Copenhagen Stock Exchange Focus: Danish Delight?

We have a short memory – both about the weather and the equity market, thus begins issue no. 87 of Focus by Equity Strategist Henrik Henriksen, Jyske Bank. At the beginning of this millennium, Danish shares were dropped as investors looked to the tech, media and telecom shares at the Nasdaq exchange, and it was widely held that the future of investments lay outside the Danish borders. However, the Danish equity market has proven to be stable compared with the foreign markets, and since the Iraq war, the KFX Index has yielded returns of 60 per cent as against the 40 per cent yielded by MSCI’s global index.

Henrik Henriksen comments on the Danish interim reports that have been published so far, and the Danish accounting season has offered very few disappointments. More than 50 per cent of the companies have made an upward adjustment of their expectations, and less than a quarter of the companies have adjusted their full-year expectations downwards. However, earnings growth may be an unpredictable indicator of the share prices. Thus, the author warns that hopes for the coming year should not be too high.

Finally, Henrik Henriksen suggests three Danish shares that have not joined the recent feast on the Danish market, but which each has the potential to make a difference in the coming 6 to 12 months.

Read the article ’Danish delight?’ in Focus no. 87. Questions to the author may be forwarded to the e-mail address info@cse.dk until 26 August 2004.