Capital market review
The beginning of 2024 was once again characterised by confidence that the difficult year 2023 would be followed by a quick economic recovery resulting from decreasing inflation and falling key interest rates. In this hope, share prices continuously rose in the first weeks of the year, and it only became apparent from May on that inflation was likely to stay at a higher level for a longer time. At the same time, uncertainty was caused by geopolitical events such as increasing tensions in the Middle East, the announcement of protective tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the EU, as well as the US Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would delay the first interest rate cut. Rays of hope were repeatedly provided by relatively good economic news, such as unemployment figures, but share prices tended to develop sideways. Even the surprising second interest rate cut by the SNB in June ultimately failed to benefit the Swiss market. On the contrary, the markets were unsettled by the surprising interest rate hike of the Japanese central bank in the summer, with the result that the share prices did not begin to rise again until September, after the ECB and the American Federal Reserve had announced lower interest rates. While American indices continued to perform positively as a result, supported by solid company results and protectionist announcements, share prices in Europe fell after the US presidential election until the end of the year. As a result, the SPI Extra closed 2024 with a performance of -0.8%, while the sector index Construction & Materials performed positively with 5.3% due to the index heavyweights, as did the defensive Swiss lead index SMI (4.2%).
The Arbonia AG share, however, performed extremely positively in the reporting year and outperformed all benchmarks. This development was driven by the announcement of the sale of the Climate Division, resulting in a share price performance of 16.1% at the end of the year.
At the beginning of the year, the Arbonia share recovered quickly from a short weak phase and thereby quickly left behind the year low of CHF 8.87 (-7.9%) of 5 January. Until the sale process of the Climate Division was announced with the net earnings for the year on 27 February 2024, the share had already increased by around 11% and thus turned into the profit zone. With the announcement of the sale process, the share price rose to CHF 12.04 or by 21.5%. The positive performance of the share continued even after the signature of the purchase agreement and culminated in a year high of CHF 13.42 on 27 May 2024, shortly after the announcement of the acquisitions of Dimoldura and Lignis. This corresponded to a gain of 39.4% since the beginning of the year. However, these highs did not last, and the share price subsequently fluctuated between CHF 12.00 and CHF 13.00 from June to November. The reporting of the half-year results, which announced a postponement of the closing of the transaction until the end of the year, was not able to change anything either. Starting from mid-November, though, the share price fell noticeably as it became increasingly uncertain whether the closing would still take place before the end of the year. However, with the press release on 20 December, the share made up for some of this decline and closed the year with a price of CHF 11.18.
The performance of the Arbonia share over the year thus amounted to 16.1% and outperformed most Swiss stocks from the field of construction suppliers, such as Geberit (-4.5%) or Zehnder (-15.5%), for example.
