The commodity complex continues to soften with oil prices sliding below USD 50 per barrel and Chinese heavy industry commodities rushing lower. The resource reflation tide recedes with benchmark indices such as the Bloomberg Commodity Index trending towards last year’s levels. Commodity prices revert towards fundamentally reasonable levels on supply rather than demand trends.
ACS’ subsidiary Cobra has won a contract worth 126 million euros to build various electricity transmission lines in Brazil, boosting its portfolio of these projects in that country to 3 billion euros.
A political risk scenario is not taking shape in Europe, but that doesn’t mean there are no problems. They are still there and in France they will rear their head under the concept of “cohabitation.” The new president of the French Republic, more than likely, will have to live with the National Assembly being dominated by the traditional parties.
Argemino Barro | The Conference Board is a non-profitable organisation set up just over half a century ago by 12 big corporations to soften their public image during a time of social unrest. Nowadays it offers analytic tools for different sectors of the economy and has 1,200 companies from 60 countries as partners. Its chief economist, Gad Levanon, analyses here the situation of the US economy in the Trump era.
Deutsche Bank is trading at attractive valuation multiples (P/BV at around 0,5x), substantially lower than the sector average (P/BV of 0,8/0,9x), so interest on the part of big institutional investors has increased. The Chinese group HNA has just become the main shareholder after raising its stake to 9.9% from a previous 4.76%.
The Corner | Everything went by the book, as investor’s preferred candidate Emmanuel Macron comfortably won the French elections against far-rightist Marine Le Pen by more than 30 percentage points. The euro came last night at times to surpass the level of $ 1.10 per unity against the dollar (although it lost this level in the Asian markets this morning). European stocks are expected to gain.
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | In a sense, there is very little point in evaluating Greece’s agreement with its lenders. After all, it is not as if there were a variety of other options available.
For the AlphaValue coverage (478 European stocks, c. €9.5Tn market cap), the 2017 expected pay-out ratio should be about 56% but “only” 49% on a median basis, “ergo big earners pay out more” says analysts from the house. An 11-year history of this ratio would show that the gap between average and median is going up with some sort of a maximum reached in 2016.
After two days in Washington DC meeting with politicians and policymakers, BoAML analysts conclude that energy “is a policy cornerstone, together with tax reform, in this Administration”
Banco Popular posted losses of 137 million euros in the first quarter, compared with profits of 93.79 million a year earlier. The losses were higher than forecast, and were the result of provisions totalling 496 million euros, up 69.9% year-on-year.