BERLIN, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- German shares went off to a bad start on Thursday, with the benchmark DAX index losing 114.12 points, or 0.74 percent, opening at 15,408.8 points.
The biggest winner among Germany's 40 largest listed companies was pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier Sartorius, increasing by 2.59 percent, followed by software company SAP with 1.11 percent and pharmaceutical company Merck with 0.96 percent.
On Thursday, SAP announced that third quarter revenues were up 5 percent year on year to 6.8 billion euros (7.9 billion U.S. dollars). The company recorded a "strong acceleration" in its cloud business in an overall "excellent quarter across all key financial metrics."
Shares of HelloFresh fell by 2.27 percent. The German meal-kit firm was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Thursday.
The yield on German ten-year bonds increased 0.0015 percentage points to minus 0.1205 percent, and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.1650 dollars, up 0.01 percent on Thursday morning. Enditem
