Kingfisher reiterates FY guidance, Big Yellow agrees to sale of industrial warehouse scheme

Stocks to watch

B&Q owner Kingfisher reiterated annual guidance on Monday as it reported a fall in first-quarter sales and announced a £300m share buyback.

The FTSE 100-listed company said total group sales fell 5.8% to £3.2bn in the three months ended 22 April against tough 2021 comparators from when Covid lockdowns led to a DIY boom and boosted revenues.

Self-storage facilities operator Big Yellow Group has conditionally agreed to dispose of its industrial warehouse scheme at Harrow, London for gross proceeds of £61.0m.

Big Yellow said on Monday that completion of the sale was conditional on practical completion of the development, which was expected to occur in August 2022. The FTSE 250-listed firm has deployed approximately £27.0m of capital expenditure into the project to date, with a cost to complete of approximately £4.5m, totalling approximately £31.5m including the cost of the land.

Newspaper round-up

HSBC has suspended a senior banker after he referred to climate crisis warnings as "unsubstantiated" and "shrill" during a conference speech that has since been denounced by the lender's chief executive. Stuart Kirk, who has been HSBC's head of responsible investing since last July, will remain suspended until the bank completes an internal investigation into the matter. - Guardian

The gap between the pay of bosses and employees will widen again this year after narrowing during the pandemic, research suggests. FTSE 350 chief executives are expected to collect 63 times the average median pay of workers at their companies, according to the High Pay Centre thinktank, which campaigns for fairer pay structures. - Guardian

A year and a half after taking the helm at one of Britain's oldest brands, Steve Rowe admitted he was still "putting out fires". It was November 2017 and Marks & Spencer had posted another fall in profits. The new 54-year-old chief executive, often described as a people person, had inherited a business in desperate need of a revival. - Telegraph

Farmers have warned that supermarket shelves could be packed with cartons of Polish eggs as retailers turn to foreign suppliers in the face of escalating food prices. Britain's egg farmers are wrangling with soaring costs, which have gone up by almost a third since the start of the year, sparking pressure on supermarkets to pay them more for their produce. - Telegraph

Administrators of the largest listed construction company to go bust since Carillion have brought in lawyers to investigate its collapse. Joint administrators at Grant Thornton have instructed Gateley, the law firm, to help them to look into the background to NMCN's failure. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks turned in a mixed performance on Friday as the Dow Jones registered its first eight-week losing streak since 1923.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.03% at 31,261.90 and the S&P 500 was 0.01% firmer at 3,901.36, while the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.30% weaker at 11,354.62.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com