GN Falls as Credit Suisse Sees Rivals Gaining: Copenhagen Mover

GN Store Nord A/S dropped the most among Copenhagen’s benchmark stocks after Credit Suisse Group AG said the Nordic region’s second-largest hearing-aid maker is losing ground to its biggest competitors.

GN fell as much as 1.5 percent, the most since Feb. 8. The stock declined 1.3 percent to 89.65 kroner at 9:57 a.m. local time, with trading volume at 19 percent of the three-month daily average. The drop made the stock today’s biggest loser in the Nasdaq OMX Copenhagen 20 index.

A proprietary survey published today by Credit Suisse ranked GN’s products as being inferior to competing hearing aids as the company cuts its sales prices. The bank lowered its recommendation on Ballerup, Denmark-based GN to underperform from neutral and repeated higher ratings on the shares of two listed rivals.

“We think the discounting behavior substantially increases risks that the company might not fully deliver on market share gains,” Christoph Gretler, a Credit Suisse analyst, said in a note. “GN might be facing problems competing with the market leaders.”

Credit Suisse kept a neutral rating on GN’s biggest Nordic competitor William Demant Holding A/S, and an outperform recommendation on Sonova Holding AG, the world’s largest hearing-aid maker.

GN, which also owns a headset unit, is scheduled to publish earnings on Feb. 21. The company will report fourth-quarter sales of 1.69 billion kroner ($305 million), according to the average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 13 analysts. That compares with reported revenue of 1.57 billion kroner in the fourth quarter of 2011.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christian Wienberg in Copenhagen at cwienberg@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Brogger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net