欧洲股市：英飞凌、易捷航空、3i集团领涨

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The Stock Movers Report, your roundup of companies making moves in the stock market, harnessing the power of Bloomberg data.

Well, let's take a look at the stocks on the move in Europe. I'm Steven Carroll and I'm joined by Bloomberg's Chloe Melay. Chloe, let's start with Infineon, riding the tech wave along with several others this morning.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, it looks like the AI trade is very much back on. And so, as you were saying, a lot was hinging upon what Micron and also Qualcomm were going to have to say in their results. And both of those companies gave a very strong forecast. In Micron in particular, it was just way ahead of estimates. And so, for investors, that really confirms that this AI growth runway is still very, very strong. And also reassured the investors when it comes to, you know, those shortages that we've been talking about in memory chips.

And so, in Europe, we are seeing now all of those AI-related stocks as well in the green. So, Infineon being one of them, but ASML, ASM, all of those chip makers, chip making equipment manufacturers, very much riding that tech wave. And it comes as quite a relief for the sector, given that the last few days have actually been quite weak for that tech sector. It's quite a familiar story now where we get investors really excited about AI and then one company will post something that indicates, you know, maybe slightly slower growth or very high expenses and investors will start to get worried and then we'll get another set of blowout results from someone else and then the confidence kind of starts back up.

And so, it seems to be happening yet again, but we are very much in the green across that tech AI-related sector this morning in Europe.

Yeah, I mean, it's very much a a buckle up for the next stage of this. Seems to be the sentiment on markets today. Let's turn next to EasyJet, shares rising on some questions about potential M&A.

Yeah, so EasyJet rejected another offer from the investment firm Castlelake, and that is now the fourth bid that it has rejected. But the different the what's different now is that it is potentially leaving the door open and showing some willingness to engage a little bit more with Castlelake. So it granted the company a bit more time and also more access to limited commercial information to potentially improve on that latest offer.

So it is definitely a change in tone from a few days ago when it seemed very opposed to it. You know, it said that this was a highly opportunistic offer that it wanted to buy EasyJet on the cheap. But now it's changing its tone a little bit and we'll have to see how this goes going forward. You know, the shares were up this morning, rose about uh 6% at the open, but we're still trading below the offer price. So now there's a lot of questions that still need to be answered.

So you know, will we see another London-listed firm going private? Will we see more evidence of this kind of consolidation M&A wave in the airline industry in those kind of tough times for that sector with those higher fuel costs? Um you know, there's a lot of those of those questions that will arise as we wait for more details on on this potential potential EasyJet M&A.

Okay, so we'll keep an eye on that one, too. And some bargain basement shopping helping to lift 3i Group.

Yeah, 3i being a private equity firm that has a big stake in the discount retailer Action. And this morning it said that things were going very well for Action. So that really reassured investors after the latest earnings in May from 3i that led the shares to really slump because they were essentially flagging the fact that Action sales were really struggling. And so at the time it was really taken as proof that even those low-cost retailers were really struggling and suffering from that weak consumer spending off the back of of the Iran war.

Um and there was particular weakness in France and in Germany um and analysts had said at the time that Action had a lot to do to try and meet its guidance, but it seems that it's managed to maybe get back on track. Um but the picture overall in retail is looking quite mixed. We also had H&M reporting and and saying that they were actually quite weak sales as well. But in a couple of weeks we'll get the earning season started uh back again and maybe the picture will get [music] clearer across across all of that retail sector.

This Stock Movers Report from Bloomberg Radio. Check back with us throughout the day [music] for the latest roundup of companies making news on Wall Street. And for the latest market-moving headlines, listen to [music] Bloomberg Radio live. Catch us on YouTube, bloomberg.com, and on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg [music] Business app.