Tate & Lyle sees US sweetener volume plunge, LXI sells two assets for £2.2m

Stocks to watch

Tate & Lyle said US bulk sweetener volume fell 26% in April as bars, cinemas, restaurants and sporting events were either shut or cancelled as part of the coronavirus lockdown. Industrial starch volume was 9% lower reflecting reduced demand for paper and packaging following the closure of schools, offices and a general decline in economic activity, the company said on Monday. Commodities were also impacted as ethanol prices decreased sharply.

LXI announced on Monday that, following an unsolicited approach, it has sold two social housing assets for a total price of £2.2m, to a specialist fund. The FTSE 250 real estate investment trust said that reflected a net exit yield of 5.15%, comparing favourably to the net acquisition yield of 6.0% that it paid in 2017. It said it intended to redeploy the proceeds into its accretive asset pipeline, once the impact of Covid-19 becomes clearer.

Newspaper round-up

Four years ago, Dave Lewis, the boss of Tesco, ran a “doomsday” management exercise in which UK’s biggest supermarket chain imagined its head office in Welwyn Garden City would have to shut down completely. “At the time people said it was a bit ridiculous and extreme,” says Lewis. As it turns out, it wasn’t extreme at all, and now looks extraordinarily prescient. – Guardian

Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct and House of Fraser chains have asked store managers to work at least once a week while under the government’s furlough scheme. Ashley’s managers had also been asked to return to work – on reduced pay – on Monday, but the company did a U-turn on Sunday after the Guardian published details of the plan. – Guardian

Confidence among UK businesses has hit its lowest level on record as it emerged a year’s worth of profit warnings had already been issued in 2020. Companies have contracted operations and furloughed staff en masse due to the pandemic, which looks likely to cause a greater economic catastrophe than the 2008 crisis. – Telegraph

Dozens of fishing ports face collapse as key European markets for fish are in lockdown and many UK supermarket fish counters, restaurants and fish and chip shops are shut, eliminating demand for UK-landed fish. While fishers are supported through the crisis by grants and the Government’s coronavirus job retention scheme, ports can no longer rely on the ad valorem charges normally paid by fishers – about 2pc of the value of the fish landed before being sold to ports or processors – to cover their fixed costs, which vary little whether the ports are used or not. – Telegraph

Rolls-Royce is expected to lay bare this week the depth of crisis it is facing after airlines grounded the vast majority of aircraft that use its engines. The aerospace and defence engineering group, which is considering making thousands of job cuts in Britain, is paid by its customers in line with how many hours they fly. – The Times

US close

Equities on Wall Street closed sharply lower on Friday, as investors digested a series of disappointing earnings reports, and took stock of a contracting US manufacturing sector.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 2.55% at 23,723.69, the S&P 500 lost 2.81% to 2,830.71, and the Nasdaq Composite was 3.2% weaker at 8,604.95.