The Paris stock market gained nearly 0.6% this morning, around the 7,090-point mark, driven in particular by STMicro, which climbed nearly 7% after announcing a 2022 net income almost double that of 2021 (see below).

Investors await the publication, early this afternoon, of the first US growth figures for the fourth quarter, which will provide a clearer picture of the current health of the US economy.

Economists are forecasting on average a slowdown to 2.6% in annualized US GDP growth over the last three months of 2022, following growth of 3.2% in the second quarter.

The results season, so far disappointing, should also continue to drive the trend, as investors become more aware of the impact of the global economic slowdown on corporate accounts.

Tesla last night reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, but its shrinking profit margins reflect an increasingly difficult market environment.

Groups such as Visa, LVMH, Mastercard, SAP, Intel, STMicroelectronics and Nokia are also due to unveil their performances today.

On the bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasuries continues to fall to around 3.46%, below the 3.50% level considered by some investors as an important technical level.

The trend is calmer in Europe, where rates are continuing their status quo of the previous day.

In company news, STMicroelectronics reported net income almost double that of 2021, to $3.96 billion, and an operating margin up from 19% to 27.5% year-on-year. Sales of the Franco-Italian semiconductor manufacturer rose by 26.4% to $16.13 billion.

Getlink unveils sales of almost 1.61 billion euros in 2022, an increase of 107% at constant exchange rates compared with 2021, 'setting a new all-time high since the group's creation'.

For 2022, SES-imagotag is forecasting sales growth of 46.4% to 619.1 million euros, the highest level of annual sales in the history of the specialist in electronic gondola labelling for the retail sector.

Finally, Air Liquide announced on Thursday that it had signed a "record" number of 52 new contracts for on-site gas production in the merchant industrial sector in 2022. The number of long-term contracts related to on-site installations signed each year by Air Liquide has thus doubled between 2015 and 2022.

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