2024-03-27 07:46:05
Zürich (awp) – The Swiss stock market should begin Wednesday’s session with a modest increase, in the wake of unimpressive international data. The main American indices ended slightly lower on Wednesday evening, in the wake of mixed macroeconomic indicators and before the publication of inflation (PCE index) on Friday.
In terms of macroeconomic news, household morale is expected in France and inflation in Spain. In Switzerland, investors will be interested in the UBS-CFA index.
Around 8:10 a.m., the SMI was almost in balance at 11,680.78 points (+0.03%), according to pre-market calculations by the Julius Bär bank. Almost all of the star stocks recorded declines around 0.1%, with the exception of Roche, UBS and Lonza.
UBS (+0.6%) showed good predispositions. The bank with three keys and Apollo ended up reaching an agreement around the securitized loans (securitized products group) of Credit Suisse, the sale of which by the former number two Swiss bank to the American fund had been called into question by its buyer in the spring 2023.
The new agreement provides for the repurchase by Apollo of secured payment facilities worth $8 billion directly from UBS. The operation is part of the three-key bank’s disengagement from the activities of its former runner-up deemed incidental, grouped together within a defeasance portfolio (NCL).
Lonza (+0.6%) benefited from a price target increase by Deutsche Bank. The analyst confirmed the buy recommendation for the pharmaceutical industry supplier and set the price target at 614 Swiss francs, after 516 Swiss francs.
Among the heavyweights of the rating, only Roche (+0.2%) climbed into the green, while Nestlé and Novartis (each -0.1%) found themselves in the red.
Excluding SMI, Accelleron showed very good predispositions, up 3.4%. Freed from the fold of ABB in the fall of 2022, the company generated in 2023 a turnover of 914.9 million dollars (825.1 million Swiss francs at today’s rate), an increase of 17. 2% over one year. The operating margin marginally eroded by around twenty basis points to 24.4%, not preventing the related surplus (Ebita) from increasing by 16.3% to 223.1 million.
Ypsomed (+2.4%) gained ground after the sale of its activities in needles and blood glucose monitoring products (BGM) to its transalpine competitor MTD. The injection device specialist also announced an investment of 100 million Swiss francs over four years in expanding the capacities of its auto-injector factory in Solothurn.
Analyst opinions carried the prices of Rieter (+2.4%), BKW (+1.4%) and Cosmo (+1.9%).
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