The markets world over celebrated the news of the new round quantitative easing in the United States. The Nordic markets gained 2%. Oslo and Copenhagen reached the year’s top plateau. Ireland’s government is aiming at 6 billion Euro savings for 2011. The EU leaders felt strong positive about the move.
Norske Skog fell 2.5% when it announced continuing losses. Third quarter EBIT showed a negative number of minus 278 million NOK. The company feels that market conditions are improving but not sufficiently to compensate for continued raw materials price increases.
Aker ASA’s net asset value was up 2.9% during Q3 compared to Q2. The financial strengthening and risk-reduction campaign of the portfolio companies continues. The liquidity position is still very strong with over 2.3 billion NOK in cash. The stock reacted positively to the report with nearly 4% gain.
Construction giant Skanska nine-month report was mostly positive. Revenues were in line with expectations and profit bested them but the full year sales guidance was lowered. The company sees Sweden, Poland and USA with a strong plus and was not satisfied with the first nine months in Norway and Finland. The outlook however is seen as positive for the entire Nordic region. There is a particular shortage of homes to sell in Sweden. The stock gained pretty much in line with the broader market, somewhat less than most cyclical stocks though.
In the Finnish construction sector, SRV Group’s order book is full. The projects in Russia have been pushed back further into the future. The company maintains expectations for 2010. Lemminkäinen had its first better quarter than the comparison period after the financial crisis. The company has acquired more lots from Russia and is planning to push ahead on schedule. The result for 2010 is expected to be worse than in 2009 (excluding the one-off legal charge of 68 million Euro in 2009 for being the leader and coordinator of an asphalt cartel) but positive.
Bionor Pharma made a dead cat bounce on rumours coming out of Sweden regarding the future of Vacc-4x. In 1.10.2010 article I covered the results from a study which forced Bionor to stop the development of the candidate. The rumour of a study with intranasally administered Vacc-4x prompted a release from Bionor, stating that the study that Swedish media beQuoted has been referring to is not lead by Bionor Pharma, has not entered clinical phase, is mainly for the study vaccine boosters and funded by Norwegian Research Council. The stock closed 28% higher but still at a penny level.
Statoil’s target prices were slashed in the wake of the disappointing result yesterday and the company underperformed the index clearly again today. TTS Group was down nearly 10% as the company reported disappointing result led by energy division. Lerøy Seafood said there was “extremely positive development in operating profit in Q3. The stock lost around half a per cent as the company said it sees limited growth for the next years.
Investor Kai Mäkelä, whose failed efforts to gain a board of directors position in Alma Media was touched in blog item 19.08.2010, sold the majority of his holdings in the company to Ilkka-Yhtymä after market closing today. The total amount sold was 7.25 million stocks, which raises Ilkka-Yhtymä’s holdings of Alma Media to 29,96% Ilkka-Yhtymä said in a stock market release.
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