Eurozone final inflation rises 0.6% MoM in April vs. 0.6% expected

• Eurozone inflation arrives at 7.4% YoY in April, misses estimates.
• Monthly HICP in the bloc rises by 0.6% in April.
• EUR/USD is keeping its range around 1.0500 on the mixed Eurozone data.

Eurozone’s Inflation rose 7.4% in April, on an annualized basis, according to Eurostat’s final reading of the Eurozone Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) report for the month.

The reading disappointed expectations of 7.5% while against the 7.5% previous. Core figures rose by 3.5%, matching the 3.5% market estimates and 3.0% last (a downward revision).       

The bloc’s HICP rose by 0.6% versus 0.6% expected and 2.4% booked in March while the core HICP numbers also came in at 1.0% versus 1.1% expected and 1.1% seen previously.

Key details (via Eurostat):

“The lowest annual rates were registered in France, Malta (both 5.4%) and Finland (5.8%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Estonia (19.1%), Lithuania (16.6%) and Czechia (13.2%). Compared with March, annual inflation fell in three Member States, remained stable in two and rose in twenty-two.”

In April, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from energy (+3.70 percentage points, pp), followed by services (+1.38 pp), food, alcohol & tobacco (+1.35 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+1.02 pp).

FX implications:

EUR/USD is off the lows but preserves most of its intraday losses amid a broad-based US dollar rebound.

At the press time, the pair is trading at 1.0510, lower by 0.32% on the day. Hawkish comments from the ECB policymaker Oli Rehn seem to have saved the day for EUR bulls.