European stocks advanced for a fifth day on Friday, extending a seven-year high, as data showed employers in the US added more jobs last month than forecast.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 0.2 percent to 373.31 at the close of trading, after earlier dropping as much as 0.4 percent. The gauge posted a weekly gain of 1.7 percent. The 257,000 advance in US payrolls beat analyst predictions for 228,000, capping the greatest three-month jobs gain in 17 years, a US Department of Labor report said.
“European market participants are cheering this very good number,” London-based Market Securities chief European strategist Stephane Ekolo wrote in an e-mail. “The US economy remains strong, which bodes well for European stocks, in the sense that the euro will weaken against the dollar, creating support for EU exporters.”
Stocks pared some gains as Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the bloc would not grant Greece’s request for a short-term financing agreement to keep the country afloat while it renegotiates the terms of its financial support. Greece’s ASE Index lost 2 percent, trimming its best weekly increase since November last year.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has vowed to stick to his anti-bailout pledges as he prepared for a detailed policy speech today. A diplomatic push this week seeking support for his plans met with a rebuff from Germany, and the European Central Bank shut off a key avenue for Greek banks’ funding.
The VSTOXX Index, a gauge of volatility on the Euro STOXX 50 Index, slipped 1.9 percent, for a fifth consecutive decline, its longest losing streak since October last year.
Among companies moving on corporate news, Statoil ASA rose 2.2 percent after Norway’s largest energy company deepened cost cuts and halted dividend growth.
GlaxoSmithKline PLC advanced 1.1 percent to its highest price since July last year. The drugmaker reported positive results from a trial combining two cancer drugs it is selling to Novartis AG, an outcome that triggers a US$1.5 billion payment from the Swiss company.
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
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by