European Shares Edge Up In Cautious Trade

European stocks were slightly higher on Friday as investors digested a raft of earnings reports and mixed GDP data from the region.

The pan European Stoxx 600 edged up 0.1 percent to 439.26 after declining 0.3 percent on Thursday. The German DAX rose half a percent and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 added 0.3 percent, while France’s CAC 40 index was marginally higher.

Tobacco company Swedish Match lost 2 percent despite reporting significant rise in first-quarter net income.

Italian energy company ENI dropped 1.2 percent. The company said that hydrocarbon production in the first quarter ticked lower to 1.70 million barrels of oil equivalent a day compared with 1.79 million boe/d the previous year.

Reinsurance giant Swiss Re jumped 4 percent after reporting a strong first-quarter to the year.

French aerospace company Safran gained 2.3 after maintaining full-year forecasts.

Lender BNP Paribas dropped 1.2 percent despite reporting better-than-expected profit, helped by lower provisions for pandemic-related bad loans and a rebound in equity trading.

AstraZeneca rallied 3.3 percent in London. The pharmaceutical giant said it generated $275m in revenue from its non-profit Covid-19 vaccine in the first quarter.

Hikma Pharma advanced 1.6 percent after announcing the approval of KLOXXADO nasal spray 8mg, by the FDA for the emergency treatment of known or suspected opioid overdose.

Smurfit Kappa surged 4 percent. The provider of paper-based packaging solutions reported that its first-quarter underlying revenue growth was 6 percent from last year.

Lender Barclays slumped 4.8 percent despite reporting a quarterly profit that more than doubled.

In economic releases, Eurozone GDP shrank by 0.6 percent in the first three months of this year as slow vaccine rollout and ongoing lockdowns delayed recovery, new figures from Eurostat showed.

The euro zone jobless rate fell to 8.1 percent in March, down from 8.2 percent in February and better than expectation of 8.3 percent.

U.K. house prices grew 2.1 percent month-on-month in April, the biggest monthly rise since February 2004, data published by the Nationwide Building Society showed. Economists had forecast an increase of 0.5 percent after posting a 0.3 percent drop in March.

On a yearly basis, house prices inflation rose to 7.1 percent from 5.7 percent in March. The rate was expected to slow to 5 percent in April.