FTSE 100 movers: RS Group jumps on takeover speculation; Whitbread hit

(Sharecast News) - London's FTSE 100 was down 0.1% at 7,617.49 in afternoon trade on Tuesday. RS Group surged to the top of the index after markets blog Betaville pointed to "a fresh round of takeover speculation" in one of its latest uncooked alerts.

Betaville said that people following the situation have heard rumours that RS Group, a distributor of electrical products and components, has attracted takeover interest. However, the identity of the company interested in RS Group remains unclear, it said.

Barclays was boosted by an upgrade to 'overweight' by Morgan Stanley.

Entain was trading up after Deutsche Bank cut its price target on the shares to 1,626p from 1,750p.

Smiths Group fell even as the engineer reported a 20% rise in annual operating profit, driven by volume growth and higher prices, which offset the impact of inflation.

Premier Inn owner Whitbread was knocked lower by a downgrade to 'sell' from 'neutral' by Redburn.

Redburn said consensus expectations for pricing versus 2019 are 20% higher for Whitbread than any other hotel group it covers.

"We argue the data suggests this is less due to supply restrictions than the company believes," it said.

"Whitbread is a superbly run business, with top-class cost control, but this isn't enough when we are 11% below consensus for RevPAR (revenue per available room) in 2026, which drops through to 16% at EBITDA."

FTSE 100 - Risers

RS Group (RS1) 791.20p 11.44% Barclays (BARC) 160.12p 4.22% Ocado Group (OCDO) 681.00p 3.65% Kingfisher (KGF) 224.40p 2.61% Entain (ENT) 941.40p 2.55% St James's Place (STJ) 836.20p 1.93% Ashtead Group (AHT) 5,134.00p 1.91% M&G (MNG) 207.80p 1.71% International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 149.75p 1.70% Imperial Brands (IMB) 1,666.00p 1.62%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 262.90p -2.41% Spirax-Sarco Engineering (SPX) 9,328.00p -1.54% Smiths Group (SMIN) 1,641.00p -1.53% Halma (HLMA) 1,920.00p -1.29% Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 4,157.00p -1.26% Whitbread (WTB) 3,532.00p -1.23% Centrica (CNA) 166.40p -0.98% Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 2,079.00p -0.91% Convatec Group (CTEC) 220.00p -0.81% Weir Group (WEIR) 1,895.00p -0.81%