tesco also took a hit after Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Dennis said he believed the supermarket may get slapped with a fine of up to £500m by the Serious Fraud Office over its £326m accounting black hole.

He said the SFO’s findings, possible fines and trading restrictions on Tesco are due to be announced this week. Dennis said the SFO could fine Tesco more than 1% of its UK grocery sales (£350m+) and force the group to repay suppliers £100m of arbitrary unjustified cash payments over several years, as well as identify individuals for prosecution. “We believe, this in turn could open the way for shareholder redress.”

Meanwhile investors were impressed with Unilever, after the consumer goods group behind Persil and Magnum ice-creams said it will not scale back its UK operations if Britain votes to leave the EU. The comments from Paul Polman, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch business, were published in The Guardian on Monday and echo those of Akio Toyoda, his counterpart at Toyota, who said the Japanese carmaker would continue to produce cars in Derbyshire even if Britain left.

FTSE 100 - Risers

Glencore (GLEN) 81.93p 4.26%
ARM Holdings (ARM) 1,020.00p 2.46%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 4,639.00p 1.84%
Sage Group (SGE) 564.00p 1.71%
AstraZeneca (AZN) 4,432.50p 1.65%
Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 3,522.00p 1.65%
Fresnillo (FRES) 671.50p 1.51%
Anglo American (AAL) 229.60p 1.28%
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 1,405.50p 1.01%
Unilever (ULVR) 2,945.50p 0.91%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Kingfisher (KGF) 324.30p -6.00%
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 64.18p -4.01%
Barclays (BARC) 184.15p -3.46%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 253.80p -3.17%
BT Group (BT.A) 471.85p -3.16%
Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 226.50p -2.41%
Tesco (TSCO) 157.00p -2.21%
Prudential (PRU) 1,296.00p -2.19%
BP (BP.) 345.65p -2.00%
Smiths Group (SMIN) 890.00p -1.98%