Rentokil shares slide nearly 20% on weak North American demand
Rentokil Initial's share price fell 17% on Thursday morning, dropping from 443.30p to 398.60p, after the pest control giant reported weakening demand in its critical North American residential market. Despite a 6.7% rise in group revenue to $3.5m for the first half of the year and a nearly 10% increase in profit before tax to $263m, investor sentiment soured due to slowing momentum in North America, which accounts for 59% of total revenue. The company, which acquired US rival Terminix in 2022, acknowledged it is not adequately benefiting from its scale. CEO Mike Duffy noted a 'weakness in North America' toward the end of July and said the firm is focusing on driving volume growth over short-term margin expansion. In the UK, the business faced 'challenging trading conditions' due to soft housing demand, impacting its asbestos removal operations.
Editorial responsibility
- No named human review is recorded for this page.
- Reports are grouped by semantic similarity and deterministic rules. Language models may assist titles, summaries, translation and cross-source analysis; the page itself is projected from evidence records.
- Current automated evidence projection