The Amsterdam stock exchange ended sharply lower on Tuesday, with heavy losses for Shell and for semiconductor shares after leaked results from ASML. The AEX fell by 2.5 percent to 899.42 points.
The semiconductor companies fell sharply at the end of the afternoon on Tuesday after the figures that ASML would report on Wednesday morning were leaked prematurely. The results turned out to be well below expectations and the outlook for 2025 was very weak.
CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a statement that AI continues to do well, but that other market segments need more time to recover. “It now appears that the recovery is more gradual than previously anticipated. And the expectation is that this will continue in 2025,” said the CEO.
In the US, chip shares were also under pressure due to the fall in the share price of ASML and the report from Bloomberg news agency that the United States wants to impose additional export restrictions on AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. These would be restrictions for countries in the Persian Gulf that want to invest heavily in data centers for AI. Nvidia lost 4.4 percent after the share reached a new record on Monday.
Furthermore, oil prices fell sharply. WTI became more than 5 percent cheaper at $70.01 per barrel.
The Washington Post reported on Monday evening, based on sources, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised US President Joe Biden by telephone last week that he would not attack Iranian oil installations or nuclear sites in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack more than a week and a half ago. .
According to ING, this risk no longer hangs over the oil markets and the risk premium has decreased. In addition, negative sentiment on the oil markets is also fueled by concerns about the Chinese economy.
The American earnings season has now started positively. After the results of JPMorgan and Wells Fargo were better than expected last week, this also applied to the figures of Bank of America, Citigroup and especially Goldman Sachs on Tuesday, which easily beat expectations.
The strong quarterly figures from US financials show that Wall Street is no longer solely dependent on the tech sector, but that profit growth has spread to other sectors, according to Vincent Juvyns of JPMorgan Asset Management.
On a macroeconomic level, the German ZEW index improved considerably in October, as did industrial production in the eurozone. The Empire State index showed a sharp contraction in activity in the New York region in October.
The euro/dollar traded slightly lower at 1.0905 on Tuesday.
Risers and fallers
ASML plummeted by 15.6 percent after the figures were leaked a day earlier than planned. Orders worth 2.6 billion euros were received in the quarter. UBS expected approximately 6 billion euros in new orders in the third quarter. The Swiss bank said this was slightly above the 5.6 billion euros that the market was counting on.
In 2025, ASML expects to generate a turnover of 30 to 35 billion euros, which is less than the 30 to 40 billion euros previously expected. And the gross margin will not be 54 to 56 percent, but 51 to 53 percent.
Besi fell 11.1 percent and ASMI lost 13.9 percent.
Among the main shares, Philips gained 1.5 percent to 29.82 euros, after an increase in advice from ABN AMRO Oddo, in which the price target almost doubled to 40.00 euros. According to the bank, the discount at which Philips is quoted is unjustified.
The media companies RELX and Wolters Kluwer also did good business with profits of 2.6 and 2.0 percent. UMG won 2.4 percent.
ING rose 0.3 percent. The bank reported that a share buyback program worth 2.5 billion euros has been completed.
ABN AMRO fell by 1.9 percent after the Dutch state announced its intention to further reduce its stake, from 40.5 to approximately 30 percent.
Prosus lost 3.2 percent after Tencent in Hong Kong fell more than 4 percent.
Shell lost 3.0 percent in the wake of the sharply falling oil prices.
In the AMX, Air-France KLM actually won 4.4 percent because oil prices were lower.
Inpost rose 2.7 percent after the company announced it had acquired the remaining 70 percent stake in Menzies Distribution Group for £60.4 million.
Alfen lost 5.5 percent after presenting new objectives and cost savings. Another negative update and just three weeks before the quarterly figures, Degroof Petercam said in a report on Tuesday. Jefferies expects a recovery in EBITDA in 2025.
In the AScX Fastned gained 5.9 percent. Fastned grew faster than the market in the third quarter of 2024, the company said. Jefferies spoke of a strong third quarter.
Avantium closed the row with a loss of 2.5 percent. Theon lost 1.8 percent after opening the books.
Onward Medical gained 5.9 percent on the local market. The company signed an agreement with CEA for exclusive rights to Clinatec’s Wimagine Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology.
Wall Street
Around the close in Amsterdam, the American stock markets were up to 0.6 percent lower.
