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Let's have a look at some of the stocks on the move today here in Europe. I'm Caroline Hepka and I'm joined by Bloomberg reporta Cloma La. Good morning, Chloe. So we're getting into earning season, but we are also thinking about the war in the Middle East and how that is affecting markets. Let's start with Lvmhe how did they do in the first quarter? What were the most interesting lines? I mean, we're also trying to think about any clues as to the second quarter. Yeah.
Absolutely. Our Image is one of the first and obviously the most important luxury companies reporting this ending season, and it's not the best start. So it's actually the sales at the fashion and leather goods business, which is the most important division FORMAH disappointed this morning, and that was mostly due to the conflict in the Middle East, which particularly hurt demand in the shopping hub of Dubai, of course, but then also really weakened that consumer confidence globally as well.
And so if we look at the business in the Middle East, it represents about six percent of total sales, and it's a division that suffered a lot, with the sales falling fifty percent in March, and that was after what LVMH said was actually a very positive start to the year. So we're seeing the impact of the geopolitical turmoil on sales really overshadowing progress in other parts of
the business. So if we look at the US and China, for example, they actually did pretty well with the New year's shopping season, boosting sales is actually quite a bit, but that is currently taking a back seat to the weakness that we're seeing in the Middle Eastern market. That was seen as a very profitable and a really key growth driver going forward, but now things are obviously a
little bit different. So we've seen shares down quite a bit for Heavy Image this morning, and that is actually after the company had these its worst start to a year on record in the first quarter, so definitely not a good time for ovamage. But we'll see how caring An MSL holding up when we get those results as well.
Yeah, absolutely, Lvimage is amongst the worst performance on the USTOX six hundred this morning. Media Company Publicists, they have a more positive earnings message.
Yeah, at a little bit more positive actually pretty resilient earnings for publicities. So it was able to maintain quite solid as sales growth for the first quarter and also kept its guidance for the year. And that is despite the fact that there is obviously an impact of the around or owned business confidence on how much companies are willing to spend on advertising and marketing those services that
Publicist provides. The company does not have major exposure to the Middle East, so that helps a little bit as well. It did strike a note of caution though it expects sales growth to accelerate in the second quarter, but provided that microeconomic conditions do not deteriorate any further. So the result my have reassured investors a little bit, but it's not eased kind of every single or worry that they have, and so shares slipped a little bit this morning. Yeah.
Meanwhile, energy price is soaring. That's obviously quite good news for BP, one of the oil companies that is really the heart of what's going on.
Yeah yeah, BP said this morning that its oil trading performance was exceptional in the first quarter, so that echoes what We've already heard from Shell a little bit earlier this month, which also mentioned this trade that the trading operation really boosted earnings in the first quarter because of this disruption to global energy market is really leading to
oil guests and fuel prices much higher. But oil majors shares are down actually this morning because oil prices are currently down, which is in response to the US and AROUND potentially considering further talks to extend this two week cease fire. So just like we saw oil jumping yesterday because of this blockade of the trade of hormones, today there's a bit more optimism around the potential peace deal,
and so there's leading oil a little bit low. So despite the fact that we had this trading update from BP, shaws are actually a little bit in the red because that was not really enough to upset the impact of those week oil prices. And we'll get more detail when we get the earnings from BP later this month. Is definitely a key sector to watch from an earning standpoint as well.
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