IBEX 35© companies increased their treasury shares by 38.7% last year, according to a report by BME’s Research Department. At the end of 2020, the total value of treasury shares held by companies in the index was 3.3 billion euros, which represents 0.63% of the IBEX 35©’s total capitalisation. This was largely due to the 27.2% decrease in the amount of own shares amortised: 4 billion, compared with 5.7 billion in 2019.
ACS has been won, in consortium with the British company Mace, a contract valued at €660 M for the construction of a new high-speed train station in Birmingham (United Kingdom), which will not produce any polluting emissions once it comes into operation. Ferrovial is also present in HS2 after it took a 15% stake in the consortium led by France’s Eiffage in April last year, which has been awarded the construction of one of the sections of the line, a contract worth around €2.6 Bn.
José Benito de Vega | In the last twelve months, the Spanish firm Vidrala has had a better stock performance than the IBEX35, with a revaluation of 1% compared to a decrease of 8% in the index, although the stock has not been spared from moments of volatility.
According to a report by the Study Services of BME on the ownership of shares, foreign investor participation on Spain’s stock market reached 46% at the close of 2017, the highest level in the historical series, with an increase of 3% over the course of the year, 9% in the decade, and 16% since 1992.
Morgan Stanley said this week that the uncertainty over Catalonia which has weighed on Spain’s performance has meant that the MSCI Spain has underperformed the EMU by 8% since August. And Spanish SMEs have underperformed by 13%. That said, there is a reason for betting on the Spanish market: it has had the fourth best EPS growth examples.
José A. Santos (Patrivalor) | The stock market value of the 60 Spanish companies analysed totalled 557.375 billion euros at end-September 2016, down 5.5% from end-2015.
The 25 non-financial companies listed on the Ibex 35 index have achieved something in 2015 which many considered as impossible: reducing their debt ratio. And they have done this despite the fact that their net income was lower than the previous year. According to BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españoles) their financial debt was 38% of liabilities, compared with 44.3% in 2014.
Spain is one of the countries in the EU where its big businessmen remain in their posts the longest. Despite the fact that Emilio Botin is gone and Alierta and Villar Mir have left, the average age of Spain’s top businessmen is still higher than in France (56.6 years), the US (58.8 years) and the UK (55.8 years).
F. Barciela / F. Gil Ljubetic | If there had been a recovery in the Ibex 35 companies previously, it’s clear that this has stopped or slowed in the January-March period. Amongst those which have already presented first quarter results, very few have given investors much of a reason to be happy.
If Telefonica approves the choice of current CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete to replace Cesar Alierta as Chairman, he will be the first Executive Chairman not to be appointed by the Spanish government. Alvarez-Pallete will face two main challenges: securing European Commission approval for the sale of O2 and dealing with the weakness of the LatAm economies, particularly Brazil.