THE TREND
(Boursier.com) — Big rebound in the Paris stock market on Wednesday with a CAC40 which rose 5% around 6,260 points at the end of the morning, or 300 points better than yesterday. Enough to erase a good part of the drop accumulated during the 4 previous sessions (about -8%). The peak of the decline was also observed on Monday when the CAC40 briefly fell to 5,756 points. The automobile and banking sectors, on the front line of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, are recovering very strongly today.
While the United States has just confirmed an embargo on its imports of Russian oil and gas, the European Union, much more dependent on Russia than the United States for its energy supply, delayed, while presenting Tuesday a plan to reduce this dependency. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, presented on Tuesday the outline of a plan called ‘REPowerEU’ aimed at making Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels well before 2030.
Russian oil represents about 25% of EU oil imports, while for the United States, the share of Russian oil is only 7%. The European Union also imports 40% of its gas from Russia, as well as 45% of its coal, hence its reluctance to impose an embargo on Russian energy, which cannot be replaced in the very short term. In particular, Brussels has set itself the ambitious goal of reducing Russian gas imports into the EU by two thirds before the end of this year. The objective would be achieved by increasing the supply of gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from other countries, such as the United States and Qatar, by increasing the share of renewable gases and by accelerating the deployment of electricity capacities. solar and wind turbines. On the oil market, these announcements have so far had no effect since the barrel of Brent is stable at 126 dollars.
In addition, the EU would prepare a gigantic plan to deal with the economic fallout linked to the sanctions against Russia. Following the emergency plan to deal with the 2020 pandemic, the EU is expected to announce a massive bond issue this week to fund the bloc’s energy and defense spending.
RISING VALUES
* Renault and Stellantis earn about 10% just like the equipment manufacturers Faurecia, Valeo Where Michelin.
* Shaken since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the banking sector is regaining some color in the middle of the week. In Paris, the Societe Generale and BNP Paribas both jumped 9%, in the first positions of the CAC40. After its counterparts from SocGen and the Agricultural credit, the rue d’Antin bank revealed this morning its exposure to Russia and Ukraine. Gross balance sheet and off-balance sheet exposures to the two countries represent respectively 0.09% of the Group’s total commitments (approximately €1.7 billion) for Ukraine and 0.07% (approximately €1.3 billion ) for Russia as of December 31, 2021. Given the way in which the bank operates in these two markets and secures its activities with a significant level of guarantees and collateral, the combined net residual exposures of BNP Paribas for Russia and for Ukraine amounted to around 500 million euros. Limited exposure for Citi, which also appreciates that the company has confirmed its financial objectives for 2025 despite the postponement of its March 14 investor day due to the situation in Ukraine.
* L’Oreal (+5% to 346 euros) in turn announced the closure of all the points of sale it operates directly in Russia and of its e-commerce site in the country due to the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. The group’s management declares that it “firmly condemns the invasion and the war in Ukraine” and specifies that it will also suspend its industrial and commercial investments in Russia.
* McPhy (+3% to 19 euros) unveiled 2021 accounts marked by an operating loss of 23.5 ME given its development efforts, with in particular a sharp increase in personnel costs necessary for the industrial scale-up and the financial impact of the potassium hydroxide leak on equipment installed in Grenzach-Wyhlen in Germany for a total amount of 5 ME. This operating loss is still lower than the forecast of -25 ME announced in the press release relating to the annual turnover of 13.1 ME (compared to 13.7 ME in 2020). The company’s particularly sound financial and balance sheet situation helps to limit financial expenses with a net result of -23.6 ME.
* Transgene soars by more than 20% to 2.17 euros. The biotech and its partner BioInvent International have announced the selection of their abstract describing preclinical results obtained with BT-001, a co-engineered oncolytic virus, for a poster presentation at the 2022 annual conference of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) . The poster will show that BT-001, a product in clinical development based on Transgene’s proprietary oncolytic vector and encoding BioInvent’s proprietary anti-CTLA-4 antibody and cytokine GM-CSF, has the potential to provide greater benefit therapeutic than systemically administered anti-CTLA-4 antibodies. The conference will be held face-to-face in New Orleans, LA, from April 8-13.
* crossroads rose 3% to 17.65 euros on Wednesday while AlphaValue adjusted the target from 23.1 to 24.3 euros with a notice to buy. Bernstein (‘underperform’) is still not convinced by the distribution group, stressing that structural problems remain despite a good annual publication and a “bullish” outlook on volumes and margin.
FALLING VALUES
* Only decrease on the CAC40, Thales lost 3% to 112 euros on profit taking after having been one of the few securities widely favored during the fall of the markets.
* Oil stocks, highly sought after in recent days, take a break: Vallourec and CGG retreat slightly. TotalEnergies clearly underperformed the trend with a small gain of 1.3%.