MILAN/ROTTERDAM: European shares inched higher on Thursday as mining stocks tracked a jump in commodity prices and helped outweigh the impact from a clutch of disappointing earnings reports from companies including Airbus and Orange.
The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.1%, with miners jumping 2.5% as copper prices surged to their highest in nearly a decade.
Technology, retail and auto stocks were also among the top gainers in early trading, rising between 0.5% and 1.0% on hopes of a bumper US fiscal stimulus package.
The benchmark STOXX 600 jumped to a one-year high this week as optimism around a global economic recovery fuelled demand for beaten-down sectors such as energy and banks, but recent expectations of a rise in inflation have fanned concerns that central banks could start tightening monetary policy.
Planemaker Airbus fell 3.8% as it posted an annual loss and withheld a dividend due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while Orange, France’s biggest telecoms group, lost 4.1% after reporting a drop in core operating profit in the fourth quarter.
Barclays shed 3.5% even as it resumed modest shareholder payouts after a year-long hiatus.
In a bright spot, Swiss banking software system developer Temenos surged 14.2% and was on course for its best day in almost a year as it launched a share buyback programme of up to $200 million.
Overall, analysts expect earnings at STOXX 600 companies to decline by about 20% in the fourth quarter before rebounding nearly 43% year-on-year in the current quarter, according to Refinitiv data.
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