FTSE 100’s best and worst shares of 2025

A vintage year for blue-chip investors included record highs for AstraZeneca (LSE:AZN), Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE:RR.), Next (LSE:NXT) and HSBC Holdings (LSE:HSBA) as almost half the stocks in the FTSE 100 registered gains of 20% or more.

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The lenders Lloyds Banking Group (LSE:LLOY), Barclays (LSE:BARC) and NatWest Group (LSE:NWG), and defence giant BAE Systems (LSE:BA.) featured among a select band of stocks up by 50% or more in the year.

Other popular investments including Centrica (LSE:CNA) and BT Group (LSE:BT.A) fared well, but Diageo (LSE:DGE) and London Stock Exchange Group (LSE:LSEG) were among eight stocks down at least 20% by the 22 December opening bell.

The surge of the FTSE 100 index towards 10,000 was made all the more remarkable by the fact that it had been as low as 7,679 in the wake of President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

Barclays, GSK (LSE:GSK), International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (LSE:IAG), AstraZeneca and Antofagasta (LSE:ANTO) all enjoyed strong years but rallied by significantly more from their April low points than they did for 2025 as a whole.

Astra ends the year as the UK market’s most valuable company after surging by 30% to £211 billion, an improvement that widens to 41% from the 9 April low point.

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The shares jumped by 12% in one session in October and later set a record high above 14,000p as Astra’s pledge that all its medicines sold in America will be made in America secured a three-year reprieve from tariffs.

HSBC is the next biggest stock at £200 billion after a 48% rise as its dominant position in Asia wealth benefited from a 30% increase for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index.

Shell (LSE:SHEL) is third at £154 billion after a year when its shares and those of rival BP (LSE:BP.) rose by about 9%. Unilever (LSE:ULVR) is fourth, having rounded off a solid year with the demerger of The Magnum Ice Cream Co NV (LSE:MICC).

FTSE 100 largest companies

Source: ShareScope as at 19 December 2025. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Rolls-Royce surged to fifth in the FTSE 100 standings after a third consecutive year of strong growth powered the engine maker’s valuation to £97 billion.

The support of July’s forecast-beating results, guidance and dividend helped shares peak at 1,190p, up from about 100p when Tufan Erginbilgic took the helm at the start of 2023 and the 2025 low of 635.8p at the height of market turmoil in early April.

Erginbilgic recently told the BBC that Rolls has the “potential” to become the UK’s highest-valued company, with his optimism built around its role in powering the data centres behind the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).

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Investors who participated in the company’s £2 billion November 2020 rights issue by acquiring heavily discounted shares at a price of 32p are now sitting on an upside of more than 3,500%. Bank of America recently lifted its price target on Rolls shares to 1,615p.

A quarter of its business comes from defence, half of which is generated in the US.

The rise in European defence spending helped the shares of BAE Systems to jump 50% to 1,724p, although they had been above 2,000p at one point in the autumn.

Naval dockyards business Babcock International Group (LSE:BAB), which returned to the FTSE 100 in March after an absence of seven years, more than doubled in value during 2025.

Babcock’s advance of 150% was only beaten by the shares of telecoms and mobile money services firm Airtel Africa Ordinary Shares (LSE:AAF) and the miners Fresnillo (LSE:FRES) and Endeavour Mining (LSE:EDV) after the price of gold rose by more than 60% as 2025’s best performing asset class.

Best FTSE 100 stocks in 2025

Source: ShareScope as at 19 December 2025. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Geopolitics, higher government debt, persistent inflation and the much weaker US dollar reinforced gold’s status as long-term portfolio diversifier. Lower interest rates also reduced the opportunity cost of holding the zero-yielding asset.

Silver rose more than 130% year-to-date, having registered a seventh consecutive monthly gain for the first time since 1980. This particularly benefited Fresnillo, which is one of the world’s leading silver producers as well as one of Mexico’s largest gold firms.

Its shares jumped by more than 400%, continuing their recovery from a 15-year low in early 2024 when shares struggled due to the revaluation of the peso and inflation headwinds.

Endeavour Mining, which has assets in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, rose 174% and Antofagasta listed 97.5%.

The company operates four copper mines in Chile, with two of them at Los Pelambres and Centinela also responsible for significant volumes of molybdenum and gold as by-products.

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It was a better year for the diversified miners as an improved China outlook helped underpin a recovery from 2024’s weak performance, with Rio Tinto Ordinary Shares (LSE:RIO) up 24% and Anglo American (LSE:AAL) ahead by a similar level after announcing a deal to merge with Canada’s Teck Resources.

Banks performed strongly for a second year in a row, led by the 81% advance of Standard Chartered (LSE:STAN) and closely followed by Lloyds Banking Group at 78%.

Lloyds’s recovery to near 100p reflected the industry-wide benefit of the structural hedges put in place to protect against interest rate volatility, as well as the removal of some uncertainty around the lender’s final provision for motor finance redress.

NatWest followed 2024’s 80% plus improvement with a further rise of 60%, while Barclays added 75% to 468.95p. That’s despite falling as far as 240p in April amid fears over its tariffs exposure as a US credit card issuer and major player in Wall Street investment banking.

Barclays is due to unveil new three-year strategic targets alongside February’s results, prompting Deutsche Bank, UBS and Morgan Stanley to forecast further upside as their top picks of the European banking sector.

In the retail sector, Next rose by another 43% to a record high as its increasingly international profile helped fuel more profit upgrades at a time of lacklustre UK trading conditions.

And Warhammer hobby firm Games Workshop Group (LSE:GAW) ended the year worth more than £6.5 billion after shares jumped by another 46%, fuelled by stronger-than-expected trading.

While the year was one of the best in recent history, some investors will still be nursing big losses after eight members of the FTSE 100 fell by 20% or more.

Worst FTSE 100 stocks in 2025

Source: ShareScope as at 19 December 2025. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

AI disruption fears were a factor in a number of the poor performances, particularly advertising and marketing group WPP (LSE:WPP) as shares fell 60% to end its 28 years in the top flight.

Auto Trader Group (LSE:AUTO) dropped 24%, while fellow portal Rightmove (LSE:RMV) dipped 18.5% after it unveiled a three-year AI investment plan that will slow the pace of its operating profit growth in 2026.

Bank of America highlighted the market’s AI jitters in a recent note on the classifieds sector.

It said: “The AI bear case centres on diminishing pricing power and competitive standing, as AI plays an increasing role for people searching for houses, cars and jobs. Do you need to browse Rightmove if ChatGPT pinpoints the exact house you’re looking for in seconds?

“But classifieds have undeniable strengths, and the industry has defied disruption for 25 years.”

RELX (LSE:REL) shares have outperformed the FTSE 100 index for 13 of the past 14 years but the run ended in 2025 after the Elsevier journals and LexisNexis owner fell by 16%.

The company is one of the best-returning FTSE 100 stocks of the past four decades, with Bank of America noting in the summer that the shares were at a “rare entry point”.

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London Stock Exchange Group (LSE:LSEG) closed 2024 near a record high after a rise of more than 20%, fuelled by strong momentum in its largest division of Data and Analytics. However, fears that its business model is under threat from AI have weighed on this year’s performance with a 21% decline.

Marks & Spencer Group (LSE:MKS) shares started the year up by 300% since October 2022 after the food, home and clothing retailer won back consumers through new look stores and improved ranges.

The shares topped 400p in April and then again in October after a strong recovery from the cyber attack disruption that left shares at 328p in the summer. However, UK economic uncertainty and wage cost headwinds have left them back at 326p for a 13% fall in 2025.

Diageo (LSE:DGE) lost a third of its value to stand at their cheapest level in over a decade, reflecting fears that the decline of the US spirits industry will go on for longer as volumes come under pressure due to lower frequency of consumption and downtrading.

The focus is now on the strategic direction of former Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis when he takes over running of the Guinness and Smirnoff owner on 1 January.

Like Diageo, the reputation of Bunzl (LSE:BNZL) as a solid and dependable member of the FTSE 100 has been tarnished by a year of heavy share price losses.

The workplace supplier of essential not-for-sale products and services lost a third of its value across 2025 after cutting guidance in April due to tougher conditions and operational challenges in its largest region of North America.