European stock markets closed lower on Friday, but ended with modest gains for the week, with weakness in metals and oil companies outweighing positive earnings news from Volkswagen AG and Puma AG.
The German DAX XETRA 30 index eased 0.7 percent at 5,701, the French CAC 40 index fell 0.9 percent at 4,910 and the British FTSE 100 index edged down 0.8 percent at 5,764.
US stocks helped pressure European markets by opening lower after a disappointing profit outlook from Pfizer Inc and a wider-than-expected December trade deficit.
However, auto stocks limited the downside. The sector climbed 1.7 percent, led by gains from Volkswagen, which advanced 10 percent after it posted a much higher annual profit than forecast and said it expects to slash up to 20,000 jobs in the next three years. VW also announced a buyback of nearly 42 million shares.
"The details were patchy, but tough talk on the progress of the ForMotion Plus restructuring program, including projected headcount cuts of up to 20,000 over three years, together with the proposed cancellation of the treasury share, is probably enough to make some investors believe this is the beginning of a new era," said Michael Tyndall, an analyst at Nomura Securities.
"We are a little more circumspect; there has been more than one false dawn," he said.
French car maker Renault was also helping the sector, ending 4.3 percent higher. The company experienced mixed trading Thursday after it released results for last year and outlined margin targets.
Oil stocks such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell declined as crude futures declined to US$62 a barrel. The International Energy Agency trimmed its oil demand forecast for this year to 1.78 million barrels of oil a day from 1.83 million barrels.
Technology stocks such as Nokia and Ericsson and semiconductor stocks STMicroelectronics ASML and Infineon Technologies were another drag on markets.
Dutch bank ABN Amro downgraded the semiconductor sector to neutral from overweight, saying it's close to a cyclical peak. It also cut French-listed STMicroelectronics to hold from buy, saying investors should be cautious on companies with broad exposure to the cycle.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the