European stocks close lower as tech and tobacco stocks tumble

European stocks closed were lower on Friday after Amazon’s earning miss and tobacco stocks took a tumble.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 slid more than 1 percent at the end of trading with only the oil and gas sector in positive territory. For the week, the benchmark fell almost 3 percent, the FTSE 100 dropped more than one percent and the Dax slipped 0.7 percent.

On Wall Street, U.S. equities fell on Friday as large-cap tech stocks followed Amazon.com lower on the back of its earnings miss in the previous session. The Stoxx 600’s technology sector dropped 1.33 percent.

Tabacco stocks fell sharply after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a plan for tobacco and nicotine regulation, which seeks to lower nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels.

Shares of Altria Group, maker of Marlboro and Parliament brands through its Philip Morris USA unit, plunged more than 17 percent. British American Tobacco, which owns brands such as Camel, Lucky Strike and Newport, more than 7 percent. Imperial Brands also fell more than four percent. Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, posted better-than-expected profits in the second quarter of the year on Friday. The lender reported 1.174 billion Swiss francs ($1.21 billion) in net profits, up 14 percent on a year earlier. Its shares slipped over 3 percent amid a cautious outlook for the firm.

U.K. lender Barclays reported a net loss of £1.21 billion ($1.58 billion) for the first half of 2017 on Friday. The bank attributed its results to a fall in sterling, a charge from the mis-selling of payment protection insurance and a loss from the sale of its Africa unit. It’s shares down 1.6 percent.

Elsewhere, Adidas surged towards the top of the benchmark after reporting an improved full-year outlook in its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday. The German sporting goods firm said it anticipated currency-neutral sales to grow between 17 and 19 percent in 2017. It had previously estimated a range between 12 and 14 percent. Shares were more than 8 percent.

On the data front, euro zone economic confidence surged to a 10-year high in July. The European Commission’s economic sentiment index hit 111.2 this month, up from 111.1 in June.

Earlier in the session, Spain recorded another strong quarter of economic growth, surpassing both Britain and France over the last three months. Spanish gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.9 percent in the second quarter of the year, according to statistics body INE.

French GDP rose 0.5 percent while the U.K.’s GDP inched 0.3 percent higher over the same period.Elsewhere, a German court ruled that driving restrictions were not legally out of proportion to cut down on air pollution, Reuters reported.
 
The decision appears likely to mean the city of Stuttgart – the bedrock of Germany’s car industry – could ban diesel cars from its roads.

Source: CNBC