Corporate results:
  • Ashtead expects rental income growth for the financial year to be at the lower end of the 11-13% range.
  • Banque Cantonale de Genève announced record profits and dividend.
  • Bayer targets 2024 Ebitda higher than market forecasts. The CEO clarifies that he will not dismantle the company for the time being.
  • Dormakaba reported first-half net sales slightly below expectations.
  • Lindt improves its 2023 results and targets 6 to 8% organic growth and a 20 to 40 basis point increase in operating margin this year.
  • Traton forecasts stable margins in 2024.
  • VAT Group suffers sharp earnings contraction in 2023.
  • Target on Tuesday reported higher profits for the last three months of 2023, thanks to a smaller-than-expected contraction in sales. The retailer said it expected like-for-like sales this year to be well above Wall Street expectations. The share price jumped 6% in pre-market trading.
  • Gitlab: The software coding platform fell by 20.2% before the opening, following the publication of its fourth-quarter results on Monday. The company expects a loss per share of between 4 and 5 cents in the first quarter of 2025, compared with consensus earnings of 6 cents.
In other news:
  • Counterpoint reports that Apple iPhone sales fell 24% in China earlier this year.
  • Tesla lost 7% yesterday after a sharp drop in February sales in China. Meanwhile, the Tesla factory in Grünheide, on the outskirts of Berlin, lost power and had to suspend production on Tuesday morning due to a fire triggered by an alleged attack on a substation by environmental activists, reports the BZ newspaper. 
  • Jeff Bezos (Amazon) is once again the richest man in the world, ahead of Elon Musk (Tesla) and Bernard Arnault (LVMH). Musk is said to be in negotiations with X's creditors to refinance the company's debt, and is facing a complaint from former X (Twitter) executives claiming $128 million.
  • The FAA has identified control problems in the production of Boeing's 737 MAX (one would have thought).
  • Fox Corporation, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery plan to add 5 million subscribers to their joint sports offering within five years.
  • Trian, Nelson Peltz's fund, again criticizes Walt Disney's management and asks for two seats on the board.
  • British Airways (International Consolidated Airlines Group) plans to invest £750 million in digital upgrades.
  • Alibaba will invest in Chinese artificial intelligence company Minimax, valued at $2 billion.
  • Hackers claim that UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom to try to recover hacked data.
  • Nestlé faces legal action in the US for marketing Perrier as mineral water.
  • Carlsberg continues its legal battle to recover the rights to sell Baltika beer.
  • Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary (Berkshire Hathaway Energy) is accused of cartelizing real estate commission prices in the USA.
  • Vitol will buy Exxon and QatarEnergy shares in Italian LNG terminal, Reuters reports.
  • Hochdorf examines options for its future, including a sale.
  • Kinnevik invests $41 million in Mews.
  • Apple fell by 1.6% before the Wall Street opening in reaction to a report by research firm Counterpoint that the group's iPhone sales in China fell by 24% year-on-year in the first six weeks of this year, amid intensifying competition from local players such as Huawei.
  • AMD lost 2.8% in pre-market trading after Bloomberg reported that the U.S. administration wanted to block the company's efforts to develop and market an artificial intelligence chip for the Chinese market.
  • Alphabet on Tuesday introduced changes to search results and new tools for application developers to comply with European regulations.
  • Viavi Solutions - The communications equipment company has agreed to buy British telecom test company Spirent Communications in a deal valued at around 1.01 billion pounds (1.18 billion euros), the two companies said on Tuesday.
  • Albemarle - The lithium mining group was down 8.4% after the close, as the company launched a $1.75 billion share issue.
  • Microstrategy was down 13% before the opening, as the software company sought to raise $600 million via convertible bonds to buy more bitcoins.