Counteroffer from ACS over Abertis boosts Ibex 0.55%

Hochtief offered 18.76 euros per aher from Abertis. The social capital of Abertis is formed by 990.38m shares, which would value the company at 18.579m euros. In addition, the offer includes an exchange of new shares of Hochtief for 19.54% of Abertis’ capital.

BIG DAY FOR CATALONIA

Investors will keep a keen eye on Carles Puigdemont to see if he will respond to the government request before 10:00 tomorrow. He is expected to reaffirm his ambiguous stance and call for dialogue. The government will probably activate article 155 as a result and now speculation is beginning as to how this could happen.

Next week Caixabank and Banco Sabadell will release their quarterly results. In relation, ElConfidencial reported on Wednesday that the banks had losted 9bn euros in deposits due to the independence challenge.

IAG was the next best performer in the Ibex, after gaining 2.65%, while Bankinter and Ferrovial were up 1.6%. Cellnex was also up after the news of the Abertis offer. Aena was up 1.05%, despite JPMorgan reducing its valuation by 5%.

Siemens Gamesa fell 1.58% to be the worst performer, after Macquarie lowered its valuation 33% due to a profit warning announced on Friday. Inditex was also down, by 0.59%, followed by Tecnicas Reunidas which fell 0.52%.

In the general exchange, OHL was up 2.95% after rocketing 43% on Tuesday.

While investors will not forget about local ongoings, they will look towards what happens in the Chinese Communist Party’s congress and attempt to analyse the consequences it will have for markets. President Xi Jinping, in a speech at the beginning of the Congress, spoke on a variety of topics, including corruption, the benefits of socialism and why it must be maintained in a ‘One China’.

UBS Spain strategy director Roberto Scholtes says that the key to the meeting in China will arrive in two parts. On the one hand, “an emphasis on continuing a plan of economic reform which includes the conversion of obsolete industries, reforming public companies, regulation of credit and moderation of the property cycle” he said. In addition, “support for the policies of Xi Jinping, with the naming of new members of the Politburo.” For Scholtes, if both aspects are fulfilled, the market would consider the economic cycle of China to be more stable. “It would reduce the risk of a property bubble which would affect the global cycle. It could give even more power to Chinese stocks and in the rest of Asia.”

In other news today, ECB president Mario Draghi spoke, while unemployment data was released in the UK and fell to its lowest level in 42 years.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

Referring to the Ibex, Bolsamanía analyst José María Rodríguez said “the gains of Wednesday along with Tuesday’s neutralised the loss we saw at the beginning of the week. In reality and as we have commented before everything remains the same. There are no changes to the technical aspect and until we breach 10,410 we will not have any.”

“We keep looking toward stocks such as BBVA, which as we know from experience is accustomed to working as an influential stock in the Ibex, as Nasdaq is to Wall Street. The loss of 7 euros would be a jug of cold water for the Ibex.”