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Last week's long awaited strategy update highlighted Umicore's ambition to try to monetize past investments in Battery Materials, acknowledging that some additional capex and equity investment into the Ionway JV are still necessary to achieve this. In the meantime, the company will actively explore partnerships in Battery Materials. The financial targets for Battery Materials were above our expectations and the same can be said for the foundation businesses, particularly Catalysis, which is to b...
In this April 2025 update of the KBC Securities' Dynamic Top Pick List, we are removing Gimv and adding Adyen. Since adding Gimv to the Dynamic Top Pick List in mid-December 2024, Gimv's performance has remained flat. However, month-to-date, it has increased by nearly 7%, while the indices have all declined. Given the backdrop of a tariff war brewing, we think it's time to remove Gimv from the Dynamic Top Pick List as medium-sized businesses are more likely to feel the pinch of lower demand and...
Following December's profit warning, Ekopak again astounded the markets yesterday by announcing an approximate €8m revenue restatement of its recently published FY24 numbers. We were surprised to learn that the restatement pertained to revenue recognition of engineering efforts linked to the Waterkracht project, which was not disclosed at the time of the FY24 release. Additionally, the company is investigating balance sheet strengthening measures, which will likely result in a dilutive capital i...
Rising interest rates are becoming a hot topic, triggered by a significant uptick in US 10-year treasury yields through February and March. In this note we revisit this topic from several angles. We dig into the empirical side of what we can reasonably expect from the market as a whole when interest rates start to rise. Secondly we review our coverage, putting forward a number of impacted sectors and stocks.