Europe Markets

These European stocks have bucked the coronavirus downturn

Key Points
  • The pan-European Stoxx 600 index is down more than 20% over the past 30 days as the virus spread rapidly throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Yet, seven European stocks have managed to climb more than 10%.

While European markets have plummeted over the past month as the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic becomes more alarming, a handful of stocks have bucked the trend.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index is down more than 20% over the past 30 days as the virus spread rapidly throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Yet, seven European stocks have managed to climb more than 10%.

Most of the stocks making gains of late fall into categories which might understandably be in demand amid a pandemic which is forcing millions of people to stay in their homes — such as food, diagnostics and remote working software.

German meal kit delivery company HelloFresh has led the way, up around 19% over the last 30 days, as of Friday morning, followed by Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt Group. British online supermarket Ocado is up by almost 11% as people have increasingly become confined to their homes.

TeamViewer, a German company which provides a proprietary software application for remote control, desktop sharing, online meetings, web conferencing, is up by more than 17%.

German molecular diagnostics provider Qiagen and French biotech firm Biomerieux have both climbed more than 12%.

The former has this week begun shipping its diagnostic testing kits for the coronavirus to the U.S., which now has the most confirmed cases of any country in the world, while Biomerieux has also launched three different diagnostic tests for the virus.

The only other category represented amongst the month's biggest stock winners is liquor. French spirits group Remy Cointreux has climbed 11.5% as of Friday morning.