Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Ends Flat as BCP Jumps 2.5%, Fitch Reviews Portugal Tomorrow, the Euribor Hits a Two-Year High

Europe Rallies on Bond Relief and Lisbon Sits It Out, but BCP Jumps 2.5%

Europe's main exchanges spent Thursday exhaling. Sovereign borrowing costs finally eased after a week of relentless selling, and most of the continent's indices took the relief and ran with it. Lisbon did not. The PSI closed at 9,401.50 points, down 0.04%, with nine constituents lower, six higher and one unchanged. Jornal de Negócios (Business Daily) put the divergence down to the two sectors that dominate the Portuguese index: utilities and retail.

The exception, and it was a loud one, was Banco Comercial Português. BCP rose 2.50% to 1.1495 euros and led the index by a wide margin, in the third session of a month that follows an August in which the bank was buying its own stock under the 407.5 million euro repurchase programme that runs to 4 December. Behind it came CTT, up 0.77% to 6.58 euros, and REN, up 0.43% to 3.495 euros. There was no company announcement to explain the move in BCP; a day on which bond yields fall and bank shares rise is a familiar pattern, but the size of the move was not.

Altri was the worst performer of the session, down 1.58% at 4.6750 euros. The energy names that had dragged the index down on Wednesday kept sliding, with EDP Renováveis off 1.05% at 13.20 euros and EDP off 0.73% at 4.63 euros. Retail followed: Jerónimo Martins, which owns Pingo Doce, lost 0.83% to 18.01 euros, and Sonae, which owns Continente, lost 0.74% to 2.01 euros.

Galp is the day's oddity. It opened as the index leader, up 1.28% at 21.38 euros on the news that it had closed its Namibian partnership with TotalEnergies, and it finished down 0.52% at 21.00 euros. The deal is covered further down.

Wall Street was in the green when Lisbon closed. At about 14:47 Lisbon time the Dow Jones was up 0.47% at 53,309.17, the S&P 500 up 0.26% at 7,686.71 and the Nasdaq up 0.45% at 26,336.32. Snowflake jumped roughly 20% on strong revenue guidance and ServiceNow added more than 6%, while Broadcom fell 5.7% to a near five-month low. Nvidia rose about 1.5% after confirming its purchase of the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for 12.93 billion dollars, or roughly 11 billion euros, one of the largest acquisitions in the company's history. United States jobless claims rose by 2,000 last week to 206,000, and the monthly payrolls report lands on Friday.

The Bond Sell-Off Pauses on Its Seventh Day

The sell-off that has punished government bond markets worldwide for a week took its first pause on Thursday. Portugal's ten-year Obrigações do Tesouro (Treasury bonds) yield fell to about 3.68%, down close to six basis points on the day, having touched a nine-year high on Wednesday. The rest of the curve came down with it: the twenty-year to 4.21%, the thirty-year to 4.31%, the two-year to 2.96% and the one-year to 2.81%.

Spain moved the same way, its ten-year down about three basis points to 3.8076% but still at levels last seen in 2023. The German ten-year Bund, the reference for the whole single-currency area, eased to roughly 3.35% and remains at its highest since 2011. Portugal's spread over Germany therefore narrowed slightly, to about 33 basis points from about 35 on Wednesday.

None of this is a change of direction so much as a breath. The pressure of the past week came from investors repricing what higher oil and gas prices will do to inflation, and therefore what central banks will have to do about it. Countries with heavy debt loads and awkward public accounts, France, the United States and Japan among them, took the worst of it, which is why Portugal's own rising interest bill and falling debt ratio have been moving in opposite directions.

The European Central Bank meets on 9 and 10 September, in Berlin. It held its rates on 23 July after raising them on 11 June for the first time since September 2023, and the market now treats a September increase as settled. Beyond that, investors are pricing a further 25 basis points at the December meeting, which would leave the deposit rate at 2.75% by the end of the year, its highest since March 2025. The euro strengthened: the ECB reference rate closed at 1.1615 dollars, against 1.1578 on Wednesday.

Fitch Reviews Portugal on Friday, and an Upgrade Is Technically Available

Fitch Ratings publishes its scheduled review of Portugal's sovereign debt on Friday. The agency currently rates the country A with a positive outlook, a position it has held since March, and a positive outlook is the formal signal that an upgrade is under consideration.

The analysts who spoke to Lusa are split on whether it happens tomorrow. Filipe Silva, investment director at Banco Carregosa, set out three arguments in favour: debt reduction that has been sustained rather than lucky, economic growth that has strengthened, and a budget position he described as considerably more comfortable than most sovereigns carrying an A. Portugal's year-on-year growth improved from 2.4% in the first quarter to 2.5% in the second, and exports did most of that work.

João Cruz, markets analyst at XTB, made the case the other way. Rating agencies, he said, tend towards caution and prefer to wait for structural milestones rather than move on a good quarter. That is the more common outcome: most of those asked expect Fitch to leave the rating at A and the outlook positive, and to revisit it in six months.

The wider picture is favourable either way. Standard & Poor's held Portugal at A+ with a positive outlook last week, and DBRS, which reviews the country three times a year rather than twice, has maintained its rating in both of its 2026 assessments so far. Portugal's borrowing costs are not currently a function of its rating; they are a function of what happens to oil.

The Euribor Hits a Two-Year High and Diesel Could Jump 14 Cents on Monday

The Euribor rose at all three tenors that matter for Portuguese mortgages on Thursday, and the twelve-month rate now sits exactly where it stood two years ago to the day. It gained 0.041 points to 3.068%, its highest since 3 September 2024.

The tenor that touches most borrowers is the six-month, which has been the most widely used reference in Portuguese variable-rate housing credit since January 2024 and covers 39.9% of that loan stock according to July data from the Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal). It rose 0.019 points to 2.789%, its highest since November 2024. The twelve-month accounts for 31.3% of the stock and the three-month for 24.4%; the three-month gained 0.009 points to 2.655%, a high since January 2025. August's monthly averages were 2.513%, 2.713% and 2.954% respectively, all up again on July. For savers, the practical consequence is that the Euribor now sits well above the 2.5% ceiling written into Portugal's savings certificates, so the state's product no longer tracks the market on the way up.

The same energy prices driving the rate expectations are about to arrive at the pump. Brent for November delivery was trading at 97.13 dollars a barrel at around 13:00 Lisbon time, up 1.57%, after touching 97.59 dollars an hour earlier; West Texas Intermediate was up 1.59% at 92.46 dollars. Brent had closed Wednesday at 95.63 dollars on the Intercontinental Exchange, and it began the week near 90. Industry sources told Notícias ao Minuto that provisional mid-week estimates point to diesel rising about 14 cents a litre and petrol about 7 cents on Monday. Those numbers cover only half the reference week and firm up on Friday evening, so treat them as a direction rather than a figure, but the direction is unambiguous. The government began clawing back part of its fuel-tax discount on Monday, a bet that now looks poorly timed.

Galp Closes the Namibian Swap With TotalEnergies

Galp told the market on Thursday morning that it has completed the strategic partnership with France's TotalEnergies in Namibia, finishing a portfolio reshuffle it announced in outline in December 2025.

The arithmetic is a swap of concentration for spread. Galp keeps a 40% interest in PEL 83, the block containing its Mopane discovery, and picks up 10% of PEL 56 and 9.39% of PEL 91. It goes, in its own words, from a position concentrated in a single block to a diversified portfolio of three offshore blocks. PEL 91 contains Venus, one of the most advanced development projects in Namibia and one approaching a final investment decision, so the company now holds assets at different stages of maturity rather than a single very large bet. Under the terms agreed in December, TotalEnergies takes on half of Galp's exploration, appraisal and development costs at Mopane and is repaid later out of half the project's future cash flows.

Galp said in April 2024 that Mopane could hold the equivalent of at least ten billion barrels of oil and gas, which would make it the most significant discovery in the company's history. When the pre-agreement with Total was announced, the shares fell as much as 15% in a single day, the worst session since the start of the pandemic, because the deal brings in a partner without bringing in cash. Co-chief executive Maria João Carioca conceded the point at the time, calling it an asset swap and acknowledging it did not distribute money immediately, while arguing it remained significantly value-generating.

The next markers are a new exploration and appraisal campaign at Mopane, due in the fourth quarter of 2026, and Venus moving towards its investment decision. Galp's Portuguese refining business, meanwhile, remains the subject of separate arguments about what happens to Sines and about the windfall levy on 2026 profits.

The PSI Made a Record 3.66 Billion Euros in the First Half, and Four Names Made Most of It

With fifteen of the index's sixteen members reported (Ibersol files on 14 September), ECO has totalled the first-half accounts, and the answer is another record. PSI companies made 3,658.2 million euros between January and June. Strip out the one-off from Semapa's sale of Secil and the figure is 3,142 million, up 13.4% on the 2,771.3 million of the same period in 2025.

The concentration is the story. The EDP group, Galp and BCP together accounted for more than 62% of the total. Six of the fifteen, or seven once the Secil effect is removed, actually reported lower profits than a year earlier, with the exporters squeezed by storms and by the price rises the war has brought. Maxyield, the shareholder association, described the season as neither exciting nor disappointing but noted that profit growth accelerated from the 6.4% year-on-year gain recorded across the PSI universe in the first quarter, and that the concentration of those profits increased.

Galp was the biggest earner, with 812 million euros, up 247 million or 43.7%, and it has raised its guidance accordingly: EBITDA of four billion euros this year, against a previous floor of 2.6 billion and the three billion reported in 2025, with oil production now expected at the top of its 125,000 to 130,000 barrel-equivalent range. EDP made 732 million euros and lifted its own full-year target to 1.4 billion, above both the 1,150 million of 2025 and its previous 1.2 to 1.3 billion range, while its renewables arm doubled its half-year profit to 184 million euros. On those guidance numbers, 2026 is heading for another record year on the Lisbon exchange, provided the energy prices holding it up do not become the thing that breaks the rest of the index.

Also Moving: A Sintra Buyer in Britain, Two Million Cars at Mangualde, 2.66 Billion Euros of Tax Refunds

Aralab buys its British distributor. The Sintra climate-chamber manufacturer has acquired 100% of the United Kingdom's Alphatech, giving it direct representation in one of the largest markets in the world for environmental test equipment. Aralab expects to close 2026 with 25 million euros of revenue, against 19 million last year. It is the company's second acquisition of 2026, after taking 51% of India's Newtronic in March alongside Germany's Memmert, and it follows the start of production in China in February. Founded in 1985 by the brothers João and Eduardo Araújo, Aralab employs about 110 people in Rio de Mouro and exports more than 80% of its output to over 80 countries; its customers include Bayer, BASF, Bosch, Continental, Airbus, Thales and Renault, along with research centres tied to NASA and the European Space Agency.

Two million vehicles at Mangualde. Stellantis's plant in Mangualde built its two-millionth vehicle on Wednesday, a grey Citroën ë-Berlingo Van in the Berlingo 30th anniversary special edition, sold to a customer in the Leiria region. The factory has been producing since 1964, under the name Citroën Lusitânia at its founding two years earlier, and it now accounts for 27% of all vehicles made in Portugal. Its record year was the last one, at 91,670 units. It runs 372 vehicles a day across three shifts, exports 95% of them, and employs 900 people directly and more than a thousand indirectly, building light commercial vehicles and passenger versions for Peugeot, Citroën, Opel and Fiat. In June it was picked as one of the sites for the group's new-generation vans.

The tax authority's final refund count. The Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (Tax and Customs Authority) assessed 2.66 billion euros of IRS (personal income tax) refunds in this year's campaign, 210 million euros or 8.6% more than last year, the Finance Ministry told ECO. By 31 August, the legal deadline for the state to pay, it had actually transferred 2.59 billion across more than 2.557 million refunds, leaving roughly 70 million and about 156,000 refunds outstanding against the 2.713 million returns that generated one. That number of refund-generating returns was itself up 92,128, or 3.5%. In total 6.505 million returns were settled, 171,000 more than last year, while the number of assessments demanding payment barely moved at 1.727 million. The average automatic refund took 11.96 days, and Lusa puts the average value at about 980 euros.

A 401 million euro hole in next year's income tax, before any new cut. The Finance Ministry's invariant-policy table for the 2027 State Budget, now with Parliament, already books a 401 million euro loss of IRS revenue. None of it is a new measure. It is the delayed budgetary effect of the annual indexation applied to 2026 income: the specific deduction rose 124.94 euros to 4,587.09 in line with a 2.8% increase in the Indexante dos Apoios Sociais (Social Support Index), and the brackets rose 3.51%, taking the first band from 8,059 to 8,342 euros. The finance minister, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, is keeping his pledge to cut income tax by two billion euros over the legislature but no longer guarantees a further rate cut in 2027, making it conditional on the public accounts. Portugal's 2027 interest bill has already grown by 776 million euros in the same set of documents.

GamaLife. The life insurer closed the first half with net profit of 27.9 million euros against 18.5 million a year earlier, a rise of 50.8% that comes almost entirely from a lower tax charge; pre-tax profit was essentially flat at 30.9 million. Its solvency ratio stood at 273%. Written business fell 4.6% to 223 million euros, with the shortfall concentrated in Portugal at 164 million, because the launch of its new guaranteed retirement savings plan slipped to July. That product, sold through novobanco, novobanco dos Açores and Banco Best with a guaranteed 3% in 2026, has since accelerated sales. GamaLife is also the vehicle through which BPCE has been reorganising novobanco's insurance arrangements.

Revolut clears its first American hurdle. The fintech said it has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a United States national bank charter. It still needs the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve and a final sign-off from the OCC, and it is holding to a 2027 launch. Revolut serves more than 80 million customers worldwide and 2.3 million of them in Portugal, where it is building a sales hub in Matosinhos.

Four million euros in Felgueiras. Grupo Mosqueteiros, the Intermarché parent, has opened a Bricomarché and a Roady vehicle-service centre in Felgueiras for about four million euros, creating 31 jobs. The group now runs 63 Bricomarché stores and 38 Roady centres in Portugal.

Tomorrow

Fitch's verdict on Portugal is the domestic event, and the American payrolls report is the one that will move the bond market that has been setting the tone all week; the final fuel prices for Monday are confirmed on Friday evening.