European stocks slipped again on Friday, following their weakest day in six weeks, as downgrades to growth forecasts weighed and bleak numbers from Umicore SA, Skanska AB, and Rockwool International A/S outweighed a sales beat at L’Oreal SA.
The pan-European STOXX 600 slipped 0.6 percent to close at 358.07 points, with most of the action at the level of individual stocks. The index posted its worst week in six, down 0.5 percent.
Markets were hit on Thursday by US President Donald Trump saying that he did not plan to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) before a March 1 deadline to achieve a trade deal.
Growth worries in Europe also spiked after the European Commission downgraded its growth forecasts.
“The trade issue is more in focus in the short term. Macro data over the last few weeks hasn’t given any reason to be more concerned about a recession than a month or two ago,” said Paul Harper, equity strategist at DNB ASA.
“The cycle is pretty mature now, but it’s always pretty difficult to know how close to a recession you are when indications are not showing signs that it’s around the corner,” he added.
French cosmetics giant L’Oreal said that strong demand for luxury skin creams helped it beat fourth-quarter sales forecasts — another company reporting better-than-feared demand from China after LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE last week.
“L’Oreal is capitalizing on very strong skin care growth, booming luxury markets, strong demand in travel retail channels and the shift to online,” Liberum analysts wrote.
Its shares rose 1.2 percent in early deals before giving back gains to trade up just 0.4 percent.
Traders put the move down to profit-taking after a strong run — L’Oreal hit a record high on Tuesday.
Luxury handbag maker Hermes International SCA gained 0.7 percent after it also said sales momentum in its Chinese stores stayed strong.
Swedish electronics group Dometic Group shone, topping the STOXX with a 13 percent jump after reporting fourth-quarter profit rose and giving a positive outlook for sales growth this year.
On the flip side, Belgian chemicals and cobalt refiner Umicore fell 4.8 percent after saying it expected growth this year to be hit by subdued demand in cars and consumer electronics, and research and development costs.
The company’s lack of quantitative guidance for this year weighed on sentiment, analysts said.
Construction was a weak spot with Denmark’s Rockwool sinking 12 percent after full-year earnings missed expectations, and Sweden’s Skanska losing 7.8 percent after it cut its dividend and lagged profit estimates.
Autos fell 0.3 percent, extending losses from Thursday, when the sector suffered its biggest one-day drop since the Brexit vote aftermath in June 2016.
Tata Motors Ltd said that Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC would swing to a loss due to weak sales, and that latest negative news on car demand weighed on auto suppliers Valeo Group and Faurecia Group, down 2.6 to 3 percent.
Adding to the negativity around autos, German car wiring supplier Leoni AG sank 25 percent after delivering a significant miss to fourth-quarter earnings expectations.
Swiss business services company Diethelm Keller Siber Hegner Holding Ltd fell 4.4 percent, extending Thursday’s losses after it reported earnings down 11 percent, lagging estimates.
Overall, Europe was on track for its weakest quarter for earnings growth in three years, but investors have been more forgiving to companies with valuations low and expectations at rock bottom.
“The question now is what can provide the catalyst for another leg up from here,” Harper said. “At the moment earnings revisions are not particularly encouraging.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained