European shares reach two-week high, led by tech stocks

By Atul Prakash and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) - European equities climbed to a two-week high on Thursday, helped by gains in tech shares, although the overall earnings picture remained weak and a decline by mining stocks put some pressure on the market.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was 0.2 percent higher at 1,298.45 points by 1457 GMT, having touched its highest level since February 4 earlier in the session.

It had ended 2.7 percent stronger on Wednesday following a surge in oil prices, but came back from highs as Wall Street turned lower, having posted its first three-day rally of 2016.

The FTSEurofirst 300 is up 5.3 percent this week, set for its biggest weekly rise since December 2011. It has been buoyed by a recovery in the price of oil and receding fears over global growth, although the index remains down 9.7 percent this year.

Tech shares rose 1.6 percent, led up by Capgemini. The French information technology services company gained 4.3 percent after reporting a 20 percent rise in full-year operating profit and forecasting a wider operating margin for 2016.

"The shares have performed poorly this year on the back of macro concerns, but the overall tone of these results is reassuring," analysts at Credit Suisse said in a note.

Among other tech stocks, STMicroelectronics rose 4.5 percent after it was lifted to "neutral" from "sell" by UBS.

In other sectors, AccorHotels rose 3.5 percent after Europe's largest hotelier said restructuring efforts and robust demand in most markets except France and Brazil helped it beat expectations.

Franco-Dutch airline Air France-KLM surged 12 percent after beating forecasts with a return to profit last year, helped by a drop in its fuel bill and growth in passenger traffic.

However, the broader earnings picture remains mixed. About half the companies in the STOXX Europe 600 index have reported results so far, and 47 percent missed expectations.

Fourth-quarter earnings have fallen 15 percent from the same quarter of the previous year, Thomson Reuters StarMine shows.

Food group Nestle dropped 4.1 percent, the biggest decline in the FTSEurofirst index, after it missed expectations, saying it was getting harder to raise prices in a tough economy.

"It's a difficult environment ... Profit margins are under pressure as companies are not able to raise prices, while productivity is edging lower," said Koen De Leus, senior economist at KBC in Brussels.

Nestle's decline saw Switzerland's SMI underperform most euro zone indexes. Britain's FTSE also lagged, hit by its exposure to commodity stocks. Some also cited concern Britain would exit the European Union, as Prime Minister David Cameron started crunch talks on keeping the UK in the bloc.

Mining shares came under pressure as some investors booked profits following a rally in the previous session. The STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources index fell 0.7 percent, after rising 8 percent on Wednesday.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)