Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Slips 0.55%, Mota-Engil Worst, Brent Drops 3%

PSI Close: -0.55% at 9,090.72 as Mota-Engil, Jerónimo Martins and Galp Lead the Drag List

The PSI (Portugal Stock Index) closed Thursday's session at 9,090.72 points, off 50.31 points or -0.55% on the day, reversing roughly three-quarters of Wednesday's +0.76% advance and leaving the benchmark hovering at the lower bound of the 9,090-9,170 range that the index has traded across the back half of June. The session opened with a defensive bid into the bank-and-utilities sleeve, but the energy and infrastructure block rolled steadily through the morning as Brent crude broke lower on the post-Hormuz oil unwind, and the close walked the index back to flat year-to-date momentum after a constructive five-session run. Turnover ran broadly in line with the 20-day average, with the sell tape concentrated across Mota-Engil, Jerónimo Martins and the pulp-and-paper bench.

Mota-Engil -2.38%, Jerónimo Martins -1.64% and Galp -1.21% Anchor the Drag List as EDP Renováveis Carries the Only Bid

The PSI movers board ran heavily one-sided on Thursday. Mota-Engil, the construction-and-infrastructure operator with the heaviest African and Latin American emerging-market beta on the index, closed the day off -2.38% — the worst session for the engineering name in roughly two weeks as risk-off fingerprints crept across European cyclicals. Jerónimo Martins shed -1.64% as the discount-retail leader gave back part of its multi-week defensive premium, and Galp Energia closed -1.21% as the integrated-energy major tracked the sharp -3.07% slide in Brent crude (settling near $77.11/bbl) on the unwinding of the Strait of Hormuz risk premium. The pulp-and-paper pair Semapa (-1.34%) and Navigator (-0.46%) tracked softer euro-area industrial-demand reads, Sonae closed -0.71%, Altri shed -0.60%, Corticeira Amorim slipped -0.45%, REN gave back -0.42%, NOS finished -0.38% and EDP Energias de Portugal eased -0.27%. EDP Renováveis (EDP Renewables) was the lone bright spot of substance at +0.15%, with CTT (Correios de Portugal) edging +0.08% and BCP closing flat at the €1 mark it pierced on Wednesday.

Portuguese 10-Year OT Yield Drifts to ~3.30%, Spread Tightens Near 37 bps over Bund

The Portuguese 10-year OT (Obrigações do Tesouro — Treasury Bonds) yield closed around the 3.30% area on Thursday, with the German 10-year Bund printing near 2.93%, leaving the PT-Bund spread tight at roughly 37 basis points — comfortably inside the wider 50-basis-point envelope that Lisbon traded across the spring window and at the tightest weekly close since the back end of April. The duration bid carried the periphery cleanly as European fixed-income desks priced through the post-Hormuz oil unwind, with the inflation premium that had been bid into the curve across the second quarter easing alongside Brent crude. The flatter yield curve also extended the Iberian-periphery outperformance against the core that has framed the OT carry trade through the first half of 2026.

EUR/USD at $1.1513 as Brent Crude Breaks 3% Lower on Hormuz Unwind

EUR/USD traded $1.1513 at the European close, a marginal +0.10% session move that stacked an intraday low of $1.1486 before the post-Hormuz dollar pulse eased. The cross continues to consolidate inside the $1.15-$1.16 range that has framed the single currency since the early-June ECB (European Central Bank) meeting. The headline macro signal of the session was Brent crude's -3.07% slide to $77.11 a barrel — a sharp move on the unwind of the geopolitical risk premium tied to the Strait of Hormuz tape and on softer Asian-demand reads heading into the back half of the week. The energy-complex move drove the Galp Energia sell tape on the PSI and tightened the inflation-premium read across the euro-area curve.

Serviço Nacional de Saúde Inks an AI-Driven Remote Physiotherapy Partnership With Sword Health for a Next-Week National Rollout

On the tech side, the SNS (Serviço Nacional de Saúde — National Health Service) confirmed Thursday that it has signed a national partnership with Sword Health, the Porto-founded musculoskeletal-care unicorn, to deliver AI-driven remote physiotherapy free of charge across the public-health network. The rollout begins next week and gives SNS patients access to Sword Health's clinically-validated digital-therapy platform — a Lisbon-and-New-York operation that has raised more than $400 million across its venture cycle and is currently weighing pre-IPO marketing windows. The deal lands as the most consequential public-sector AI-health contract in the Portuguese market this year and positions Sword Health's home-country reference customer alongside its blue-chip US employer book. Expect read-through into the broader Portuguese health-tech sector and into the Ministério da Saúde (Ministry of Health) digital-transformation roadmap.

Euronext Lisbon Opens a Fast-Track SME Listing Pathway to Pull More Mid-Caps onto the Public Tape

Euronext, the pan-European exchange operator that runs the Lisbon market, announced Thursday a fast-track listing pathway designed to compress the documentation and review window for small and mid-cap Portuguese candidates onto the public-equity tape. The expedited frame is targeted at companies inside the Euronext Growth-and-Access tier and is positioned as a complement to the TAP Air Portugal bond roadshow and the Novobanco IPO window that the exchange has been working into the back half of 2026. The pathway sits alongside the Capital Markets Day-era institutional agenda that has framed the Lisbon institutional-investor calendar across June and reads as the structural follow-through on the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (Securities Market Commission) discussion paper on retail-investor access to Portuguese capital markets.

Acciona Lines Up a Portuguese Renewables Portfolio Divestment of Roughly 120 MW in Wind-and-Solar Development Assets

Spanish energy major Acciona is preparing the sale of roughly 120 MW of Portuguese wind-and-solar development assets, according to a Jornal de Negócios report Thursday, in a portfolio rotation that lands inside the active Iberian renewables M&A window. The development-stage book is expected to attract bids from infrastructure funds, the Iberian utility bench and the strategic-M&A desks at EDP Renováveis and Greenvolt, with the Portuguese permitting calendar and the post-Sines hyperscale-build power-purchase agreement framework setting the bid math. The transaction would be the second material Iberian-sponsor renewables exit out of Portugal this quarter and reads as a clean signal on the maturing Portuguese green-energy capital-stack market.

Tomorrow's Outlook

Friday opens with the Trabalho XXI (Labour XXI) labour-code vote in the Assembleia da República (Parliament) as the dominant domestic political tape — the outcome frames the trajectory of Portuguese unit labour costs and the wage-bargaining cycle into 2027 and feeds directly into the bank-and-retail PSI sleeve. Watch BCP and CTT for follow-through on Thursday's flat-to-positive close, Galp for any Brent-stabilisation bounce, and Mota-Engil for any oversold buy interest after the -2.38% drag. On the macro tape, the EUR/USD cross at $1.1513 and the OT 10-year near 3.30% sit at the centre of the carry framework, with European composite PMI on Monday and the Banco de Portugal's quarterly economic projections on the back-half calendar as the next directional reads for the fixed-income desk.

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