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The Stock Movers Report, your roundup of companies making moves in the stock market, harnessing the power of Bloomberg data.
Now, let's take a look at some of the stocks on the move today in Europe. I'm Lizzie Burden in London alongside Stephen Carroll in Brussels and were joined by Boomberg reporter Chloe Melly. So Clarie, let's start with Axo no bell a dark hue from them this morning.
That's great, great stuff, Lizzie. So, Exo Nobel the paint maker, and the suitors for Exo have backed off. So Nippon Paint and Sherwin Williams have now ended their effort to buy Exo Noobel, which means that EXO will go ahead with its merger its planned merger with Exalter Coatings instead.
So EXOD rejected two offers from those two firms. So the latest actually valued at twelve point five billion euros and it involved plans to break up the business, but it said that the agreement that it had with ex which was agreed in November last year, was actually superior, and so that's led to a massive plunge in the chars this morning, so big reversal from the massive jump that we had seen when Axo revealed that it had received and then subsequently rejected those offers, and so the
sell off as actually eraised all of those prior gains. And now the context behind this kind of m and A activity in the paint making sector is that those companies are chemical companies, and so they are dealing with the same things that this chemical sector is dealing with, which is really high raw materials costs, and then also a lot of weakness in end markets and markets like the industrial or the automotive and markets, and so this creates this need for scale for consolidation in this sector,
and so we are seeing that. So we'll probably be hearing more from this pain making sector. But in the meantime we're getting and exalt merging apparently.
Okay, so that's actual abround the paint space. We're going to go to the high street next into Text, the owner of Zara and other fashion brands say the high streets giving high margins.
Yes, so Zarah owner Intertext is doing very well. So said that growth had really picked up at the start of its second quarter. So it has the quarter that starts in May, is what it means. So that came as a relief for investors that have been obviously really worried about the impact of the Iran war on retailers. Of course, that's the sector that's been dealing with really high energy costs, high shipping costs, and then at the same time lower consumer spending. But it seems that Intertext
is quite resilient within this quite tough backdrop. It's benefited from a strategy of investing in very big flagship stores and then also trying to move more towards the higher end of the fashion market because the lower end is where it's actually much more competitive, because we've got names like Sheen for example, really lowering prices, and so for investors, this update from Intertext this morning was really seen as evidence that it can probably better whether this current environment,
which is getting actually more and more difficult than some of its peers, and perhaps it can do better than a company's like H and M, which has actually been seeing a bit of weakness. And so we were seeing shares in Intertext rising on the back of this update, which was seen as really reassuring from that retail perspective.
Were saying in retail, but moving to the bargain bin because B and M seems to be really flying this morning.
Why, yeah, absolutely, So this is another positive retail story for B and M. The context is that BNM has had a very tough year, so the profit is actually down. It's had to implement the big strategy reset in October after a lot of poor execution has led to a pressure on sales growth, and then there's of course still that backdrop of a low consumer sentiment the prospect of
potentially higher interest rates as well in the UK. But what the stock is reacting to today very positively is that despite all of those challenges, B and M was actually quite optimistic for the future. So it's said that is starting to see some of the benefits of this turnaround. Mented in October said that BNM UK in particular was on track to return to higher and stronger margins and also that it will actually be able to upset the impact from those higher energy costs and higher shipping costs
as well, and so this is very positive. It also echoes what we heard from Debenham's as well this morning, formerly known as Boohoo, which actually was even more bullish. It said that it expects very strong momentum this year after returning to growth for this quarter. So maybe UK retail is actually doing fairly well and better than feared.
Really. The Stock Movers report from Bloomberg Radio. Check back with us throughout the day for the latest roundup of companies making news on Wall Street and for the latest market moving headlines. Listen to Bloomberg Radio Live, catch us on YouTube, Bloomberg dot com, and on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.