Inchcape shares slide amid Asia market ‘challenges’
Shares in Inchcape tumbled on Tuesday after the car distribution business warned of challenges in Asian markets.
The London-listed firm was the worst performer on the FTSE 250 index amid a wider stock sell-off, with its shares sliding almost 9 per cent to 793p – though the stock remains up by 3 per cent since the start of the year.
Inchcape said revenue in Asia sunk by 15 per cent to £2.5bn in 2025, partially offset by 8 per revenue growth in Europe and Africa. The company warned that “challenges” in the region “are expected to continue” into 2026.
The company said it would also be losing BYD as a customer in some markets because the Chinese car giant was taking more of its distribution in-house in a sign of its continued growth.
Inchcape forecast revenue growth to come in at “the lower end” of its previous guidance of between 3 and 5 per cent.
Chief executive Duncan Tait said that car manufacturers, known as OEMs, were reliant on Inchcape to navigate continued disruption to global trade policy, after the US Supreme Court ruling forced the Trump administration to replace its targeted tariff regime with a globally-set one in the latest erratic turn in US trade policy.
“We want stability in that tariff regime,” Tait told City PM.
“Today there is clearly not stability in that tariff regime, it seems to change really rapidly. This is where we can play a brilliant part because it’s our job to understand these markets inside out.
“If you think about our specialism, which is to drive performance in small to medium sized markets, I think our OEM partners need Inchcape more than ever before so they can hand responsibility to those markets to us, we can deliver in those markets and they can get on with deriving their own performance in the big markets in the world.”
Inchcape reported a 2 per cent fall in its overall turnover to £9.1bn for 2025, while pre-tax profit was also down two per cent to £406m.
The FTSE 250 constituent unveiled a new £175m share buyback, adding to the £250m buyback programme announced in March last year.
Its full-year dividend was up 13 per cent to 32.3p.