Before the bell: Nvidia’s CEO speaks, markets look ahead

Lotus Bakeries soars while Hormel Foods gets hammered. Strong results at Ackermans & van Haaren.

The Bel20 slipped 0.3% yesterday. Lotus Bakeries (+5.2%) stood out against the trend after Bank of America raised its rating on the biscuit maker to buy and set a price target of 10,500 euro. The stock closed yesterday at 8,320 euro. The company from Lembeke was also added to the bank’s favorites list. Analyst Antoine Prévot says all the ingredients are there for further momentum. The Euro Stoxx 50 was flat, while luxury holdings Kering (+2.4%) and LVMH (+2.2%) outperformed. In the U.S., the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained 0.3% and 0.5% respectively. Nvidia shed only 0.8% as CEO Jensen Huang managed to cool investors’ overly high expectations.

This morning in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.8% while Japan’s Topix slipped 0.4%. Later today, BYD and Alibaba will publish their results. At home, Ackermans & van Haaren reported half-year results: net profit rose 36% to 273 million euro. On the macro front, we’ll get August inflation figures out of Germany, July inflation data from the U.S., and the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey for August.

More volume, less profit

This morning, Belgian insulation panel producer Recticel released its half-year results. Europe’s construction sector has been under pressure for some time, and in Flanders last week building permit applications fell to their lowest level on record. Still, Recticel’s revenue rose 12% in the first half to 335 million euro. Despite the higher sales, the company posted a net loss of 0.3 million euro. In the first half of 2024, it had achieved a net profit of 6.6 million euro. The swing is mainly due to one-off financial charges of 11.5 million euro from a write-down on a loan to Ascorium, in which Recticel holds a minority stake. Excluding these costs, margins slipped slightly to 8.3%. CEO Jan Vergote expects EBITDA for full-year 2025 to reach 55 million euro. That is 10% higher than in 2024, but still short of the 61 million euro analysts had forecast.

A little less SPAM, SPAM, SPAM and SPAM

Hormel Foods, maker of the infamous canned meat “SPAM,” had a rough day on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of the food producer plunged more than 13% after weak quarterly results and a lowered outlook. The company blamed higher input costs, particularly pork and beef prices. U.S. consumers are increasingly opting for a cheaper and healthier alternative: turkey. One piece of good news—SPAM is popular in China too. International volumes grew 8%, thanks largely to rising demand for the product there. There’s also a little less SPAM this week at Spaarvarkens: on Saturday there will be no Spamalot Actua webinar, due to the investors’ walk in Olen.

Did you know…

Warren Buffett celebrates his birthday tomorrow? We wish the super investor a happy 95th with plenty of Cherry Coke and See’s Candies!

This article was translated from Dutch and was originally published on Spaarvarkens.be.