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European Equity pre-Market Summary - 1st September 2026: Strong results from Bunzl; Air Liquide draws interest

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European Equity pre-Market Summary - 1st September 2026: Strong results from Bunzl; Air Liquide draws interest

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Earnings

  • Bunzl (BNZL LN): +4% - Co. reported H1 Revenue of GBP 5.93bln, with other metrics also strong. The Co. also raised its FY26 guidance, and now sees operating margin to be broadly flat Y/Y (prev. guided slightly down Y/Y). (Bunzl)

  • Partners Group (PGHN SW): -5% - Co. reports a slight miss on H1 Revenue, which EBITDA came in at CHF 706mln vs 774mln Y/Y. (Partners)

Stories

  • Air Liquide (AI FP): +4.5% - Elliott Management has reportedly built a stake in Air Liquide, the FT reports. (FT)

  • Alcon (ALC SW) - US White House announces price agreements with several pharmaceutical companies, including Alcon, with the drug makers committing to invest a minimum of USD 19.6bln collectively in US manufacturing in the near term. (White House)

  • AstraZeneca (AZN LN) - Co. announces that its Tagrisso plus Orpathys demonstrated statistically significant and highly clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival in 1st-line MET-overexpressing EGFR-mutated lung cancer. (AstraZeneca)

  • Glencore (GLEN LN) - Co. reportedly took a USD 480mln provision on its exposure to Radiant World, Bloomberg reports. (Bloomberg)

  • Reckitt Benckiser (RKT LN): +2.9% - Co.'s Mead Johnson unit was ruled in favour by a jury regarding a group of federal cases alleging that formula for premature babies is linked to a deadly bowel disease. (Business Wire)

  • Novartis (NOVN SW) - Co. says it has paused 8 clinical trials of an experimental therapy targeting autoimmune and neurological disorders in late August after 3 fatal cases of a severe immune response, WSJ reports. Elsewhere, the Co. announces its remibrutinib significantly reduces relapse rates and shows favourable safety profile in Phase III RMS trials, and met its primary endpoints. (WSJ/Novartis)

  • WPP (WPP LN) - Co. is cutting an additional 1,000 jobs by the end of the year as the Co. undergoes a restructuring plan that will also see non-core businesses and surplus properties offloaded. (FT)

Broker Moves

  • Reckitt Benckiser (RKT LN) upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JPMorgan

  • Drax Group (DRX LN): +4% upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman Sachs

The numbers after the Co. & ticker are the pre-market indication via Tradegate

Context

A mixed pre-market tape rather than a single catalyst, so the items are best read by category. The Elliott stake in Air Liquide is the headline with the deepest precedent: activist campaigns against large-cap European industrials have historically played out over quarters, with the initial pop on the FT report typically followed by a wait for the fund's demands, which in comparable cases have centred on capital allocation, margin targets and portfolio reviews; French governance norms and the anchor role of long-term individual shareholders have made outcomes slower and less confrontational than in US or UK situations. Bunzl's raised margin guidance fits the stock's established pattern of steady execution rewarded disproportionately when distribution peers face volume pressure, and guidance raises from this issuer have tended to hold. The Novartis trial pause on fatal immune responses is the idiosyncratic risk item: pauses of this kind have historically split between resolved safety holds and programme terminations, with the read-across depending on whether the mechanism is drug-specific or class-wide. The White House pricing agreements continue the pattern of pharma conceding near-term pricing for policy certainty, a trade the sector has absorbed before. Reckitt's jury win removes one overhang from a multi-case docket rather than resolving it.

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