DCC shares were on course for their biggest one day fall since March, after the company said that chief executive Donal Murphy is to step away from his day-to-day duties “to address a medical condition”.
Mr Murphy, 57, will step back “for the next few weeks”, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
While Mr Murphy will remain involved in the business, chief financial officer Kevin Lucey will take on his daily responsibilities during the period he has stepped back.
Shares in the Dublin-based conglomerate slumped as much as 3.85 per cent to £46.89 in London in late afternoon trading. That would be the biggest drop since March 15. The stock is still up nearly 15 per cent on the year so far.
Mr Murphy represented Ireland at cycling in the 1980s before entering the business world. He has been in charge at DCC since July 2017, having joined the company in 1998.
The move comes just a week before the Dublin-based conglomerate is due to publish its fiscal full year earnings on May 16. Mr Lucey will present the results, along with divisional management, DCC said. Mr Murphy is expected to be back at work before the company’s annual general meeting, scheduled for July.
Despite the fall in the share price on Tuesday, Mr Murphy’s absence is not expected to have a significant impact on the DCC in the immediate term. Mr Lucey has been CFO since 2020 and has been with the firm since 2010.
Six of DCC’s top management apart from Mr Murphy have been with the business for at least a decade, according to the company’s website. The upcoming results are thought to have been a catalyst for publicising Mr Murphy’s absence, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“In spite of the backdrop of economic uncertainty in Europe, rising inflation and volatile wholesale oil and gas prices we anticipate a resilient performance from DCC when it releases results for the year to March” next week, Goodbody analyst Gerry Hennigan wrote in a research note on Tuesday.
“That, in part, relates to a history of managing commodity price volatility, but also the relatively defensive attributes of the group’s exposure to sectors such as energy and healthcare.”
DCC said in February that trading for the third quarter of its year was in line with expectations and ahead of the prior year, which it characterised as a “good performance given the challenging macro environment”.
