Food retailers were on shopping lists on Monday afternoon, with supermarket giant Tesco making gains after an upgrade by Exane BNP Paribas.

The French broker raised its rating for the stock from 'underperform' to 'neutral' and lifted its target price from 320p to 375p, saying that company is "beginning to move in the right direction" despite concerns about its overseas activities.

"Tesco still has to demonstrate that it can secure UK profitability and use its excess cash wisely but it is beginning to move in the right direction, we believe," analyst Andrew Gwynn said.

"Having spent the last four to five years underperforming the industry, Tesco is now level-pegging with Sainsbury in like-for-like terms at the head of the Big 4."

Rival retailers Morrison and Sainsbury were also performing well this afternoon.



Top performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 3,072.55 +1.88%
Food & Drug Retailers 4,405.26 +1.44%
Forestry & Paper 8,428.59 +1.03%
Automobiles & Parts 6,008.83 +0.59%
Insurance (non-life) 1,735.08 +0.48%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Personal Goods 21,426.68 -1.44%
Technology Hardware & Equipment 1,095.55 -1.40%
General Industrials 3,619.42 -0.86%
Industrial Engineering 8,771.26 -0.77%
Support Services 5,439.52 -0.65%

BC

Related share prices
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) share price
Tesco (TSCO) share price
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) share price