Standard Chartered Record, Whitbread Plan, Stellantis Falls

Indices built to someone else's specification? That's the old way. The new way is Bloomberg Equity Indices. Design custom benchmarks and distribute them at speed. Discover evolved benchmarks for today's equity markets at bloomberg.com slash equity index licensing. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. The Stock Movers Report. Your roundup of companies making moves in the stock market. harnessing the power of Bloomberg data. Now, let's take a look at some of the stocks on the move today here in Europe. I'm Caroline Hepker and we're joined by Bloomberg reporter Chloe Millais. Good morning, Chloe. So, let's wade through all of these earnings in Europe. What stands out to you this morning, Chloe? Yeah, one of the big standouts for me this morning was Standard Chartered after a very busy week of bank earnings. And so, for Standard Chartered, we had record first quarter profit way ahead of analyst estimates. And that was fueled primarily by really strong inflows in its wealth business. And so, that helped to offset higher charges that were linked to the tensions in the Middle East. So it booked a credit impairment charge of almost million which included almost million in precautionary management overlays that were tied to the Middle East situation in particular So that is one thing but the wealth inflows were so good that that really offset that. And investors are now really looking towards next month when the bank is scheduled to unveil some new medium-term targets as well. It's been very busy with other banks as well today. We had SockGen, we had BNP, we had BBVA as well, seeing really strong lending, which offset the impact of provisions as well. So now that we're coming to the end of this bank reporting season, it seems that the main takeaways are that there are a lot of charges and provisions related to the Middle Eastern tensions, that trading is good but maybe not as good as it was on Wall Street and that there's still this continued uncertainty on the impact of inflation going forward on both loan demand and on provisions as well. Yeah, absolutely. So that then on the banks, What about Whitbread? Embarking on an overhaul, what does that look like for them? Yeah, very tough morning for Whitbread. Shares are down quite significantly. And that is after announcing a new five-year plan. So it's cutting capital spending. It's cutting thousands of jobs as well. And the aim of all of that is to return billion to shareholders by 2031 So it plans to cut about 3 jobs in the UK and Ireland So that 13 of its workforce That quite significant And it also plans to reduce the proportion of its properties that it owns outright. So essentially, it will sell some freehold properties and then sign long-term rental agreements instead. So that will free up some cash and that will be used to fund more shareholder returns. So that is the plan. It also plans to turn some of its branded restaurants into hotels as well, which means more hotel rooms and therefore better margins. But investors are questioning a little bit this leasehold strategy instead of the freehold. And also the fact that this is a lot of investment short term with maybe unclear benefits in the medium term. And then there's the added challenge of this higher inflation and this weak consumer confidence hurting travel demand and therefore demand for hotel rooms. Yeah. OK. So that's weird bread. Stellantis managed to turn a profit, but it hasn't turned its fortunes around as far as investors are concerned. Why? Yeah, it was quite interesting because recently Stellantis said that it had seen a surge in shipments to North America. And so analysts had really seen this as a sign that this market was really back on track, especially given that North America is such an important market for Stellantis But then today there was actually weaker than expected performance in that region and a lower than expected margin and also a one gain of around 400 million euros for expected future tariff refunds So some of that took the shine off the return to profit. And the CEO is now about to finalise the review of the operations and then will present the results in May, so next month. And so, we have already seen Stellantis invest billions of dollars in the U.S. and walking back its electrification plans, and then also stashing some prices to win back market share. So there's already some parts of this review that are known, but we'll see what else is in store and whether or not that is investisized enough to turn things around for Stellantis. The Stock Movers Report from Bloomberg Radio. 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