European Stocks Little Changed; BAT Gains on Sales

European (SXXP) stocks declined, snapping a four-day rally for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, as companies from Bayer AG (BAYN) to Volvo AB (VOLVB) reported earnings. U.S. index futures were also little changed, while Asian shares advanced.

Bayer AG fell 1 percent after reporting worse-than- estimated earnings. Unilever fell 1.8 percent after the world's second-biggest consumer-goods company reported the slowest quarterly revenue growth in two years. British American Tobacco Plc (BATS) gained 2.1 percent after first-quarter sales surpassed projections. Volvo climbed as truck orders increased.

The Stoxx 600 slipped 0.4 percent to 293.61 at 9:28 a.m. in London. The benchmark gauge has still rallied 3 percent so far this week as company earnings beat forecasts and investors speculated the European Central Bank will cut interest rates. It has advanced 5 percent so far this year. Contracts on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose less than 0.1 percent, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index increased 0.8 percent.

"We see a lot of disappointments, a lot of companies missing forecasts," Patrick Legland, head of research at Societe Generale SA, said in an interview with Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television. "So long as we don't have a nice recovery in economic figures, we'll see this more and more. The worse the economic situation will be, the more investors will be expecting the ECB to step in."

U.K. Economy

In the U.K., the Office for National Statistics releases data at 9:30 a.m. that may show the country avoided an unprecedented triple-dip recession. Gross domestic product grew 0.1 percent in the first quarter after contracting 0.3 percent in the previous quarter, according to the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Bayer dropped 1 percent to 79.82 euros. Germany's biggest drugmaker posted first-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and special items of 2.45 billion euros, trailing the 2.55 billion-euro estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Unilever fell 1.8 percent to 2,794 pence in London. So- called underlying sales, which exclude acquisitions, disposals and currency swings, rose 4.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. The median analyst estimate had projected a gain of 5.5 percent.

Royal KPN NV slipped 5.2 percent to 2.63 euros. The Dutch phone operator said it will sell 2.84 billion new shares for 1.06 euros each, a 62 percent discount on yesterday's closing price of 2.78 euros.

BAT Sales

BAT climbed 2.1 percent to 3,623 pence. Europe's largest cigarette maker said first-quarter sales excluding currency swings rose 5 percent. That beat the 3.7 percent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Volvo advanced 1.6 percent to 91.75 kronor after saying truck orders rose 11 percent to 61,045 in the first quarter. The world's second-largest truckmaker reported first-quarter operating profit of 482 million kronor ($73 million), missing the analysts' average estimate of 1.63 billion kronor.

Nobel Biocare Holding AG rallied 4.7 percent to 9.95 Swiss francs, its largest increase in three months. The world's second-biggest maker of dental implants posted first-quarter net income of 13.3 million euros, exceeding the 11.7 million euros projected by analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Straumann Holding AG, the largest dental-implants maker, gained 2.8 percent to 122 francs.

Bankia SA (BKIA) jumped 10 percent to 13.92 euros. The Spanish lender that posted a record 19 billion-euro ($25 billion) loss in 2012 swung to profit in the first quarter. Net income was 74 million euros in the first three months of the year, the bank said late yesterday. That surpassed the 46.3 million-euro average analyst projection.

The volume of shares changing hands in companies on the Stoxx 600 was 13 percent greater than the average of the past 30 days, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.