France's Axa, Europe's largest insurer by premium income, reported a nearly two percent fall in first-quarter sales on Thursday, sending its shares four percent down.
Axa generated sales of 20.05 billion euros ($24.36 billion) in the first three months of the year, slightly short of an average forecast of 20.19 billion in a Reuters poll of five analysts.
On a comparable basis, adjusted for currency and group structural changes, sales rose 2.3 percent.
"The numbers are pretty much in line with our expectations," said Nicholas Byrne, an analyst at Lehman Brothers.
But shares dropped as much as 3.8 percent and by 1330 GMT they were trading at 17.11 euros, down 3.6 percent, compared with a two percent decline in the DJ Stoxx European insurance index.
The euro's strength, particularly against the dollar, hurt revenues when translated back into euros. Sales of life insurance and savings products fell more than three percent to 11.78 billion euros, although the 2003 quarter was boosted by one-off premiums from Japan and Belgium.
"First-quarter growth in our life and savings operation is tempered by specific events that occurred in the first quarter of 2003, but is showing underlying strength in line with our strategy to focus on more profitable products," Chief Executive Henri de Castries said in a statement.
Sales of life insurance and savings products in France rose 10 percent to 3.23 billion euros, but fell 11 percent to 2.98 billion euros in the United States.
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