By Atul Prakash
LONDON (Reuters) - British stocks edged lower on Friday, with food ingredients company Tate & Lyle (L:TATE) among the worst performers as its shares slumped following a profit warning.
Tate & Lyle lost around a tenth of its stock market value after warning that annual profits would be below the range it forecast back in September, due to a weak performance from its sweeteners business.
"Tate shares are being dumped by disappointed investors, with management finding no way of sugar-coating a third profit warning in a year," said Accendo Markets' head of research Mike van Dulken.
Tate & Lyle was the worst-performing stock on the FTSE 250 mid-cap index (FTMC), which fell 0.2 percent.
The benchmark, blue-chip FTSE 100 index (FTSE) also fell 0.3 percent to 6,848.01 points, as investors levelled positions ahead of U.S. employment data due later in the session.
According to a Reuters survey, non-farm payrolls probably increased by 234,000 last month after a 252,000 rise in December, and the unemployment rate was seen at 5.6 percent. The jobs report is due at 1330 GMT.
"It is not a time to be taking a lot of risk, particularly given the number of times the FTSE 100 has traded above 6,800, and so far failed to hold above that level for very long," said Brown Shipley senior fund manager John Smith.
Barratt Developments (L:BDEV), Britain's top housebuilder by volume, also fell 2.2 percent after brokerage Liberum cut the stock to "hold" from "buy". Barratt's fall made it the worst FTSE 100 stock in percentage terms.
The FTSE 100 hit a peak last year of 6,904.86 points, its highest since early 2000, although it then lost ground towards the end of 2014. The index is up around 4 percent so far in 2015.