Daily market update: Magnum Ice Cream Company, Unilever, Schroders, RELX

The FTSE 100 eked out a new record intraday high at 10,530 as takeover activity gave a boost to the market.

UK growth figures were as limp as a piece of wilted spinach. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ strategy from day one was to get the public finances in order and then grow the economy, but people are growing tired of waiting for part two to kick into gear.

The UK economy is barely growing yet the stock market hitting new highs might sound an odd pairing. It’s important to remember the FTSE 100 is not a direct representation of the UK economy. Approximately three quarters of its members generate their earnings overseas, and so what’s happening with GDP only has limited relevance to the direction of the stock market, although it can affect investor sentiment.

Some of the more domestic-facing names on the FTSE 100 were out of favour, including housebuilders and property stocks but there was enough strength in the heavyweight banking and mining sectors to outweigh these losses.  

Stronger-than-expected US jobs numbers resulted in mixed trading on Wall Street yesterday as investors weighed the potential implications for the Federal Reserve’s decision making. Asian markets were higher with South Korean and Japanese indices reaching new all-time highs.

Magnum Ice Cream Company

The Magnum Ice Cream Company has seen its share price melt faster than a Cornetto left in the sun after its maiden results as an independent entity.

The spin-off from Unilever meant the results were always likely to be messy with one-off costs associated with the split.  

However, investors were still unimpressed by the big drop in annual profit and cash flow, raising questions about how the process was communicated and managed. The share price sell-off suggests lots of Unilever holders were looking for any excuse to offload the Magnum shares they were handed as part of the demerger.

From Unilever’s perspective it just reinforces the decision to exit the ice cream business to focus on its core brands. Ice cream is seasonal and has higher storage and distribution costs.

A further concern for the market is the potential impact of weight-loss drugs on people’s appetite for high calorie, indulgent ice cream products.  

Looking for positives, the 2026 outlook has been maintained, sales and volumes were higher in 2025, and the hope will be that sentiment towards the Magnum Ice Cream Company might improve with the weather in the coming months.

Unilever

While Unilever's results may not have got quite the ugly reception afforded its spun-out ice cream business, the figures didn’t inspire much enthusiasm either.

Unilever’s full-year numbers for 2025 were fine but not fantastic. What's troublesome is an underwhelming outlook for 2026, with sales growth at the bottom end of the previously guided range. This reflects difficult market conditions.

In Western markets Unilever faces pressure from people trading down to unbranded alternatives. This is why emerging markets have been a key source of growth for Unilever because alternatives don’t exist to anywhere near the same extent, if at all.

However, even in developing parts of the world Unilever has been affected by uneven demand with certain areas of the business struggling in markets like China and Latin America.

Having continued the process of reshaping and refocusing the business started under his predecessor Hein Schumacher, current CEO Fernando Fernandez will be under pressure to demonstrate the benefits of this strategy.  

The fourth quarter may have been a bit better than previous quarters and the company served up a €1.5 billion share buyback, providing a glimmer of optimism for shareholders to latch on to, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Unilever recovery story is spluttering.

Schroders

Ding-dong, the takeover bell is rung once again as London stands to lose a veteran of the UK stock market. Schroders has been listed in London since 1959 and is among the biggest UK-quoted asset managers.

It is the second FTSE 100 member to receive a takeover bid so far in 2026. The 34% bid premium including dividends is below the 44% average year-to-date and there may be grumbles from shareholders the takeout price is not generous.

Unfortunately for disgruntled shareholders, there’s not a lot they can do in this situation. The Schroders family own approximately 45% of the business and they’ve indicated support for the bid at the current price. What they say goes in this situation, given the scale of their voting power.

RELX

RELX’s latest results are a pivotal moment for the business following market concerns that Anthropic’s new legal AI tool would eat its lunch.

Given the scale of the recent share price sell-off, RELX had no choice but to use its financial results as a platform to reassure the market. Unfortunately for RELX, it looks like it hasn’t found the right words to fully calm investors’ nerves.

RELX’s message on AI is loud and clear – it’s an opportunity, not a threat. It has deployed AI across its own business to become more efficient and to benefit clients. However, there still feels a sense of trepidation among investors about third party AI disruption, given a muted share price reaction to the results. That is despite the company ticking all the right boxes on revenue, profit and dividend growth.

RELX will have to keep banging the drum that clients are not going to suddenly defect to generative AI apps like Claude and get the same level of service.

The FTSE 100 company has made big money from making itself indispensable to people in the legal sector, deeply embedding itself in their day-to-day processes. There are doubts that Claude can mirror the same depth of information offered by RELX and be trustworthy.

There is a reason why RELX is using words like ‘verified’ when describing its content – it knows the key to stopping clients from switching to something like Claude is playing the trust card.