market report
On the last trading day in April, the DAX rose thanks to strong US targets. The 16,000 point mark is achievable, but this would require data on inflation and economic growth.
The DAX started trading with an increase of around half a percent to 15,850 points. “The guidelines from the USA are so good that they can’t be ignored. It’s impressive how steeply things went up on Wall Street,” judges the expert Thomas Altmann from QC Partners. This gives the DAX the chance to take a new step towards 16,000 points. The leading German index was yesterday, accompanied by many quarterly reports, practically standing still at 15,800 points.
Christian Henke, market analyst at IG Markets, sees a headwind from the seasonality: “At the end of today’s trading day, not only the month of April ends, but also the strong seasonal phase. From today to May 6th, a brief market weakness could statistically begin.” says Henke. This could make it a little more difficult to reach the 16,000 point mark.
In addition to the company balance sheets of the day, economic data are again under observation today: “After yesterday the focus was on US growth figures, today’s focus is on European data,” write the analysts at Helaba. This includes current inflation figures, as well as the development of gross domestic product (GDP) in Germany and the euro zone. “The provisional German consumer prices should draw attention to the fact that price developments are still too dynamic for the ECB to be able to sit back and relax,” is the assessment of the experts.
German import prices had already caused a surprise beforehand, as they unexpectedly fell by 3.8 percent in March. It is the first decline in more than two years and is mainly due to falling energy prices. Because of the consequences of the Ukraine war, imports to Germany rose by an average of 26.3 percent in the past year and thus more than at any time since 1974 in the wake of the first oil crisis. Since September, however, inflationary pressure has eased noticeably.
Surprisingly strong corporate balance sheets drove Wall Street yesterday. The Dow Jones gained 1.6 percent to 33,826 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq advanced 2.4 percent to 12,142 points and the broad-based S&P 500 gained 2 percent to 4,135 points.
According to analysts, business results from giants such as Facebook parent Meta have overlaid economic fears and banking concerns according to figures from the US regional bank First Republic. “If you look at Microsoft and Meta, the rumors about the Nasdaq going down were grossly exaggerated,” said David Russell of online broker TradeStation. “A lot of people wanted to bury the technology and said it was dead forever, but now there’s a good chance for growth stocks to make a comeback.”
After the Bank of Japan’s interest rate decision, investors in Japan turned to stocks. The Nikkei index advanced 1.4 percent on Friday to 28,856 points. The broader Topix gained 1.2 percent. The Japanese central bank stuck to its ultra-loose monetary policy at the first interest rate meeting under its new governor Kazuo Ueda. However, the monetary authorities decided at their meeting to subject monetary policy to a broad-based review.
Things also went uphill in China. Indices followed Wall Street higher. Surprisingly strong corporate balance sheets encouraged investors. The Shanghai stock exchange was up 0.8 percent. The index of the most important companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen gained 0.6 percent.
Deutsche Bank wants to strengthen its business with corporate customers with an acquisition in Great Britain. She has agreed to take over the British investment bank Numis with the board of directors, as both sides announced. The Germans are offering Numis shareholders 350 pence per share – a premium of 72 percent on Thursday’s closing price. According to Numis, the offer is valued at around 410 million British pounds (a good 463 million euros). The takeover should create “a leading British investment bank”, it said.
The carmaker Mercedes-Benz benefited from the demand for expensive cars in the first three months of the year and made more profit. The consolidated result increased by 12 percent to 4.01 billion euros. As already known, sales of cars had risen by 3 percent overall, but because of the good run in luxury cars, sales climbed more strongly by 8 percent to 37.52 billion euros. Mercedes was able to charge higher prices on average and thus more than compensate for higher material costs. Before interest and taxes and adjusted for special costs, the operating result rose by 2 percent to 5.42 billion euros.
Reluctance to consume and falling advertising revenues spoiled the 2022 financial year for the television group ProSiebenSat.1. Sales fell by 7 percent to 4.16 billion, the profit adjusted for special effects even fell by 18 percent to 301 million euros. The new CEO Bert Habets had already announced job cuts, now he also wants to save on the shareholders and cut the dividend from 80 to 5 cents per share.
At the Munich-based specialty chemicals group Wacker, the boom has ended for the time being. Sales fell in the first quarter by 16 percent to 1.74 billion euros because the volumes sold and prices fell. Earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) even fell by 56 percent to 281 million euros. “As expected, the destocking of our customers and the cautious ordering behavior in the first quarter are reflected in our figures,” said CEO Christian Hartel.
The medical and safety technology group Drägerwerk was back in the black in the first quarter, mainly thanks to significantly higher sales. The profit amounted to 17.2 million euros in the first three months, as announced by the SDAX-listed company. A year earlier, Drägerwerk reported a loss of 27.1 million euros.
The competition with AT&T and Verizon is also affecting T-Mobile in the new year. Because US mobile operators are trying to snatch customers away from each other with bargain offers, the revenues of the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary shrank by 2.4 percent to $19.63 billion at the start of the year. However, earnings were higher than expected at $1.58 per share. At 538,000, the increase in new customers was a little more than half as high as in the previous quarter.
The online giant Amazon surprised investors with a significant profit in the billions in the first quarter. In the first three months of the year the conversion rose by nine per cent on 127.4 billion dollar; while a profit of 3.2 billion dollars was achieved.
Intel posted a quarterly loss of $2.8 billion, up from $8.1 billion a year earlier. It was the highest minus so far for the group, which had been used to success for a long time. Sales fell 36 percent year-on-year to $11.7 billion. On the one hand, Intel is struggling with the cooling of the PC market after the boom at the beginning of the pandemic. But technology for data centers also went down again.