The Milan Stock Exchange continued the rises of the past few days and also closed this last session of the week with a plus sign. Operators were comforted by the good data coming from the macro front, with the composite SME index of the Eurozone which rose in July to the highest levels of the last 21 years. Wall Street’s good pitch also helped trade.
In this context, the Ftse Mib index finished with an increase of 1.29%, returning to 25,000 points, to be precise 25,124.91 points. Among the titles of the main basket of Piazza Affari, several titles that have stood out. Stmicroelectronics was certainly one of them. The share of the chip group has jumped forward by more than 2% (+ 2.8%) even exceeding the threshold of 33 euros, after having crossed the 32 euros just a few days ago. The new push came from Intel which reported revenues of $ 18.5 billion in the second quarter, doing better than expected. The US company also slightly improved its guidance for the whole of 2021, taking it from 72.5 to 73.5 billion dollars. During the call, the CEO said he expected further growth for the PC market in 2022, and that the imbalance between supply and demand should improve in the second half of the year but that for a normalization it will be necessary to wait until 2023.
Azimut was also among the best stocks in the Ftse Mib basket, with a progress of 2.1%. Barclays analysts promoted Azimut, bringing the rating to the Overweight step (overweight) and the target price to € 27 from the previous € 23.1. “We think there has been limited disclosure by the company on recent M&A deals and initiatives, and their contribution is not fully reflected in the consensus estimates,” analysts explain in their recent report.
On the opposite front, therefore among the declines, Telecom Italia slipped by 0.8%, disheartened by the results reported by rival Vodafone on the Italian market. In the second quarter Vodafone saw a decline in organic revenues of -3.6% (-7.8% in the previous quarter) for Italy, with a similar decline for mobile and fixed. Vodafone speaks of competition that remains intense. According to Equita Sim, the results indicate greater competitive pressure.