The sale of a French joint venture should provide further support to investor confidence in events and conferencing group Tarsus, believes broker KBC Peel Hunt, which has reiterated its 'buy' recommendation on the stock.The company has sold its French joint venture to its partner, Reed, for £0.4m and announced plans to invest £0.45m in its Chinese joint venture (JV), a sum that will be matched by its JV partner.'Trading for the group remains in line with the board's expectation and [they] anticipated a very satisfactory outcome,' KBC analyst Malcolm Morgan notes.Given that the 2009 show run by the French joint venture has already taken place this year Morgan expects the sale to have little impact on this year's earnings.KBC has a target price of 120p for Tarsus.