The control room of Euronext, the company that manages the Paris Stock Exchange (AFP/Archives/ERIC PIERMONT)
The Paris Stock Exchange ended slightly higher on Wednesday (+0.08%), little affected by the plunge in Teleperformance, with investors holding their breath before an important session on Thursday with several inflation figures in Europe and the United States. .
The star CAC 40 index gained 5.99 points to finish at 7,954.39 points, still remaining close to its records reached on Friday. Over the first three sessions of the week, it only lost 0.15%.
The CAC 40 suffered little from Teleperformance’s drop of more than 14%, the company weighing only 0.45% in the calculation of the index.
“It’s a wait-and-see attitude. The bulk of corporate results are behind us,” explains Emmanuel Cau, head of equity strategy at Barclays.
Faced with the record levels reached by several indices around the world, “the market seems to be a little tired”, which translates into “a decline in performance or profit taking”, he explains.
The week is placed “under the sign of macroeconomics”, describes Mr. Cau but the main indicators have not yet been published.
On Thursday, investors will first learn the inflation figures in February for France, then in Germany. They will then turn to the American PCE indicator for the month of January, the American Central Bank’s preferred barometer for measuring price developments.
“We are still debating: are we going to have a reduction in key rates or not? Central banks are blowing hot and cold” and the first trends for 2024 “have somewhat upset the theme of disinflation”, explains Emmanuel Cau.
Key rates are the main tool of central banks to have an influence on price movements in the economy. Since November, investors have hoped that the slowdown in inflation will allow them to ease the pressure, but the timetable imagined by investors for the first reduction has been postponed several times.
Teleperformance picks up
The action of the global call center giant Teleperformance fell by 14.14% to 114.45 euros, at the end of a very turbulent session during which it lost up to more than 25%, touching its lowest level since 2016.
The publication of deferred payment specialist Klarna, which highlighted the results of its product designed with artificial intelligence (AI) using OpenAI, particularly for after-sales service, scared investors. “They are looking ahead in three to five years and saying that the group’s profitability will be revised downwards” due to this competition, explained Jacques-Aurélien Marcireau, co-head of equity management at Edmond de Rothschild and responsible for tech investments.
The company responded, regretting in a press release the “negative conclusions” about it drawn from Klarna’s publication.
Worldline plummets
The payment specialist fell 10.17% to 11.00 euros, after announcing a net loss of 817 million euros for 2023. The “marked deterioration in consumption in Europe” has strongly penalized profitability, explained the group’s general director, Gilles Grapinet. During the third quarter 2023 results, the stock had collapsed by almost 60%.
Billions in losses for Casino
The Casino group has published a spectacular net loss of 5.7 billion euros in 2023, attributable in particular to the great difficulties of its hypermarkets and supermarkets which it has since sold largely to competitors.
Its action, which jumped on Tuesday after the announcement of the court’s acceptance of the safeguard plan, fell by 21.85% to 55 cents.
Interparfums praised
The Interparfums group announced a 2023 net profit up 19% compared to 2022, at 118.7 million euros and said it wanted to devote “particularly significant investments to its Lacoste brand” in 2024. The stock jumped by 5.43% to 52.40 euros.
© 2024 AFP
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