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After snapping up Rhythm & Booze last year, Conviviality Retail (CVR) is back on the acquisition trail after announcing the purchase of East Midlands and Yorkshire convenience chain GT News.

The Bargain Booze and Wine Rack owner has bought up the entire share capital of the privately owned retailer for £6m, plus a working capital adjustment of approximately £0.3m. GT News has 37 stores and made a profit of £436,355 in the year to 30 June 2013, despite sales dipping 1.6% to £27.2m following the closure of four stores.

Chief exec Diana Hunter said the acquisition helps strengthen the firm’s footprint in areas in which it currently lacks a strong presence.

Conviviality has been under some pressure as the supermarkets have stepped up their price war. In its 2013/14 financial year, sales dropped by 4.3% after it closed 21 outlets. Sales stabilised for the 26 weeks to 26 October 2014, dipping slightly to £182.9m, compared with £183.7m, but concerns remain about its tight margins (having made a half year profit of £3.2m) and pressure on off-licenses from increasing competition in the convenience sector and regulatory crackdowns on tobacco sales.

Morning update

Food prices fell by the highest rate ever recorded by the BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index in January as the New Year price war took hold. The index, which started in 2006, found this morning that food prices fell by 0.5% year-on-year in January after reporting inflation of 0.1% in December.

Also announced this morning, is the placing of another 120 million shares in B&M Value Retail (B&M Bargains) by former private equity owner Clayton Dubilier & Rice. The placing, which will take place later this week, will reduce CD&R’s stake to 17.4% and will mean over 50% of B&M will be traded publicly to enable its inclusion in the FTSE indexes. With a market cap of £3.2bn, B&M is on the edge of the FTSE 100.

The big early mover on the stock market this morning was Ocado (OCDO), as investors woke up with a different view on the company that they had yesterday (see below). Ocado was 3.7% down in early trading to 419.2p, having risen by almost 5% yesterday. Conviviality Retail edged down 1.5% to 130p after its purchase of GT News this morning.

At Midday, GlaxoSmithKline releases a Q4 trading update.

Yesterday in the City

If the brokers are struggling quite what to make of Ocado at the moment (the spread of price targets currently ranges from 260p to 680p), the market seems to share its confusion.

After reporting on its first ever annual profit, the online supermarket fell 5.7% to 390.9p moments after opening, only to shoot up through the day to end Tuesday a healthy 4.7% to 435.2p. The stock has more than doubled since hitting 216.8p in October, but remains 16.8% down year-on-year.

There has been a huge sigh of relief across Europe when the early financial plans of the new Greek government were not as radical as some had feared. The big gains on the Athens stock exchange of the past couple of days were mirrored by a similar recovery of Coca Cola HBC’s share price. The dual Athens/London-listed Coke bottler was 3% up to 1,104.6p having previously lost almost 14% of its value in 2015.

Associated British Foods (ABF) survived the day relatively unscathed after announcing yesterday morning it was taking a £98m charge on its bioethanol joint venture. ABF ended the day 1.1% down to 3,079p.

UK-listed agriculture firm Zambeef Products was 11.1% up after selling its edible oils business to Cargill.

Elsewhere, the supermarkets continued their momentum from a good Monday with more gains yesterday. Morrisons (MRW) led the way after Ocado’s results, climbing 2.1% to 186.7p. Tesco (TSCO) was up 1.6% to 232p and Sainsbury’s (SBRY) climbed 1% to 269.9p.

Other big movers included McBride (up 3.1% to 84.25p) and Britvic (up 2.9% to 733.5p), while TATE & Lyle fell back 2.3% to 658.4p and SABMiller dropped 1.5% to 3,571.8p.

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