嘉士伯下调指引上限、Frontline上涨、Smith & Nephew下跌

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

Well, let's take a look at some of the stocks on the move today in Europe. [music] I'm Teyu Adewole, alongside Stephen Carroll, and we're joined by Bloomberg reporter Chloe Malle. Chloe, Carlsberg has nudged its outlook higher on stronger demand for soft drinks. But how are investors reading this?

Well, it's quite interesting for Carlsberg because the shares are actually down this morning despite, as you said, it narrowing its guidance towards the top end of its guidance range. And so, what investors seem to be focused on a bit more than this higher outlook is the fact that volumes were actually weaker than expected over the first half of the year, and that was primarily driven by a lot of weakness in the Asian market and the Chinese market in particular, which represents about 20% of profits.

So, it's obviously a very important market for Carlsberg, and it really disappointed investors. The company did actually benefit from quite good cost discipline, which meant that the lower volumes did not necessarily translate into weaker profits, and it was able to nudge that profit outlook a bit higher. But it still indicates, of course, that this underlying demand really is struggling to recover in those key markets.

And we've seen, you know, pretty mixed first half across the board for that beer that alcohol sector in general. The World Cup had been, of course, a quite significant boost. But then at the same time, we have this weaker consumer confidence weighing on performance and this broader decline in alcohol consumption in places like the US and Europe, which is, of course, now a really big challenge for all of those companies.

One of the things that is actually helping Carlsberg in that way is that it is expanding its soft drinks portfolio. It acquired Britvic. It's, you know, really trying to focus in on that and move away from more of that sort of fully alcohol focused portfolio. And that is helping, but it's still kind of struggling with some weakness in some key markets.

Well, let's stay in Scandinavia. We'll go from Denmark to Norway and the shipping company Frontline. Their shares higher today.

Yes, so Frontline is owns a fleet of crude oil tankers. And so that's a sector that of course tends to do well when tensions in the Middle East worsen and because that means that war risk premiums spike and then that means that tanker rates rise as a result. And Trump has just taken a hardline on Iran insisting that there were no talks ongoing at the moment, which means that we are currently nowhere close to a resolution over the control of the Strait of Hormuz.

And so we've [snorts] seen the crude tanker rates jumping 40% yesterday. And there's this continued uncertainty right now, this continued capacity squeeze on all of those vessels in the Strait. And so that means that those tanker rates are likely to stay very elevated. And according to Bloomberg Intelligence and other analysts, this means a major earnings windfall in the second half of the year, over that second half for all of those tanker companies, a lot of which are based in Asia, you know, names like Cosco Shipping for example.

But one of the big beneficiaries that is that is in Europe is going to be Frontline. And so we are seeing that in those shares this morning jumping higher.

Okay, well, that's on the US Iran tensions in the Middle East. But to a different sector now, medical devices, Smith & Nephew are hitting its lowest since May on the departure of the CFO. Can you tell us more?

Yes, so this is really all about this kind of management uncertainty. So the CFO is leaving and according to analysts, this really raises a lot of questions about the outlook for for company. So for example, we had Jefferies analyst saying this was a really abrupt exit, and so that will raise eyebrows among investors. And then Barclays analyst said this is yet another negative to the equity story for the company. So, what they're referring to here is that there's been some recent kind of bad news, a lot of challenges for that company.

There was the activist investor Cevian Capital taking a stake back in 2024, and then more recently the company has also cut its sales outlook just earlier this month because of weaker demand for hip and knee implants in the US. And so, it's currently undergoing this big turnaround focus on the orthopedics business, and which is the largest driver of sales, but it's also a division that has been facing a lot of challenges lately.

So, there's this activist stake investor stake, there's this outlook cut, and now [music] there's the CFO departure. So, there's really a lot of challenges accumulating for the company.

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