The main index on the Oslo Stock Exchange fell from the start, but turned positive during the afternoon. When the exchange closed, the increase was 0.5 percent.
Results season continues this week, with several heavyweights appearing on the label, both in Norway and abroad. On Tuesday morning, Vår Energi delivers its numbers, before Børsen’s largest company Equinor releases its results the next day. In the US, among others, Exxon Mobile, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Shell will come under fire in the coming days.
According to SEB, 75 percent of the S&P 500 companies that have reported results to date have exceeded initial expectations.
Furthermore, there will be interest rate announcements from both the Federal Reserve (Wednesday), the European Central Bank (Thursday) and the Bank of Japan (Friday).
Billionaire settles patent dispute
Robot warehouse company Autostore fell more than five percent in early trading in Oslo Boers on Monday, after a $1 billion settlement in a patent dispute with Britain’s Ocado was announced on Saturday afternoon. However, it recovered throughout the day, and when the stock market closed, the price rally ended at 1.7 percent.
Not all of the terms of the settlement were shared by the parties, but a set of them appeared in the exchange’s announcement: Autostore must, among other things, pay Ocado £200m, the equivalent of 2.5 billion crowns, over the next 24 months.
The two companies have been in a protracted patent tussle since then before Autostore goes public in 2021. There have been small skirmishes between the two companies over the years, but in 2020 the bot wars began in earnest, when Autostore launched several international lawsuits against Ocado. Settlement means withdrawing all claims and accusations in legal disputes between the parties.
Moreover, both companies are completely free to use technology covered by both companies’ patents before 2020. Both companies will also be allowed to use and market their own products based on the patents after 2020, without risk of infringement.
In all, over the past two years, Autostore has booked costs of more than half a billion kroner in connection with the lawsuits.
Central bank miner
In the next few days, there will be interest rate decisions from three of the most influential central banks in the world.
The first is the European Central Bank on Wednesday, when an increase of 0.25 percentage points is expected. It will raise the main interest rate in the euro area to 3.75 percent, after a corresponding increase at the meeting in June.
At the time, the European Central Bank raised its inflation forecasts, and central bank governor Christine Lagarde’s message that “more work remains” made it resoundingly clear to the market that the rate hike was far from over. In an advance review of the rate meeting, the SEB wrote last week that further rate hikes depended on future macroeconomic data.
The European Central Bank is not expected to cut interest rates until the middle of next year at the earliest.
In the US, the increase at this week’s interest rate meeting was almost fully appreciated, and the SEB expects increases in both the US and the Eurozone to stall after this week’s decisions.
The main interest rate in the United States is currently between 5.0 and 5.25 percent.
Neither the Fed nor the European Central Bank will commit to further increases, but it is also too early to expect signs of cuts. Both are likely to say that possible increases in the future will become relevant if inflation is not as moderate as expected, SEB wrote in a Monday morning report. (conditions)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We’d like you to share our statuses using links that lead directly to our pages. Reproduction or other use of all or part of the Content may be made only with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms see here.
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