Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Dips 0.3% as Oil Tops $100, Galp Surges, NOS Profit Jumps 19%

Portuguese Equities: PSI Slips 0.27% but Leads Europe as Oil Tops $100

Lisbon spent Thursday playing defence — and did it better than anyone else on the continent. The PSI index (Portuguese Stock Index) closed 23 July down 0.27% at 9,252.58 points, giving back 25.04 points from Wednesday's 9,277.62 finish, on a day when a fresh escalation of tensions in the Middle East pushed crude oil back above $100 a barrel for the first time since May and painted every major Western European bourse red. That modest slip made the Portuguese market the region's least-punished exchange, a resilience owed almost entirely to its heavy energy weighting: with oil surging, Galp's rally absorbed most of the selling pressure hitting the rest of the board. Even after the pullback, the index sits roughly 20% above its level of a year ago and remains within sight of the 9,409-point peak it touched in April.

Blue-Chip Movers

Galp Energia was the session's engine, surging 3.71% to €20.96 as the oil-price spike flowed straight through to the earnings outlook for Portugal's flagship energy producer. Grid operator REN — Redes Energéticas Nacionais (National Energy Networks) added 0.54% to €3.715 and EDP — Energias de Portugal (Energies of Portugal) firmed 0.28% to €4.624, the trio doing the heavy lifting that kept the index's losses so shallow. The casualty list was longer. CTT — Correios de Portugal (Post Office of Portugal) slid 4.67% to €5.925, surrendering Wednesday's standout gain as investors took profits on the run sparked by reported interest from Spain's Cajamar in its banking business. Construction group Teixeira Duarte fell 2.93%, cork producer Corticeira Amorim lost 2.74%, and the paper complex was uniformly weak, with Semapa down 2.64% and Navigator off 2.37% to €3.134 ahead of its first-half results. Mota-Engil dropped 2.07%, retailer Jerónimo Martins eased 1.47% to €16.81 and Banco Comercial Português (BCP), the country's largest listed bank, shed 1.08% to €1.0515. Sonae ended flat at €2.045, while the day's two reporting companies, NOS (down 0.16%) and Altri (down 0.43%), closed little changed as their first-half numbers landed.

Government Bonds and the Euro

Portuguese sovereign debt cheapened further. The yield on the 10-year Obrigações do Tesouro (Treasury bonds) rose about three basis points to 3.58%, extending a climb of roughly 32 basis points over the past month as the oil spike hardened expectations that the European Central Bank (ECB) will stay on hold rather than resume cutting rates. The spread over 10-year German Bunds — the market's gauge of Lisbon's credit standing — sat near 38 basis points, with the Bund itself trading around 3.20%; Portugal's premium remains historically tight, anchored by its run of budget surpluses and falling debt ratio. The euro, meanwhile, finally broke out of its narrow July band — to the downside. EUR/USD fell 0.29% to $1.1379 as markets digested the ECB's decision to leave its deposit rate unchanged at 2.25%, a hold framed by a cautious, data-dependent stance amid the uncertainty that $100 oil injects into the inflation outlook. A softer euro compounds the sting of dearer crude for Portuguese importers, though it offers exporters a modest cushion.

Business & Tech Focus: NOS Opens Earnings Season With a 19% Profit Jump

Lisbon's first-half reporting season opened on Thursday, and telecoms operator NOS set an encouraging tone. Net profit jumped 19.2% year on year to €139.5 million, even as core telecom revenues slipped 0.7% in what management described as a "very challenging" competitive market. The growth came from everywhere else: the customer base expanded by 229,200 (up 2.1%), the technology-services division — increasingly the group's second engine — grew revenues 13.4% to €103.5 million, and the EBITDA margin improved 0.6 percentage points to 44.6%. NOS also kept deleveraging, cutting net debt 4.5% to €1.7 billion. For a stock that has lagged the PSI's utility and energy heavyweights this year, the print strengthens the case that the group's pivot toward IT services and cloud business can offset a saturated connectivity market.

Earnings Watch: Storm Damage Slashes Altri's First-Half Profit

The season's other opener was grimmer. Pulp producer Altri reported a 66.6% collapse in first-half profit to €4.6 million, with revenues down 2.2% to €364.7 million and EBITDA down 38% to €35.5 million, as the damage last winter's storms inflicted on its wood supply and logistics chains worked through the accounts. The second quarter, however, pointed to recovery: revenues rose 20.8% year on year to €204.6 million as operations normalised. The read-across matters beyond Altri itself — Navigator, its larger paper-sector peer, presents its own first-half figures imminently, and Thursday's 2.37% slide in Navigator shares suggests investors are braced for a similarly storm-marked set of numbers.

Investment Watch: Germany's Hennig Signs a €51 Million Plant Deal

Away from the exchange, Portugal booked a fresh piece of industrial investment. AICEP — Agência para o Investimento e Comércio Externo de Portugal (the Portuguese Trade and Investment Agency) signed a contract with Hennig, the Munich-founded metalworking and mechatronics group, for a €51 million factory in the Pincho industrial zone of Figueira da Foz. The project is slated to create 452 jobs, with completion targeted for early 2028, and carries roughly €7.7 million in state support under the contractual investment regime. For the central-coast region, it is one of the largest greenfield industrial commitments in years, and it extends the run of German manufacturers folding Portugal into their production-decentralisation strategies.

The Day Ahead

Earnings season now gathers pace into the month's end, with Navigator's first-half results the next domestic catalyst and the index heavyweights to follow — but with crude holding above $100 and Middle East headlines running the tape, Friday's session in Lisbon is likely to be decided in the oil market rather than on home ground.