In a continuation of a troubling trend, German shares closed in the negative territory for the fifth consecutive trading day on Friday. The decline was attributed mainly to the poor performance of Sartorius (SRT.F), which saw its shares drop significantly after announcing disappointing financial outcomes for the first half of the year.
This downturn in stock prices was mirrored in the blue-chip DAX index, which lost 1%, as the overall market faced a regional retreat across Europe. Sartorius recorded the steepest drop, plummeting 14.96% among its peers in the German blue-chip space by the end of the trading day. The German pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment manufacturer released a cautious outlook for the full year 2024 in conjunction with its financial report, stating that it experienced a year-over-year decrease in both net profit and sales revenue for the six-month period ending June 30.
"In light of persistently weak demand, Sartorius anticipates that sales revenue for the 2024 fiscal year will be consistent with the previous year—projected to oscillate within a range of low single-digit negative to low single-digit positive sales development. This is a notable revision from an earlier expectation of mid to high single-digit sales growth," the company remarked in its results announcement. On a broader corporate scale, Deutsche Börse ($DB1) assured that trading on its Xetra platform would continue normally despite facing a global IT outage earlier that day.
This disruption resulted from a cybersecurity incident involving CrowdStrike, which impacted Microsoft's Windows systems. From an economic perspective, there are signs of gradual improvement in producer prices, with Germany recording an annual decline of 1.6% in industrial product prices for June.
This represents a slowdown from the 2.2% decline noted in the previous month, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. Furthermore, a comprehensive survey conducted by the European Central Bank indicated that professional forecasters are now expecting a modest 0.7% real GDP growth in the eurozone for the year 2024.
This marks a favorable upward revision of 0.2 percentage points compared to earlier projections. Conversely, expectations for GDP growth in 2025 were revised downward slightly, predicting a 1.3% growth rate, down by 0.1 percentage points from previous forecasts..