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The departing chair of Rentokil Initial (LSE:RTO) has backed up his confidence in the pest control firm’s “substantial opportunities” by adding £100,000 of its shares to his retirement pot.

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Richard Solomons, who this month announced his intention to step down from the board, made his first purchase of Rentokil shares since November 2023 at Thursday’s price of 463.5p.

The stock has been among the best performing in the FTSE 100 index since the start of the Iran war and is up by more than 50% since hitting a six-year low of 306p in last April’s tariffs sell-off.

The shares were 388p when Solomons, who is the former chief executive of InterContinental Hotels, took on his role as chair of Rentokil in May 2019.

They rallied as far as 630p by 2023, only to fall back amid difficulties integrating the Terminix acquisition that made Rentokil the largest player in North America’s pest control market.

Recent trading has offered encouragement after annual results on 5 March showed organic revenues in the North American pest control arm had accelerated to 2.6% in the fourth quarter, up from 1.8% in the third and 0.1% in the first half.

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City firm UBS responded by switching to a Buy recommendation and higher target price of 540p, adding that a return to Rentokil’s compounding profile could support a significant re-rating.

The bank said: “We have been broadly cautious on Rentokil since its 2022 Terminix acquisition, but last year's strategy reshaping means we now see realistic potential for volumes to inflect in 2026 - ending about three years of share losses.”

It expects new chief executive Mike Duffy to invest even more in growth but believes this will come with lower incremental costs. It sees margins of 19% in the 2027 financial year, which is below the company’s 20% target but better than the 17% it believes shares are pricing in.

UBS added: “Importantly, the North American pest control market remains fundamentally defensive and fragmented with advantages for large players.”

Solomons told investors in Rentokil’s annual report, which was published last week, that 2025 had been a year of encouraging performance.

However, he added there was still much to do for Rentokil to reach its full potential as the company's recent growth continues to underperform the market in North America.

He concluded: “With a strong and resilient business model and platform for growth there are substantial opportunities for value creation across the group.”

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Solomons said it was with “mixed emotions” that he had informed the board of his intention to retire as chair once a successor has been appointed. He will stand for re-election at May’s AGM.

At 2024’s event, 21.5% of votes were cast against him as some shareholders expressed concern about board oversight of financial performance in North America and the Terminix integration.

The issues of board diversity and succession planning were also mentioned as Rentokil has not met the targets that at least 40% of directors are women, including in at least one senior role.

Solomons, who received a fee of £442,000 in 2025, held 84,900 Rentokil shares worth about £400,000 at the end of 2025. Last week’s purchase added 21,100 shares to his holding.

What's the next move?

Rightmove (LSE:RMV) chair Andrew Fisher has disclosed purchases worth £83,800 after the property portal’s share price slumped to its lowest level in over six years.

The dealings on Thursday were at an average price of 419p, which compares with the FTSE 100 company’s record position of more than 800p in August last year.

The shares are down by about 8% since the start of the Middle East conflict, having earlier been caught by broader market fears about AI disruption.

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The selling has continued even though Rightmove said in February’s annual results that it entered 2026 with strong momentum, having achieved 9% growth in annual revenue and underlying operating profit in 2025.

It said it has accelerated technology innovation, including through a multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud spanning infrastructure, platform, data and AI capabilities.

Panmure Liberum said that in-line results, top-line guidance slightly above last year’s at 8-10% and a higher share buyback showed the lack of justification for the sell-off.

The City firm added last month that much of the debate over AI remains over hypothetical technologies which have not been made to work today.

It added: “The AI debate will continue; yet it's worth reiterating the various bear cases floated around often confuse longstanding technologies (such as web-scraping) with AI, as though they are new developments. They are not.

“Many others make assumptions about technological capabilities that don’t exist today.”

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With a price target of 660p, Panmure Liberum said that a multiple of 14 times 2026’s forecast earnings was a very rare opportunity.

It added: “The current valuation prices in that the company is both ex-growth and facing into severe margin decline, which doesn’t look likely. From here, this stock doesn’t require good news to re-rate; simply the continued absence of bad.”