The Spanish business sector is heading to close a week that has brought pleasant surprises to investors and analysts. More than 80% of the Ibex 35 will have presented their semi-annual accounts by the end of this Friday, within the framework of a season in which forecasts are turning optimistic, at least for four of the Ibex 35 heavyweights. Indra, Telefónica, Sabadell and Iberdrola have monopolized the leading role in the results session on Thursday after business expectations for this year have improved. A whole avalanche of good news for the market that has been welcomed with rises in the stock market, even more so when it comes to an environment conditioned by the uncertainty that exists about the course of the economy after the vertical rise in interest rates.
The update of Indra’s roadmap has been the one that has generated the most astonishment on the floor, after José Vicente de los Mozos has made his debut as a director with a review of his billing estimate, ebit and cash generation above of 4%. Very much in line with the group led by Álvarez-Pallete, which goes back to the heat of its estimate of doubling revenue to anticipate organic growth of 4%. The same for Iberdrola, which expects to increase its net profit by around 10% by 2023, as well as for Banco Sabadell, which also improves forecasts and aspires to reach a profit of 1,000 million this year, an unattainable barrier for the firm to date. .
Although each one of them operates in totally different areas, the last two values more clearly reflect the economic cycle through the evolution of their business, especially banking, which offers an almost real-time snapshot of the financial situation of the companies. companies and families. In this sense, the increase in the cost of credit will help the entity led by César González-Bueno to obtain historic profits while the Spanish economy is not yet showing signs of fatigue. After recovering the GDP prior to the pandemic during the first quarter of the year, resilience has been one of the words most used by international organizations when making their projections.
One of the last to do so has been the investment bank Goldman Sachs, for which it has shown greater confidence than in the rest of its European neighbors, apart from the holding of elections. This reinforces the projection made the day before by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has once again raised its forecasts for Spain and estimates that it will grow by 2.5% in 2023, one point more than its estimate last April thanks to s to the pull of tourism. They are even higher than those of the European Commission, which in its spring review showed that Spanish GDP would grow by 1.9%.
Both highlight the growth of this country, above the rest of the members that make up the single currency area. While waiting to find out if it finally abandons the technical recession after two consecutive quarters of GDP fell, a figure that will be known next week, the expectations for this region are weaker, although positive. Specifically, this year an increase of 0.9% is expected, half of that given to the United States (+1.8%) in a sign that the most anticipated recession in history has not yet reared its head. In fact, he believes that the world economy could grow more than expected, although risks such as high inflation persist.
These analyzes are in line with the projection of the Federal Reserve (Fed), which rules out a recession in the United States, while the European Central Bank (ECB) speaks of the fragility of the economic situation. In Both Regions The Key To This Evolution Is Subject To The Course Of Interest Rates And The Impact That The Latest Decisions Will Have After Elbo Elvad US Organization Has Taken Rates To Their Highest Level In 22 Years, Up To 5 .5%, while the Frankfurt-based central bank has decided to raise the other 25 basis points this Thursday, to 4.25%, an unprecedented level since 2008.
Arrived at this restrictive terrain, the heads of monetary policy of these two blocs are already contemplating the possibility of lowering their tone for fear of going too far. In Europe, the vertical escalation of interest rates and the lower investment has already turned into a cut in the demand for loans to historical lows, something that for now does not seem to affect the aforementioned heavyweights of the Ibex 35, whose prospects have improved in this environment of economic fragility.
