U.K. stocks fell slightly on Wednesday, with concerns over rising bond yields and Deliveroo’s lackluster market debut weighing on sentiment.
The benchmark FTSE 100 dropped 0.3 percent to 6,754 after adding half a percent on Tuesday.
Deliveroo shares slumped 30 percent on debut as the takeaway delivery company faces criticism over its treatment of riders. Peer Just Eat Takeaway declined 1.6 percent.
Premium pubs and hotels business Fuller, Smith & Turner gave up 4 percent. The company said it expects full-year revenues in Managed Pubs and Hotels to be about 80 percent less than the previous year.
Gold mining company Petropavlovsk fell about 1 percent after unveiling capex plans for 2021.
In economic news, the U.K. economy grew more than previously estimated in the fourth quarter but the overall contraction for the whole year of 2020 was the biggest on record, data from the Office for National Statistics showed.
GDP grew 1.3 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter instead of +1 percent estimated initially. The economy had expanded sharply by 16.9 percent in the third quarter.
The level of GDP was still 7.3 percent below its fourth quarter of 2019, revised from the previous estimate of 7.8 percent.
Over the whole year of 2020, GDP contracted by 9.8 percent, slightly revised from the first estimate of a 9.9 percent decline. This was the biggest contraction on record.
Separately, data from the Nationwide Building Society revealed that U.K. house prices increased 5.7 percent year-on-year in March, slower than the 6.9 percent growth seen in February. This was the slowest rise since September 2020 and also weaker than the economists’ forecast of +6.4 percent.
U.K. shop prices continued to fall in March as non-food retailers resorted to discounting, data from the British Retail Consortium showed. The shop price index fell 2.4 percent on a yearly basis in March.
Market Analysis
FTSE 100 Slides As Investors Watch Rising Yields
2021-03-31 09:24:45
