French stocks exhibited a varied performance on Friday morning, as investors remained cautious about making substantial moves while evaluating the developments in the Middle East and responding to reports of Hezbollah’s rejection of a new ceasefire agreement with Israel. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah escalated following the elimination of Hezbollah’s engineering unit commander Abed Harb by the Israel Defence Forces. Investors were also anticipating the important U.S. jobs data set to be released later in the day. The CAC 40, which drifted down to 8,236.79, was up 29.45 points or 0.26% at 8,273.74 a few minutes past noon.

• Pernod Ricard, Hermes International, and Publicis Groupe experienced gains ranging from 2.2% to 2.5%.
• L’Oreal, Saint-Gobain, EssilorLuxottica, LVMH, Carrefour, Bouygues, Capgemini, Dassault Systemes, Eurofins Scientific, Airbus, Sanofi, Kering, Credit Agricole, and Michelin experienced an increase of 1% to 2%.
• STMicroelectronics experienced a decline of 4.1%.
• ArcelorMittal experienced a decline of 2.7%, Schneider Electric saw a decrease of 2.1%, and Legrand recorded a loss of 1.4%.
• Safran experienced a decline of approximately 0.4%.

Data indicated that industrial production in France experienced a modest increase of 0.1% month-on-month in April, contrary to market expectations of a 0.2% decline, although this marks a deceleration from an upwardly revised 1.4% increase in the preceding month. On a yearly basis, industrial production accelerated to 2.8% from an upwardly revised 1.3% in March.

France’s trade deficit decreased to Euro 5.6 billion in April, down from Euro 6.4 billion in March, and was below the anticipated Euro 6.5 billion shortfall. Exports increased by 3.1% month-on-month, reaching Euro 54.6 billion, whereas imports saw a more modest rise of 1.5%, totalling Euro 60.2 billion.