A week closed its doors marked by a succession of decisions by the main central banks which highlighted a more restrictive approach at a general level to counteract the strong inflationary pressures. Now the attention of investors is returning to the effects of the new covid wave with the United Kingdom marking record infections (over 88 thousand yesterday). Still on the Covid front, comforting indications arrive from South Africa, with the hospitalization rate in the second week of Omicron’s diffusion which is 91% lower than that highlighted by delta in the previous wave.
At Piazza Affari at the end of the day, the Ftse Mib index fell by 0.64% to 26,611 points. The weakness of Wall Street yesterday and today weighs thanks to the approach of a squeeze on rates by the Fed which penalizes mainly growth stocks. Among the individual securities of the Ftse Mib, Poste Italiane is saved from sales (+ 0.13%) which announced that it has approved the terms of a new agreement until 2024 on Postal Savings, which includes postal savings books for a total of 103 billions of euros and postal savings bonds for a total of 216 billion euros.
Best performer of the day was Amplifon with + 2%. Among the big names stands out the -2.6% of Stellantis. STM is also bad (-1.29% approximately at € 41.39). To weigh is the indiscretion gathered by Bloomberg, according to which Apple has started hiring engineers for a new office in Southern California to develop proprietary chips. The engineers will work on wireless radios, radio frequency integrated circuits and a wireless system-on-a-chip, and will also develop semiconductors for connecting to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. These are all components currently supplied to Apple by Broadcom, Skyworks and Qualcomm. “The news is bad for Apple’s entire supply chain, including STM,” warned today from Equita. At the end of 2020, the latest public figure, Apple represented 24% of STM’s revenues, substantially double the amount generated in 2017 (11% of turnover), while before 2017 the figure was less than 10%.
Deep red for DiaSorin, the worst stock in the Ftse Mib with a drop of almost 11% in the € 158.85 area, after the publication of the new plan by 2025. In detail, the group expects ex-Covid revenues to 2022 up by around 24%, total ones down by around 2%, with Covid turnover down from around 370 million euros in 2021 to around 150 million in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin in 2022 is expected to rise by around 35%. According to the Equita experts, “a weaker 2022 and a target of slightly lower than expected margins by 2025”.
Among the banks, Intesa Sanpaolo suffered at -1.65%, while Unicredit regained strength (+ 0.4%). Finally, Bper was weak (-0.17%) following the decision of the Interbank Deposit Protection Fund (Fitd), the largest shareholder of Banca Carige, which announced that it had rejected the offer from the Modena bank.