Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Up 0.6%, Utilities Lead, Sonae Eyes Malls

Market Wrap: Utilities Lift the PSI to a 0.6% Gain

Lisbon opened the week on the front foot. The PSI index (Portuguese Stock Index) closed Tuesday's session up 0.61% at 9,210.84 points, adding 55.84 points from Monday's 9,155.00 close and trading in a tight band between 9,189.94 and 9,240.22 through the day. Utilities, industrials and telecoms did the heavy lifting, more than offsetting a wobble in the food-retail heavyweight that dominates the index. Volumes were the thin, unhurried kind that August tends to bring, but the tone was firmly constructive, leaving the benchmark comfortably in double-digit positive territory for 2026 as a whole.

The Movers: EDP and Galp Lead, Jerónimo Martins Slips

The day belonged to the energy names. EDP Renováveis (EDP Renewables), the group's green-power arm, led the blue chips with a 2.19% gain, while Galp Energia rose 1.83% on firmer crude and the parent utility EDP added 1.25%. The cork multinational Corticeira Amorim rounded out the leaders' board, up 1.04%.

Working the other way was Jerónimo Martins, the owner of the Pingo Doce chain, which fell 1.15% to stand as the session's steepest decliner. The pressure followed the group's confirmation that it is shuttering around 200 of its Ara discount stores in Colombia in the wake of the deadly magnitude-7.4 earthquake that struck the country — a reminder that, for a retailer whose growth story leans heavily on Poland and Colombia, the risks are as geographic as they are competitive. The paper-and-pulp maker The Navigator Company slipped a milder 0.37%, while Banco Comercial Português (BCP) and Semapa finished little changed.

Business & Tech Focus: Sonae Eyes Malls, Mobi.E Hits a Million

Away from the tape, the deal chatter centred on Sonae. The Portuguese retail-and-property group is evaluating the acquisition of shopping centres in Portugal alongside a Norwegian institutional investor, according to reporting on Tuesday, in a move that would follow a large joint purchase of retail assets the pair struck in Spain. Neither the specific properties nor a price tag have been confirmed, and the talks remain exploratory — but for a group that already runs one of the country's biggest mall portfolios through its Sonae Sierra arm, the signal is that appetite for prime Iberian retail real estate is anything but exhausted. The shares were flat on the day, with the market waiting for firmer terms before it prices anything in.

The week's clearest data point on Portugal's energy transition came from the roads. Mobi.E, the state-backed operator of the national public charging network (Rede de Mobilidade Eléctrica — Electric Mobility Network), reported that its points delivered more than one million charging sessions in July, a monthly record for the network. The milestone is a proxy for how quickly electric vehicles are moving from novelty to normal on Portuguese roads, and it lands just as the grid prepares for an unusual stress test of its own (see below). For the utilities and charge-point operators building out the infrastructure, a million-session month is the kind of demand curve that finally makes the economics work.

Bonds and the Euro

The macro backdrop stayed placid. Portugal's 10-year Obrigações do Tesouro (Treasury bonds) yielded around 3.52%, barely a basis point higher on the day and holding the spread over benchmark German Bunds — trading near 3.16% — at roughly 36 basis points, a historically tight premium that continues to reward Lisbon's run of budget surpluses and falling debt. The euro was equally quiet, with EUR/USD changing hands near $1.154, essentially flat, giving importers and exporters alike little to react to.

The Day Ahead

The single biggest variable for Wednesday sits in the sky rather than the order book: Portugal's first total solar eclipse since 1912 will sweep the country around midday and briefly erase an estimated 450 MW of solar generation, forcing the grid operator to lean on hydro, gas and imports to fill the gap. That puts the utilities that led Tuesday's advance squarely in focus. Otherwise, expect the same thin August rhythm — a market with little on its domestic calendar, taking its cues from crude, from the last stragglers of earnings season, and from whether Sonae's mall ambitions firm up into something the tape can actually trade.