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Today ’s Newsflow Equity Research 07 Dec 2020 08:53 GMT Upcoming Events Select headline to navigate to article

ARYZTA Conditional offered confirmed by Elliott, asset Company Events disposal and restructuring announced 08-Dec Ferguson; Q121 Results 10-Dec DS Smith; Q221 Results Economic View Crunch Brexit meeting this evening Marston's; Full year results

Irish Banks On ECB watch later this week on bank dividends (not holding our breath!)

Economic Events Ireland 07-Dec GDP Q3 Industrial Production Oct20 10-Dec CPI Nov20

United Kingdom 07-Dec Halifax House Price Nov20 10-Dec GDP Oct20 Trade Balance Oct20 Construction Output Oct20 Industrial Production Oct20 Manufacturing Production Oct20

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ARYZTA Conditional offered confirmed by Elliott, asset disposal and restructuring announced

Following press speculation over the weekend, ARYZTA has confirmed this morning that it Recommendation: Buy has received a further “conditional offer” from Elliott. While no details are provided on the Closing Price: €0.65 conditions attached to the offer, a price of CHF 0.80 per share remains on the table. Jason Molins +353-1-641 9141 Separately, the company also announced that it has completed the disposal of its North [email protected] American take and bake pizza business to Brynwood Partners (private equity group). No financial details were disclosed. Furthermore, it was also disclosed that two members of the

Executive Committee were leaving the business and not being replaced. These include Tony Murphy, Chief People Officer and John Heffernan, President and Chief Commercial Officer for North America.

Ahead of the upcoming AGM (December 15), ARYZTA has stated that it will consider Elliott’s conditional offer in accordance with its fiduciary duties and processes in due time. In addition, the pizza disposal and headcount reduction are in line with its recent strategic update to become to become a more lean and agile business.

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Economic View Crunch Brexit meeting this evening

Brexit, nor 2020, would not be complete without some last-minute drama. For the past few Dermot O’Leary weeks, we have talked about crucial moments, but today seems to be the day that events +353-1-641 9167 [email protected] are coming to a head. Despite all the reasons on both sides to avoid a messy no-deal situation, at this point fundamental differences remain between the two sides.

At a briefing for EU Ambassadors this morning, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier stated that differences remain and that there has been no agreement on the important area of fishing rights. This followed reports, coming from the EU side last night, that there was indeed progress on this area. The UK side dismissed the suggestion. Similar briefings and counter-briefings are occurring in other areas too, highlighting the lack of trust between the two sides.

Both the UK and the EU want a deal it seems but do not want to be the ones to back down on key demands and thus be seen to be losing face with their domestic electorates. The controversial Internal Markets Bill makes its way back to the House of Commons today while the Finance Bill comes before the House of Commons in the coming days. Both Bills have elements that would break parts of the agreements within the EU Withdrawal Bill. If a Free Trade Agreement is agreed, these bills would become irrelevant.

There is clearly still a lot of gaps to close between the two sides and very little time to do so. It is, however, always darkest before the dawn.

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Irish Banks On ECB watch later this week on bank dividends (not holding our breath!)

Whilst we all have one eye on the prospects of a break over Christmas in a few week’s time, Eamonn Hughes ahead of that, there’s a couple of important events this week. The first one is obviously the +353-1-641 9442 Brexit negotiations and the second one is the ECB meeting on the 10th. [email protected]

Barry Egan On Brexit, the negotiations remain on a knife-edge with the Taoiseach calling it still just 50- +353-1-641 6059 50 and that “I don’t think we can be overly optimistic about a resolution”. The “level playing [email protected] field” remains the biggest (but not the only) issue outstanding. The fact that we are still at these discussions is hugely frustrating, but we are where we are, so let’s some hope some

sense/logic prevails in the coming days. However, most attention for bank investors will

probably be centred on the ECB meeting on Thursday (10th). The ECB is expected to expand its €1.35trn emergency asset purchase programme by another €500bn on Thursday but will also make its call on bank dividends as well. Press speculation put a few options on the table last week in relation to the dividend debate, but as we noted in an interview with Andrea Enria – the chief regulator within the ECB – his reference to some banks being “all over the place” in relation to provisioning, segregating banks into three tiers feels to us they will leave the ban in place this Thursday, give banks Q4 results to get their houses in order and then start separating the good from the bad post publication of results and/or the outcome of the EBA stress tests which starts in January and concludes in July.

Elsewhere, we note the Irish Independent story that Avant Money is to provide a €75m lending pot earmarked for residential green projects. Under EU rules, 70% of Ireland’s energy requirements must be from renewable sources by 2030. The banking sector has been moving to position itself at the centre of financing Ireland’s energy transition, so it is no surprise that Avant Money is also engaging in this journey. The Avant story comes after AIB in recent weeks set a target that 70% of all new lending by 2020 would be green lending.

As we have noted on a number of occasions recently, our own work shows the Irish banks have been more conservative than peers on provisioning (AIB H120 charge at 42% of EBA 2018 adverse scenario stress test level, BOI 30%, EU average 21%), Ireland has more conservative internal models (Irish RWA density in mortgages 2-2.5x EU levels) and a sound capital trajectory (AIB CET1 troughs at c.15% CET1 over FY20-23, BOI 13-13.5%). So, this should position the Irish banks relatively well on distributions when the ECB finally relents on the dividend ban. Our forecasts show dividends at the Irish banks start from FY21 earnings.

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