B&Q owner Kingfisher and grocer Morrisons both face potential ejection from the FTSE 100 this week.
If the pair lose their FTSE 100 status there will only be four retailers left in the blue-chip index, The Sunday Times reported.
Kingfisher and Morrisons are capitalised at £4bn and £4.1bn respectively, and their fallen share prices have resulted in them being near the bottom of the index, meaning their positions could be usurped by FTSE 250 businesses when the index is recalculated.
If they slipped out of the FTSE 100, the only retailers left would be JD Sports, Next, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. One-time FTSE 100 staple Marks & Spencer lost its FTSE 100 ranking last autumn.
Kingfisher has been trading poorly for some time and parachuted in new chief executive Thierry Garnier to address the situation.
He said late last year as he updated on the third quarter: ”We are suffering from organisational complexity, and we are trying to do too much at once with multiple large-scale initiatives running in parallel. Altogether, this has brought disruption to sales and has distracted the business from focusing on customers. In addition, we faced softer market conditions in our main markets.”
Morrisons has suffered in tough grocery conditions. However, Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne today upgraded his recommendation to outperform because of low grocery valuations.
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