[MARKET ANALYSIS] European bourses firmer given the constructive tone in Asia; Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd raise their FY26 guidance

• European bourses are firmer across the board, outside of the FTSE 100 given that 19% of the index is trading ex-divs. The positiveness follows on from the constructive tone overnight in Asia. Despite choppiness in China, Lenovo surged some 22% after the Co. reported a 43% increase in revenue to USD 26.94bln, beating expectations of USD 22.33bln. Post-earnings, the CEO said they are to achieve the USD 100bln annual revenue goal ahead of schedule and announced that they are working with Nvidia (NVDA) to launch an AI PC powered by the RTX chip later this year.
• Sectors point to a more mixed picture. Banks top the sector pile, followed by Insurance and Food, Beverages & Tobacco. Basic Resources is the clear sector laggard, with Chemicals and Energy printing modest losses.
• A lot of guidance changes this morning. Shippers Maersk (+5.1%) and Hapag-Lloyd (+0.4%) raised their EBIT and EBITDA guidance, with the former upgrading forecasts for the second time this year, while payments platform Adyen (+12.4%) upped its net revenue growth to between 21-23% (prev. guided 20-22%). Furthermore, Pandora (+1.8%) upgraded revenue guidance to reflect the IEEPA tariff claim, and made the point that margins were strong even without that. Elsewhere, Orsted (-3.2%) and Zealand Pharma (+2.5%) maintained their FY guidance; while Thyssenkrupp (+1.7%) narrowed its forecasts upward.
• Other key movers include: Kuehne+Nagel (+2.1%), invests into a new container freight station in Cambodia; Lanxess (-6.9%), downgraded to sell at Berenberg; TKMS (+11.3%), upgraded to outperform at Bernstein.
• US equity futures are muted, trading in narrow ranges. Despite the light volumes, there are a few key movers pre-market: Cerebras Systems (-17.4% pre-market), Q2 revenue missed estimates and gross margin fell; Cisco (-5.8% pre-market), despite Q4 earnings beat and raised its guidance.

European sessions that open on the coattails of a constructive Asia close tend to hold the bid only where the overnight driver is earnings or guidance rather than macro; here the impulse is stock-specific, with Lenovo's revenue beat and the Nvidia-linked AI PC announcement doing the heavy lifting for the tech tape. The FTSE 100 underperformance is mechanical, a large share of the index trading ex-dividend depresses the benchmark independently of sentiment, and past episodes of this kind see the lag unwind rather than signal relative weakness. The more durable thread is the cluster of guidance upgrades, particularly the container shippers raising EBIT and EBITDA forecasts, a pattern that in prior freight upcycles has been read through to rate firmness, tight capacity and the knock-on for logistics peers such as Kuehne+Nagel, which is also firmer. Pandora's explicit reference to an IEEPA tariff claim is the tell to watch on the policy side, since companies quantifying tariff recovery in guidance has historically preceded broader sector restatements. The sector skew, banks and insurance leading, basic resources lagging, is consistent with a guidance-led rather than macro-led tape. Cisco falling pre-market despite a beat-and-raise fits the established pattern of crowded networking and AI-infrastructure names being sold on any hint of in-line rather than exceptional numbers, and whether that read-through extends to the wider semiconductor complex into the US open is the follow-on.