14.12.2010

Nordic Markets had a mixed day without too much happenings. Outokumpu gave a nasty surprise for the stocks in the sector. The steelmakers fourth quarter is much weaker than expected. The company now expects a clearly negative result instead of breaking even. The company is citing continued economic uncertainty and rather sheepishly blaming higher than expected costs because of the desire the reduce inventories. Outokumpu also does not intend to re-start Avesta investment in Sweden in the foreseeable future and writes down 18 million Euro as a result. The stock closed down more than 5%.

Nokia is having a hard time to break out of a spiral of disappointments. Today news broke out that the company will be cutting about 1800 jobs worldwide from Symbian RD. Around 800 of those jobcuts will be in Finland. As for today’s market reaction, the main driver behind the slight decline of the stock was report that E7 smartphone will be late to the market. Some of the decline levelled once people concluded that E7 would not have sold a lot before Christmas anyhow as it is more of a corporate phone. As you may recall, Nokia was similarly behind schedule with N8. The optimists take this as a sign that the company absolutely does not wish to let unfinished or faulty products to market where as Nokia bears can point out that N8 had its own issues post-launch regardless.

Vestas Wind has been gaining on hopes of favourable green energy U.S. tax legislation passing. Petroleum Geo-Services held its capital markets day. The company touts good progress in Brazil, says that the age of easy oil is over and production gap is widening and predicts a 2011 EBITDA of around 500 million USD. PGS also introduced a dividend program. Viking Line raised guidance in connection with its quarterly report. It believes that the prices of cruise services continue to have downward pressure due to heavy competition.

Lundbeck will focus a whole lot on Lexapro sales in China. Meda acquired three established Over-The-Counter medicines from GlaxoSmithKline in the US market. Meda was up 5.85% on the news. Novo Nordisk was criticized by the British authorities for giving a too favourable view about Victoza’s risk-benefit profile to the public.