Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, The.
Speaker 2: Stock Movers Report, your roundup of companies making moves in
Speaker 2: the stock market, harnessing the power of Bloomberg Data.
Speaker 3: Let's have a think about what individual stocks are moving.
Speaker 3: So let us look at the individual names on the
Speaker 3: move today here in Europe. I'm Caroline Hepga and I'm
Speaker 3: joined by Bloomberg reporter Climberla. Good morning. The start of
Speaker 3: our conversation will be Reno some good ratings guy and
Speaker 3: who from.
Speaker 1: Yeah SO has one beck its investment grade of status
Speaker 1: from SMP SO. SMP has said that Reno had managed
Speaker 1: to really refresh its product lineup and broaden its presence
Speaker 1: outside of Europe, and so those two things should really
Speaker 1: help with revenue growth and with volumes over the next
Speaker 1: couple of years. And this is really your vote of
Speaker 1: confidence for the new CEO started just over the summer.
Speaker 1: He's been very careful with costs, so that's been a
Speaker 1: big part of his strategy. And he also said that
Speaker 1: he really wanted to expand in markets like Latin America
Speaker 1: and India rather than a China in the US because
Speaker 1: of that quite weak demand in Europe. And so this
Speaker 1: strategy seems to be paying off, and this rating upgrade
Speaker 1: this morning really boosted the shares for Reno, and this
Speaker 1: is much needed relief for a company that's not been
Speaker 1: having the best year. Of course, alongside the rest of that,
Speaker 1: carmaking a sector in Europe that's obviously been struggling quite
Speaker 1: a bit, but this seems to be a company that's
Speaker 1: on the road to recovery.
Speaker 2: Perhaps.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's think about European sportswear and Puma in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what's happening with Nike over in the US
Speaker 1: is not good news for Puma essentially. So Nike has
Speaker 1: worn that sales would be much weaker for this quarter,
Speaker 1: the war quarter that is starting that started on December
Speaker 1: the first, and that is because of lower demand for
Speaker 1: its Converse brand and also weak sales in China. So
Speaker 1: this doesn't bode very well for Puma because they also
Speaker 1: have a huge market in China, and this seems like
Speaker 1: there's no recovery yet in consumer sentiment in that country,
Speaker 1: with a customers continuing to kind of cut back on
Speaker 1: that discretionary spending, and Nike is more exposed to that
Speaker 1: than brands like Adidas and a Sports for example, a
Speaker 1: local Chinese brand, because Nike has failed to really deliver
Speaker 1: a big, kind of standout model, and Chinese consumers also
Speaker 1: increasingly want kind of very niche performance features that Nike
Speaker 1: has not been able to deliver. And this is also
Speaker 1: a problem for Puma because it's also a company that's
Speaker 1: struggled to launch a product that really captures consumers attention,
Speaker 1: and so that's probably going to be a big problem
Speaker 1: moving forward for Puma as well, and we have seen
Speaker 1: those shares are struggling this morning on the back of.
Speaker 3: That interesting I was just reading GQ's article and look
Speaker 3: at trainers for twenty twenty six. I need a pair
Speaker 3: of trainers. So it happened to look at what the
Speaker 3: trends are going to be and apparently I'm told weirder, chunky,
Speaker 3: ballet trainers, all sorts of things. Yeah, anyway, it's happening, yeah,
Speaker 3: under training department.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Let's also think about this FCA probe of a well
Speaker 3: known company in the UK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so wh Smith is facing a probe. W Smith
Speaker 1: is having a real tough time at the moment. So
Speaker 1: we remember, of course, the accounting era from a few
Speaker 1: months back, where it revealed that it had overstated its
Speaker 1: result in the North American and North American business, so
Speaker 1: it had overstated it by thirty million pounds. And since
Speaker 1: then that has triggered a bunch of setbacks for the company.
Speaker 1: We've seen shares plunging, We've they've had to delay their
Speaker 1: results twice, they've had to cut their outlook twice as well.
Speaker 1: The CEO resigned and today there's obviously yet another setback
Speaker 1: with the financial regulator in the UK, the FCA, opening
Speaker 1: an investigation into the company, and the FCA can take
Speaker 1: enforcement actions when the companies have misleading public announcements, and
Speaker 1: so it had fined Tesco, for example, about one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty million pounds back in twenty seventeen for overstating results.
Speaker 1: So we'll see what the investigation actually actually triggers for
Speaker 1: wh Smith. So it has this probe, and then it
Speaker 1: also has cut its annual dividend for the first time
Speaker 1: since the pandemics. We've got two big setbacks for the
Speaker 1: company this morning. That's not going to help the shares
Speaker 1: which are down about more than forty percent a year today,
Speaker 1: and that of course doesn't really help with credibility and
Speaker 1: makes it difficult for wh Smith to move forward, at
Speaker 1: least for now.
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