Three European stocks for a world in flux

Harry Halewood, the product specialist for the Making Europe Great Again UCITS ETF, has selected three European stocks for your portfolio

European stocks are expected to rise. Countries are turning back to domestic production as the world grows more fragmented and unpredictable. They are coming to understand that although international trade and specialization have advantages, depending too much on other countries exposes them. Europe is left vulnerable despite its embrace of trade and globalization.

As a result, the continent has established a number of significant funding initiatives to boost its own industrial, infrastructure, and defense capabilities. This is referred to as the "Making Europe Great Again" agenda. For European stocks, it is generating a possible tailwind.

Watch these three European stocks.

The largest energy company in Denmark, rsted A/S (Copenhagen: ORSTED) is a world leader in wind farm development, construction, and operation. It is proud to have the world's largest offshore wind farm. Europe sees renewable energy as a way to reduce its reliance on gas imports.

Key financial indicators, such as profit and cash flow, have increased since 2021 despite a long-term drop in the share price. Analysts generally agree that rsted has turned into a buying opportunity, with rising cash and tradeable asset levels strengthening the company's financial position.

Watch the entire video here. RST is working on projects on several continents, most notably the completion of Hornsea 3, a wind farm in the North Sea off the coast of the United Kingdom that could supply power to 3.3 million homes continuously. 800 million of an outstanding 1.2 billion loan facility from the European Investment Bank can be used to support this project and others.

Actividades de Construccin y Servicios (Madrid: ACS), a Spanish firm offering construction and associated services, is our second European stock. In an effort to broaden its exposure to digital infrastructure, ACS recently decided to take the lead in a £2 billion joint venture with BlackRock to construct a data center pipeline with a capacity of 1.7 gigawatts.

According to ACS, this is just one step in the company's quest to become a global leader in the digital infrastructure industry. This change from contracted third-party involvement to ownership and development of data-center facilities amply illustrates ACS's ambition to enter this quickly growing market. According to ACS's forecast, the company's total revenue from digital infrastructure will increase from £10 billion in 2025 to £25 billion in 2030, indicating potential for significant future profits.

The French business Thales (Paris: HO) offers a range of products in the fields of digital security, aerospace, and defense. Half of sales are made up of defense. In this field, long-term public-procurement contracts are common, which makes Thales a possible beneficiary of Europe's defense budget boom.

A 60% increase in radar antenna production for the Netherlands' Ministry of Defense and an agreement with Renault to produce 1,000 units of the Thales Toutatis loitering-munitions drone per month, up from 150 annually, are just two examples of the public and private partnerships that Thales has formed.

In particular, the second agreement is significant. The idea has gained traction due to the use of drones in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The number of drones used in the conflict increased by 1,000 percent between early 2024 and the summer of the following year. Thales seems to be setting itself up to follow this upward trend as European nations realize they must catch up in this area.