(CercleFinance.com) – European stock markets are down slightly this morning, Paris is down 0.4% ahead of Frankfurt (-0.8%) and ahead of London (-0.3%), in a context of caution before the season quarterly corporate results and the prospect of a Fed rate hike at the end of the month.
Additionally, ‘the resurgence of Covid-19 and fines imposed on major tech companies in China have outweighed optimism about the upcoming earnings season’, Liberum said this morning.
The latter also highlights, in addition to concerns about demand in China with the reintroduction of severe restrictions, a surge in gas prices linked, according to him, to maintenance on the largest gas pipeline transporting Russian gas to Germany.
In addition, investors learned this morning of a fall in the ZEW economic climate indicator for Germany, which fell by 25.8 points to reach a value of -53.8 in the July 2022 survey, reflecting a sharp deterioration in the country’s economic outlook.
The assessment of the economic situation in Germany has also deteriorated sharply, with the corresponding index currently standing at -45.8, 18.2 points lower than in June. In both cases, these are levels below those of March 2020.
“The main current concerns relate to the energy supply in Germany, the announced hike in interest rates by the ECB and new restrictions linked to the pandemic in China,” explains the institute.
In the news of European companies, BASF published last night its preliminary results for the second quarter, including an estimated net profit up 26% to 2.09 billion euros, ‘significantly higher than the consensus of analysts’.
The company also announced this morning that the business unit of its Coatings division, BASF Global Automotive Refinish Coatings Solutions, has partnered with the Association of European Peugeot Dealers (AECP) for years to come.
Equinor announces that it has signed an agreement to buy a 100% stake in US battery storage developer East Point Energy LLC.
Finally, Holcim indicates that it has acquired Teko Mining Serbia, one of the largest independent aggregates companies in Serbia with an estimated turnover in 2022 of more than 20 million euros and 2.4 million tonnes of aggregates sold by year.
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