Greencore directors buy shares a day after slump

Greencore's chairman Gary Kennedy and fellow non-executive director Heather Ann McSharry bought shares in the convenience foods group on Wednesday, a day after the stock slumped by 30 per cent in reaction to a profit warning.

Mr Kennedy spent £36,333 (€40,969) acquiring 30,000 shares a day after the stock plummeted the most on record, while Ms McSharry spent £25,500 buying 20,000 shares, according to stock market filings.

In an unexpected trading update, the Dublin-based group said on Tuesday that it now sees its adjusted earnings per share for the year to September coming to 14.7-15.7p, compared to prevailing market expectations of between 15.7p and 16.6p before the alert.

Rhode Island

The warning came as the company said that it would cease production at its loss-making Rhode Island facility this month and it guided that contract wins elsewhere in the US would take longer than expected to come on board.

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Greencore’s $747.5 million (€606.8 million) purchase in December 2016 of Illinois-based Peacock Foods, which generates about $1 billion in annual sales, more than quadrupled the group’s total US sales.

However, the profit alert underscored issues in the US operation that Greencore had built up over the past decade in that market.