Six months later, he is already making his comeback. The media and communications giant Vivendi, notably owner of Canal+, Prisma Média and Havas, will re-enter the flagship index of the Paris Stock Exchange, the CAC 40, stock exchange operator Euronext said this Thursday, December 7.
Vivendi will regain its place at the expense of the payments specialist Worldline, which had joined the stock market index in 2020 and which will therefore be ejected. The Euronext scientific committee, independent of the management of the stock exchange operator, made this change following the quarterly review of the CAC 40, which will be effective on December 18.
Takeover of the Lagardère house
The group owned by the Bolloré family only left the CAC 40 in June 2023 after seeing its stock market value divided by three in almost two years, largely due to the sale of its former subsidiary Universal Music , which represented 46% of the group’s revenues in 2020. Since the beginning of June, Vivendi shares have gained around 4% and concluded the takeover of the Lagardère house in November after a long series.
Conversely, the story of Worldline is that of a “loss of confidence” among investors, who have suffered a series of disappointments for two years, relates for AFP the analyst of the American investment bank Stifel, David Vignon . The payments specialist, sometimes compared by investors to a technology company, took advantage of the rush in this sector in 2020 to see its market valuation double in around ten months.
But since then, the rise in interest rates, less cash generation and difficulties in Germany, an essential market for the company, have caused the price to plunge. Thus, after the third quarter results, “which should have been a non-event” for David Vignon, the company’s shares plunged by almost 60% on October 25, a historic variation for a CAC 40 group. No changes have been made to the broader SBF 120 index