(News Bulletin 247) – Auto stocks were among the biggest declines in European markets on Monday, weighed down by a rating from Barclays which downgraded the sector, worried about the repercussions of a coming recession.

Around 3:45 p.m., the STOXX Europe 600 Automobiles & Parts index, which brings together the biggest players in the industry, lost more than 1%, against a gain of 0.1% for the STOXX 600 index.

While it expects the first half of the year to be relatively decent, thanks to the strength of order books in Europe and the resilience of US consumption, Barclays says it fears a much stronger second half of the year. difficult for the car.

The design office explains that it is beginning to worry about the effects of weak volumes in China, the price cuts announced by Tesla, a normalization of stocks and the recessions that are emerging in the United States and in Europe. .

This leads him to downgrade his recommendation to ‘negative’ versus ‘neutral’ so far.

In this context, Barclays says it prefers Mercedes-Benz (overweight, target price of 85 euros) to BMW (underweight, target of 97.5 euros), while also stating that it appreciates Michelin (overweight, target of 35 euros) and Daimler Truck ( overweight, target 40 euros).

From a more ‘opportunistic’ point of view, the analyst explains that he favors VW (overweight, target 150 euros) at the expense of Renault (underweight, target 39 euros).

In Paris, the Renault tire showed the largest drop in the CAC 40 index on Monday following these remarks, with a decline of 4.2%, while Stellantis lost 0.6%.

In Frankfurt, Mercedes-Benz yielded 1.5%, Porsche 1.4%, BMW 1.1% and Volkswagen 0.9%.

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