CAC 40 Down Nearly 0.5% As Investors Focus On Earnings

(RTTNews) - The French stock market is down in negative territory a little past noon on Thursday with investors largely reacting to corporate earnings announcements, and the latest batch of regional economic data.

The benchmark CAC 40 was down 35.70 points or 0.44% at 8,038.53 a few minutes ago.

Legrand is tanking nearly 10% after the company's results for the first nine months of the year fell short of expectations. The company reported sales of 6.97 billion euros in the nine-month period ended September, less than an expected 7.03 billion euros.

Teleperformance is down more than 6% after reporting a drop in third quarter revenue and lowering its annual targets.

Pernod Ricard is down 2%, while L'Oreal, Schneider Electric, Kering, Airbus, Dassault Systemes and Essilor Luxottica are down 1 to 1.6%.

TotalEnergies, Safran, Saint Gobain, AXA, Hermes International and Euronext are down with modest losses.

ArcelorMittal is rising more than 4% after it reported a 31.35% jump in net income in the September quarter.

Publicis Groupe is gaining 1.9% and Veolia Environment is up 1.85%. STMicroElectronics is up 1.7%, while Engie and Stellantis are up 1.25% from previous closing levels.

Orange, Carrefour, Michelin, LVMH, Bouygues, Unibail Rodamco and Societe Generale are up with modest gains.

On the economic front, data from S&P Global showed that the HCOB Construction PMI in France fell to 39.8 in October from 42.9 in September, signaling a faster pace of decline in activity and extending the sector's downturn to 41 months.

Data published by Eurostat showed Eurozone retail sales declined for the second straight month in September, dropping by 0.1% on a monthly basis, the same in August. Meanwhile, economists had expected a rebound of 0.2%.

Year-on-year, retail sales growth moderated to 1% from 1.6% in August, in line with expectations.