(News Bulletin 247) – The CAC 40 finished close to equilibrium this Wednesday, while American growth for the fourth quarter was adjusted downward. Teleperformance fell as did Worldline.

A session without much animation on the CAC 40 this Wednesday. The Parisian index finished slightly up 0.08% at 7,954.39 points, after spending roughly the entire day around equilibrium.

US gross domestic product (GDP) was revised slightly downward for the fourth quarter of 2023. The second estimate brings growth down to 3.2% year-on-year for the last three months of last year compared to 3.3%. for the first.

This had little impact on the evolution of the major indices. The market is now awaiting the publication on Thursday of the PCE index for the month of January, the preferred gauge of the American Federal Reserve (Fed) for measuring inflation.

Investors are watching this figure to try to anticipate the next decisions of the American central bank. In recent weeks, the market has been forced to rethink its approach, counting on only a few rate cuts during the year.

“The market now anticipates three rate cuts from the Fed for this year (75 basis points or 0.75%), compared to more than six cuts anticipated at the start of the year. For the European Central Bank too, expectations of rate cuts in 2024 have been halved since the start of the year, to less than 100 basis points now,” notes Xavier Chapard of LBPAM.

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Teleperformance still caught up by fears about AI

Business news has remained quite dense. Teleperformance took center stage, falling 14.14%. The plunge in the customer relations group is linked to the announcements of a Swedish fintech, Klarna, which revealed significant feats of its AI assistant in terms of customer relations, which makes the market fear a disappearance of specialized companies in this sector. The stock, however, halved its losses after the group reacted by ensuring that its current activity “in no way reflects” the negative conclusions drawn from Klarna’s communication.

On the publications side, Worldline lost 10.2% after revealing growth below expectations in the fourth quarter as well as medium-term targets considered unambitious by analysts.

Conversely, Interparfums gained 5.4% driven by profitability higher than expectations for 2023.

Atos finally gained 4% after noting the failure of negotiations to sell its historic activity to Daniel Kretinsky while communicating unsurprising 2023 results.

The bitoech OSE Immunotherapeutics took 51.6% after announcing a partnership with the American giant Abbvie to develop an experimental treatment to treat severe and chronic inflammation.

Note that Casino fell by 21.9% while the distribution group reported spectacular net losses of 5.7 billion euros for the year 2023, due in particular to heavy accounting depreciation.

On other markets, the euro fell 0.06% against the dollar to 1.0839 dollars. Oil is losing ground. The April contract on Brent from the North Sea lost 0.9% to 81.89 dollars per barrel, while that of the same maturity on WTI listed in New York lost 0.9% to 78.18 dollars per barrel. .