Day on the swing for Piazza Affari with banks in difficulty even today. The Ftse Mib eventually closed at 24,161 points, up 0.30%, after having slipped below the threshold of 24 thousand points during the session. After a declining start, Wall Street has turned up by about half a percentage point, giving breath also to the EU stock exchanges that yesterday had paid the return of worries about the record numbers of Covid infections in some countries, in particular India. On the corporate front, Netflix numbers on the subscriber front have disappointed. On the other hand, semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML surprised positively by raising its full-year sales forecasts.
A new difficult day for the entire banking sector, among those most impacted by the re-emergence of fears about the economic recovery. Bper sold 2.22%, Banco BPM 1.2% and Intesa Sanpaolo 1.1%. In the end, it limited the Unicredit damages (-0.78% to 8.116 euros) after having managed to sell 2% below the threshold of 8 euros (which had not violated to the downside since February 2).
Among the big companies in trouble, Enel also dropped by 0.79%. Among the oil stocks, ENI performed well (+ 0.75% to € 10.15). According to reports from the Reuters agency, Eni is evaluating the possibility of spinning off the upstream activities in Africa and the Middle East into new jvs to reduce the level of debt and facilitate the energy transition. Eni would be in talks with some players in the oil & gas sector (Total and BP are mentioned) to combine part of their operations in key geographic areas.
The best performer of the day was Moncler (+ 4.26% to € 52.36) under the pressure of the numbers beyond the expectations released by Kering. The transalpine luxury giant reported consolidated revenues of 3.89 billion euros in the first quarter, up 21.4%. The driving force was the Gucci brand with sales of over 2.16 billion euros (+ 20.2%). Meanwhile, rumors of M&A in the luxury sector are back. Hugo Boss is up sharply in Frankfurt today after the Times argued that the German fashion house would be the subject of interest in a possible acquisition with LVMH, of Kering and a private equity fund that could make an offer.
Broadly positive session for Telecom Italia (+ 1.44% 9 with today’s press rumors that report that tonight there will be an extraordinary Board of Directors of CDP in which the negotiation with Macquarie on OF could be unlocked. CDP would buy 1% of OF by Macquarie for € 53m (the same price recognized by Macquarie to ENEL), thus rising to 51%, and assuming control and management of the asset. CDP would then appoint the CEO and Macquarie that of the CFO (with veto powers on investments), while jointly the two shareholders would appoint the president. The negotiation seems very advanced and the agreement could therefore be resolved already in today’s Board of Directors. The release of the impasse on the new structure of OF would be positive for the chances of achieving the single network as CDP would thus have more ease in following up the letter of intent signed with TIM in August 2020 and because the infrastructure funds involved in the two assets (Macquarie and KKR) have all the if to push towards a project capable of unleashing synergies and giving visibility to the returns on investment.