At the start of trading, the minus signs clearly dominate the Frankfurt stock market. Amazon business results that are worse than expected are dampening sentiment.
Shortly after the start of trading, the DAX slipped to 15,455 points, a decrease of 1.2 percent. In the further course of trading, investors will take a critical look at the European inflation data, among other things, after the inflation rate in Germany reached 3.8 percent in July, the highest level since 1993. At the European level, experts expect a price increase of two percent, after 1.9 percent in the previous month.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro continues to move towards $ 1.19. In the course of the week, the lack of clear indications from the US Federal Reserve to an exit from the extremely loose monetary policy and disappointing economic data weighed on the American currency.
And then came Amazon
Before the release of the Amazon figures, the major stock indices in America posted new record highs yesterday. The Dow Jones index closed 0.4 percent higher at 35,084 points. The broad S&P 500 advanced 0.4 percent to 4,419 points. On the Nasdaq technology exchange, the composite index gained 0.1 percent to 14,778 points.
Sobering outlook
But then the world’s largest online retailer caused disappointment. Although Amazon benefited from the trend towards shopping on the Internet and booming cloud services in the second quarter, the outlook caused disillusionment . In the three months ended June, net income rose 50 percent year over year to $ 7.8 billion. Revenues grew 27 percent to $ 113.1 billion. Amazon cracked the $ 100 billion mark for the third quarter in a row. Investors reacted nevertheless disappointed and sent the share after the hours of trading down seven percent.
After the announcement, the most important US futures also turned red. The one on the S&P 500 lost just under one percent.
Profit jump at T-Mobile US
The mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile US earned a bottom line of $ 978 million in the second quarter. The surplus was almost eight times higher than a year ago, when the balance sheet suffered from high costs due to the merger with US rival Sprint and the Corona crisis. The mobile operator increased its revenues by 13 percent to $ 20 billion.
The provider of the photo app Pinterest was able to improve its sales in the past quarter by 125 percent year-on-year to 613 million dollars. The bottom line was there were black numbers of $ 69.4 million after a loss of just under $ 101 million in the same quarter of the previous year. Pinterest also announced that the number of users active on the platform at least once a month has decreased from 478 to 454 million within three months. This news caused price losses of the Pinterest share in after-hours trading of around 19 percent.
The SAP subsidiary Qualtrics is acquiring the customer analysis specialist Clarabridge for around $ 1.1 billion. The takeover will be paid for with shares and should take place this year, Qualtrics announced. Clarabridge was previously privately owned. The company, founded in 2006, focuses on text and language analysis and uses artificial intelligence for this.
RWE raises forecast
The energy group RWE expects a better result than before in 2021 due to the strong trading business in the first half of the year. The company announced today that earnings adjusted for one-off effects are expected to be between 1.05 and 1.45 billion euros. The new range is thus 300 million euros above the old one.
At the hospital and medical group Fresenius, confidence is growing after significant growth in the second quarter. In 2021, Fresenius now anticipates an increase in net income adjusted for currency effects in the low single-digit percentage range. So far, the group had expected a profit at least at the level of the previous year. The dialysis subsidiary Fresenius Medical Care, which, like Fresenius, is listed in the DAX, stuck to its goals.
The takeover of the US cancer medicine specialist Varian and the flourishing business with corona rapid tests give Siemens Healthineers a strong boost. Sales soared in the third quarter of 2020/21 by a good half to five billion euros. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) doubled to 945 million euros. The group also increased its forecast for the year.
After a jump in sales and profits in the second quarter, the engine manufacturer MTU is confident of a more specific forecast for 2021. The company now expects sales of EUR 4.3 to 4.5 billion. In doing so, MTU narrowed the previous margin by 100 million euros each. MTU is becoming a little more optimistic about the result: 10 to 10.5 percent of sales are now expected to remain as adjusted operating profit. So far, MTU had targeted at least 9.5 percent.
The lubricant manufacturer Fuchs Petrolub exceeded the pre-crisis level in the first six months and raised its annual targets. Management now expects sales at the upper end of the range of 2.7 to 2.8 billion euros for 2021. The group now wants to increase earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to 350 to 360 million euros. When the figures for the first quarter were presented, the company had raised the target to 330 to 340 million.
The major French bank BNP Paribas earned significantly more in the second quarter thanks to lower loan loss provisions. Compared to the previous year, the surplus rose by 27 percent to 2.9 billion euros.
