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New rules in the pandemic:
Corona has multiplied the valuation of some companies - now investors are withdrawing money
Photo: Moderna/DPA
Daily increasing numbers of corona infections are still making headlines.
But the future is traded on the stock exchange, or at least what investors expect in the future.
And the corona pandemic apparently no longer plays a major role, as Goldman Sachs investment strategist
Christian Mueller-Glissmann stated
in an interview with manager magazin.
Rising inflation figures and the expectation that the US Federal Reserve will take countermeasures and raise interest rates at least three times this year are causing a rethink on the stock market: Growth stocks and tech companies, which have supported the stock market upswing for years, have come under considerable pressure since the beginning of the year.
Instead, investors have rediscovered their love for so-called value stocks, i.e. established companies with stable cash flows.
The swing in shares of companies that were traded as winners of the Corona crisis for a while is particularly drastic.
Their courses rose sharply in the early days of the pandemic.
In the meantime, however, most of them have fallen considerably again, as these prominent examples show:
Biontech - once save the world and back
The vaccine manufacturer from Mainz, together with its US partner Pfizer, has played a major role in the fact that the corona pandemic has lost some of its horror.
Fully vaccinated people can hope for a mild course in the event of an infection.
The recommendation of a third (booster) vaccination keeps the demand for the vaccine high: Biontech
is also keeping in business the expectation that Biontech/Pfizer will soon be offering a vaccine adapted to the Omicron variant
.
Nonetheless, the stock has lost more than 50 percent since early December and has since fallen to $150, its lowest level in 9 months.
Since the record high in August, losses have already amounted to around 65 percent.
However, Biontech's stock market value had increased almost ninefold between March 2020 and August 2021.
The most important reason for the price slide is profit-taking and the expectation that other vaccines and Covid drugs from other manufacturers will soon come onto the market: if Biontech and Pfizer had sales of around 35 billion US dollars in 2021, such sales should increase in the can hardly be achieved again this year.
The competition never sleeps.
Netflix - Fierce streaming competition slows growth
Streaming services like
Netflix
were among the big winners of the corona pandemic.
Because of lockdowns and quarantine rules, millions of people around the world have been spending much more time in their own four walls for months than before.
Most of them used it with television: Netflix experienced a real rush of customers, especially at the beginning of the Corona crisis.
The share price more than doubled between March 2020 and November 2021 from around 290 euros to more than 600 euros.
Then came the crash: Since the record high in mid-November, the share has lost around 40 percent in value.
The weak business figures alone and a disappointing outlook presented by the company last week caused the share price to fall by around 20 percent.
Sartorius - laboratory outfitter is cautious about 2022
The laboratory outfitter and biotech supplier
Sartorius has been
spoiling investors for years with double-digit growth.
The corona pandemic has again increased the demand for the products of the company from Göttingen.
Sartorius not only supplies precise analytical balances and the basic equipment for medical laboratories.
The Sartorius Stedim Biotech holding also produces everything that companies from the booming biotech sector need to equip their laboratories - from bioreactors to filter systems and nutrient solutions for cell cultures.
Sartorius has thus positioned itself at the center of a booming industry that will also be one of the global growth sectors after Corona.
However, the Sartorius growth machine has been running for so long that the high growth rates of the past cannot continue forever.
The market value of the Dax climber has tripled since March 2020, but since the high at the end of December 2021 at around 600 euros, it has fallen by around 25 percent in the past three weeks.
The company has grown strongly through acquisitions - and still presented sales growth of 44 percent in the third quarter of 2021.
According to many stockbrokers, things should not continue at this rate in 2022 - especially since Sartorius did not increase the annual forecast in the fall.
That's when the profit-taking began.
Peloton - Clients prefer gyms
Peloton
is a US company based in New York City that mainly produces fitness equipment such as stationary bicycles and treadmills for domestic use and markets it via a high-priced subscription model.
In addition to the device, the customer also buys fitness and motivation courses.
A business model made for the pandemic period - the share multiplied its value between March 2020 and early 2021 from around $18 to around $140.
But the success did not last long.
With the end of the lockdowns, the public fitness centers reopened and customer demand for Peloton's offers decreased.
The US broadcaster CNBC reported last week that the company had put production on hold for the time being - due to a lack of demand.
The share has fallen by around 80 percent since January 2021 and is now back to pre-crisis levels.
Delivery Hero - the delivery service is slowed down by the tough competition
What is the best thing that can happen to a delivery service?
That millions of people stay at home and only dare to go outside in exceptional cases.
The lockdown and quarantine regulations during the corona pandemic have
proven to
boost Delivery Hero's
business model
: between March 2020 and January 2021, the market value of the company managed by Niklas Östberg almost tripled.
However, the competition has grown just as quickly as the number of customers in recent months: Delivery Hero is not only dealing with global competitors such as Uber Eats and Just Eat Takeaway, which has so far dominated the German market with the Lieferando brand.
In addition, with the US giant Doordash, which has already secured the services of Wolt and Flink, another competitor is pushing to Europe: reason enough for Östberg to call off the planned attack in Germany.
Delivery services are still seen as future business, but the price war and the battle for market share is so brutal that shareholders will probably have to reckon with losses from competitors for years to come.
Reason enough for shareholders to take some money off the table: Delivery Hero shares have fallen by around 40 percent since the end of November.
Zoom - Return to the offices, move away from video calls
There shouldn't be many people in office jobs who haven't attended a Zoom conference at least once in the past two years.
A large part of the working population abruptly said goodbye to the home office in spring 2020, and those who just visited the canteen together every day have since only greeted each other via the computer screen.
Companies like the US video conferencing software provider
Zoom
benefited from this: the company increased its user numbers and the share price shot up.
While the Zoom share cost less than 70 euros at the beginning of 2020, it was suddenly almost 500 euros at the peak in October of the same year.
In the meantime, however, the hype has largely evaporated - a Zoom share is available for 137 euros, as little as it was last time in May 2020.
Teamviewer - weak growth, high costs
Teamviewer
was also
considered the winner of the Corona crisis for a while – possibly wrongly.
The company offers software that can be used to remotely access and maintain computers.
Many investors thought this would be needed in times of lockdowns and working from home: the share more than doubled in value in the first half of 2020.
But then disillusionment set in: The company disappointed with weakening growth, has a cost problem and, on top of that, too much fluctuation at management level.
A Teamviewer paper now costs around 14 euros – the issue price at the 2019 IPO was just over 26 euros.
Return of caution in the stock market
What's next?
According to experts, the move away from growth and many tech stocks and the rediscovery of the value sector is hardly over yet.
In an interview, Goldman Sachs strategist Mueller-Glissmann, for example, advises more diversification and considers banks, energy suppliers and the pharmaceutical industry to be promising sectors.
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"Biggest turn to value in the last 20 years":
Federated Hermes
portfolio manager
Louise Dudley
Photo: Dean Northcott
"Value trades are still the favored market direction," agrees
Louise Dudley
, portfolio manager for the global equity market at investment house Federated Hermes. "Because high-growth companies with high multiples are more prone to disappointment about earnings prospects." According to Dudley, the stock market is experiencing "the strongest turn to value in the past 20 years."
"As interest rate hikes are inevitable in the short term, the market is turning,"
agrees Geir Lode
, head of global equities at Federated Hermes. "Whether we call this a value market or an anti-growth market, the bottom line is the same: high multiple, high growth stocks appear vulnerable."
According to Lode, the transition from a growth market to a value market is unlikely to go smoothly.
On some days, the outperformance of the value market might falter.
It is also possible that tech and similar growth stocks will pick up again in the meantime.
Overall, after the price boom in the growth and tech sector in recent years, there is some catching up to do in the area of value stocks.
Lode is therefore certain: "The capital flows will favor the cheaper end of the market."