PFFFFZZZ.That’s the fizz going out of Britvic shares after its admission this morning that its recall of various fruity drinks could end up costing it £25 million.
As product recalls go this is not like when a major car company admits that one its models has a tendency to self-combust and advises people to stop driving them.
It’s a bit embarrassing for the company that it sent out products without proper lids, but then, nobody died.
Rather more red-faced should be the City analysts who devote their working lives to being on top of situations such as this.
The Britvic issue has been around for a week and the pointy heads should have done a rather better job of figuring out what the impact could be.
Instead, with the shares already down 16%, we get this: Research Alert! Canaccord Genuity cuts Britvic to sell, and slashes the target price for the shares from 310p to 200p.
Advice to sell this stock would have been handy any time up until yesterday. Today it’s not much better than useless.
Canaccord aren’t alone. Panmure Gordon also advises selling the shares — thanks chaps — and cuts its estimate of what the stock is worth from 350p to 250p, which is roughly where they now are.
UBS says that shares it yesterday thought were worth 370p should now be valued at just 315p.
For stable-door/horse-bolting behaviour, this lot are nearly as bad as credit ratings agencies.
