On Thursday, attention will be paid to the quarterly reports of Air France-KLM and ING, among other things. Steel producer ArcelorMittal and construction company BAM also provided an update on the state of affairs.
Outside the Damrak, large European groups such as Société Générale, Volkswagen, Henkel and UniCredit came up with figures. We are also looking forward to the Bank of England’s interest rate decision, which will be released later in the day.
Air France-KLM suffered a loss of 1.5 billion euros in the first quarter. Due to the corona crisis, travellers are staying away. Travel restrictions and lockdown measures also detracted from the airline’s performance. The loss was smaller than the 1.8 billion euros in the first three months of 2020.
CEO Benjamin Smith hoped that vaccination programs and the introduction of travel passes will bring air traffic back to life. Smith also emphasized that Air France-KLM will continue to pay close attention to costs in the coming months.
Based on the opening indicators, the Amsterdam AEX index is heading for a slightly higher start of the busy figures day. Elsewhere in Europe, too, the stock market indicators seem to be opening expectantly after the strong price gains the day before. The main stock markets in Asia showed a mixed picture on Thursday. In Tokyo, where investors returned after a long holiday, the Nikkei was a positive outlier with a gain of 1.8 percent.
ING increased the quarterly profit by 50 percent to 1 billion euros. This means that the bank performed better than analysts had foreseen. Particularly in Germany and Belgium, ING noticed an apparent increase in demand for investment products, and the group generated more income from commissions.
Steel group ArcerloMittal says it has had its strongest quarter in ten years. The company saw strong demand for steel, with more steel being shipped. This is mainly because economies are slowly recovering from the corona crisis.
The pharmaceutical sector is also in the spotlight. The United States is behind a proposal to release patents on corona vaccines. Developing countries have long argued that vaccines should not be protected so that less wealthy countries can quickly vaccinate large parts of the population against Covid-19.