Coronavirus crisis to put diverse impacts on listed firms

Finnish stock market analysts predict a diverse impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the results of Finnish listed companies, reported news agency Xinhua quoting a Finnish language business daily Kauppalehti.

Kauppalehti said its pool of analysts had predicted the total result of Finnish listed companies would decline by 13 percent, following the continuous growth throughout 2019. However, 48 percent of the listed companies would improve their result.

The technology giant Nokia would show a strong improvement in the upcoming Q1 results, the Kauppalehti analysts pool said.

Antti Saari, the chief analyst of the Finnish OP Group told business daily Kauppalehti on Monday that information technology, food industries and health services could exit the COVID-19 crisis in growth figures. Saari listed the financial sector, the forest giants and the machinery sector as likely losers in the crisis.

Besides, in a change of the economic behavior of consumers, Kauppalehti noted that somewhat unexpectedly the coronavirus crisis is speeding up the demise of cash in Finland. The usage of automated teller machine (ATM) has dropped drastically. Consumers have followed the retail sector request to use contactless card payments or mobile pay, if possible, to avoid especially giving cash. Bank of Finland's survey last year indicated that only 6 percent of Finns used cash.

Last week, the Ministry of Finance predicted that Finnish economy would shrink by 5.5 percent this year, but a worse alternative would mean a 12-percent drop.

As of Monday afternoon, Finland had confirmed 3,868 coronavirus infections with a total of 98 deaths and 67 cases currently being in intensive care, according to the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). However, THL acknowledged that tens of deaths in nursing homes are missing in their tallies. Nursing homes are not part of the health care system in Finland.