European stocks posted a second weekly gain, with the STOXX Europe 600 Index completing the biggest monthly increase this year, as companies from Ericsson AB to Volkswagen AG reported better-than-estimated earnings.
Ericsson surged 16 percent as the biggest maker of mobile-phone networks reported first--quarter profit that more than tripled. Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, jumped 12 percent. Parmalat SpA soared the most in two years as Groupe Lactalis offered to buy the 71 percent of Italy’s biggest dairy company it doesn’t already own.
STRONG EARNINGS
The STOXX 600 advanced 1.2 percent to 283.78 this past week, for a 2.9 percent increase this month.
The measure has surged 8.2 percent from this year’s low on March 16 as companies from UBS AG to Akzo Nobel NV reported earnings that exceeded forecasts and the US Federal Reserve maintained its pledge to keep interest rates low for an “extended period.”
“There are enough reasons to be positive on equities,” Vincent Juvyns, an equity strategist at ING Investment Management in Brussels, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“We see it in the earnings season. There are a lot of reasons to be worried about the macroeconomic context, but at the same time, on the microeconomic level, companies are doing well,” Juvyns said.
Of the 113 companies in the STOXX 600 that have reported earnings since April 11, 66 have beaten analyst forecasts for per-share profit, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
National benchmark indexes rose in all of Europe’s 18 Western markets, except Austria and Denmark.
France’s CAC 40 gained 2.1 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 Index climbed 0.9 percent, while Germany’s DAX rallied 3 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
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