FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - A critical study by the French investment bank Exane BNP Paribas on Bechtle's revenue growth on Monday sent the IT service provider's shares down to their lowest level since October at below 41 euros. Most recently, it lost 7.1 percent to 40.82 euros.

Meanwhile, the shares of IT service provider Cancom temporarily reached their highest level since March 2023 at 33.40 euros after announcing share buybacks. Since the beginning of the year, the shares of the SDax company are up almost 10.5 percent, while Bechtle has lost 10 percent.

Analyst Martin Jungfleisch expects only "slow-motion growth" from IT service provider Bechtle, which is listed on the MDax. He therefore canceled his neutral investment rating and rates the share as "underperform" with a price target cut from 48 to 38 euros.

On the one hand, Jungfleisch wrote, Bechtle's most important markets are likely to suffer from the economy. "A weak macroeconomic environment is likely to affect demand driven by small and medium-sized companies," he expects. The analyst referred to the SME statistics of the German development bank KfW, which, according to him, correlate strongly with Bechtle's organizational growth. The KfW indicator not only points to the fact that the trends are not improving, but that they are even weakening, he wrote. Accordingly, spending by this very important customer group for Bechtle is likely to remain weak.

"In addition, we expect spending by the German public sector to remain weak, while the French business, which accounts for eleven percent of revenue, is also facing challenges in view of the political turmoil following the EU elections."

On the other hand, the transition to Windows 11 is progressing slowly, Jungfleisch added. The tailwind from this area is therefore likely to be less pronounced than hoped for, which will have an additional negative impact. After all, support for Windows 10 will not end until October of next year, which is why the upgrade cycle is not likely to accelerate until 2025. According to him, this assumption is underpinned by data showing that the introduction of Windows 11 has stagnated since the second half of 2023./ck/jha/he