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European stocks rose to hit their highest level in a month on Thursday as heavyweight luxury companies were boosted by Richemont’s buoyant sales update.
The broad-based Stoxx 600 index rose 0.8 per cent to its highest since mid-December. Paris’s Cac 40 rose 2.1 per cent, while Germany’s Dax rose 0.2 per cent to an all-time high.
Richemont, the Swiss owner of the Cartier brand, surged 17.9 per cent after it beat market expectations for quarterly sales, in an upbeat sign for the European high-end luxury sector.
The strong results triggered gains in other luxury names as “investors took Richemont’s update as a signal that the luxury goods sector’s slump was over,” said Russ Mould, an analyst at AJ Bell.
A basket of European luxury groups rose 8 per cent, with LVMH and Hermès jumping 9.6 per cent and 5.9 per cent respectively.
The bloc’s chipmakers also gained after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, forecast overall revenue would increase by close to 25 per cent this year, although it cut its profitability target.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Technology index, which includes big European chipmakers, rose 1.7 per cent, while Dutch semiconductor company ASML gained 3.3 per cent.
