By Aude Lagorce, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- European stocks rose on Thursday, buoyed by a late-session rally on Wall Street, as investors greeted solid earnings results from French firms including banking group Credit Agricole and cosmetics giant L'Oreal.
The Stoxx Europe 600 index (ST:SXXP 249.01, +1.47, +0.59%) gained 0.6% to 248.95, recouping some of the past session's 0.8% decline. All sectors traded in the green except the traditionally defensive pharmaceutical segment.
U.S. stocks rallied late Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA 10,060, +19.61, +0.20%) snapping a four-session losing streak, as investors picked up stocks battered by the recent flow of disappointing economic data. Read Market Snapshot.
U.S. weekly jobless claims, an important indicator of the state of the labor market, are due at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time.
"I think it's the absence of bad news driving European markets more than anything else. We had a run of pretty horrible data out of the U.S. and the perception overnight seems to be that the selling off has probably gone far enough," said Ian Williams, strategist at Altium Securities.
He said jobless claims could have an impact later in the session.
"The attention paid to that weekly number depends on the mood in the market as a whole. When it's bad, they tend to get more attention than they deserve," he said.
The much more important event on the macroeconomic agenda is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's planned speed at the annual central bank conference in Jackson Hole on Friday.
The late Wall Street rally had a positive impact on sentiment in Europe. Among the major European indexes, the U.K. FTSE 100 index (UK:UKX 5,140, +30.18, +0.59%) rose 0.7% to 5,142.23, the French CAC 40 index (FR:PX1 3,467, +17.19, +0.50%) gained 0.6% to 3,469.36 and Germany's Dax-30 (DX:DAX 5,916, +16.21, +0.28%) index advanced 0.3% to 5,916.69 points.
Accor, Credit Agricole in focus
A slew of French companies reported encouraging results Thursday.
One of the top gainers on the French index was Accor (FR:AC 24.51, +1.01, +4.28%) , whose shares surged nearly 5%. The hotels group said its first-half loss shrank to 64 million euros ($81 million) from €236 million in the year-earlier period. Underlying earnings more than doubled and Accor said it targets an operating profit between €370 million and €390 million in 2010.
It was also a good day for Credit Agricole (FR:ACA 10.18, +0.28, +2.78%) , which advanced 3.8%.
France's third-largest banking group posted an 89% jump in second-quarter net profit to €379 million, helped by the performance of its domestic retail business and investment banking arm. The bank's tier 1 capital ratio, an important indicator of financial strength, widened to 9.7% from 9.2% in the year-earlier period. Read about the Credit Agricole results.
In the cosmetics sector, shares of L'Oreal (FR:OR 80.83, +5.06, +6.68%) rose 4.3% after the firm posted a 21% increase in first-half profit after European markets closed Wednesday. The group's operating margin surged to a record level on stronger sales of luxury products and management expressed confidence in the outlook for the rest of the year. Read more about the L'Oreal results.
The notable exception to the string of upbeat corporate updates from Paris was Gemalto (FR:GTO 28.82, -0.63, -2.14%) . The digital-security firm's shares dropped 5.9% after posting a small decline in profit to €63 million.
In Amsterdam, Ahold NV (NL:AH 9.65, -0.02, -0.20%) (AHONY 12.18, -0.11, -0.90%) shares gained 0.3%. The supermarket operator, which owns the Stop & Shop chain in the U.S., reported a 3.1% increase in second-quarter profit to €202 million and an 11% jump in sales. Still, it warned that market conditions remain challenging as competitors slash prices.
In London, results from Diageo PLC (UK:DGE 1,050, -16.00, -1.50%) (DEO 66.37, -0.21, -0.32%) weren't as warmly greeted. Shares of the spirits giant declined 1.1%.
The owner of Smirnoff vodka and Guinness stout posted a 1.5% increase in annual net profit to 1.63 billion pounds ($2.53 billion) and raised its dividend by 6% to 23.5 pence a share.
Miners, however, were having a strong session on the back of solid results from copper miner Kazakhmys (UK:KAZ 1,107, +34.00, +3.17%) , which rose 3.4%. The top gainer in the FTSE 100 index reported an 11% increase in first-half profit and a 36% jump in sales.
