(News Bulletin 247) – The Deutsche Bank subsidiary in charge of European indices made this announcement on Monday. Bavarian Nordic and Puig will be included in this index.

Forvia and Ubisoft are about to suffer a slight downgrade. Stoxx Ltd, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, announced on Monday that the two French stocks would leave the Stoxx Europe 600, one of the pan-European benchmark indices (along with the Stoxx Europe 50), on September 23.

Since the beginning of the year, Forvia has fallen by 53.7%. The automotive equipment manufacturer, a former subsidiary of PSA, may have suffered from market questions after the announcement of a major restructuring in Europe. More broadly, the stock has suffered from an adverse context for equipment manufacturers, with fears that groups in the sector will suffer from Chinese competition and that the electrification of manufacturers will weigh on their profitability.

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Ubisoft in the hard

Ubisoft, for its part, has lost 31% since the beginning of the year. The video game publisher had been weighed down in May by prospects for the current financial year that disappointed the market.

To get back on track, the company must be able to count on its two “AAA” games (video game blockbusters) launched this year, namely the next Assassin’s Creed in November and the game “Star Wars Outlaws”, released Friday.

However, UBS notes in a note that the reception of players on this last game is for the moment rather glacial. On Metacritic, an aggregator of press and user reviews, Star Wars Outlaws obtains a score of 4.9 (out of 10) among players, which translates into a reception “generally unfavorable”. In comparison, the score of the press rises to 76/100, which translates into a reception “generally favorable”. The opinions of players are, in detail, polarized between murderous criticisms and very favorable comments.

This poor response from “gamers” could explain the 5% drop in the stock on Monday, with the stock losing another 2.4% on Tuesday. UBS also acknowledges that this reception poses a “downward risk” to its sales forecast for the game, at 10 million units.

Puig and Bavarian arrive

Besides Forvia and Ubisoft, German industrial conglomerate Thyssenkrupp, Irish-British online gambling specialist Flutter Entertainment, and pharmaceutical group Indivor will also leave the Stoxx Europe 600.

On the entry side, some names are particularly noteworthy. This is the case of Puig, the Spanish cosmetics group and owner of the brands Nina Ricci, Paco Rabanne and Jean-Paul Gaultier, which entered the Madrid Stock Exchange in May. Another company to have recently entered the stock market, the investment fund CVC, which arrived in Amsterdam in April, will also join the Stoxx Europe 600 on September 23.

The same will be true for the Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, whose stock price has soared by 47% in one month. This company has recently been in the media spotlight because it is the only pharmaceutical laboratory to have a vaccine approved by the authorities against “mpox” or “monkey pox”. This virus has seen a significant resurgence in August, with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring it a public health emergency, its highest level of health alert.