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Paris - European stocks rose on Tuesday, trimming the previous session's losses as better-than-expected earnings helped offset recent worries over the pace of economic growth in Europe.
Shares in German car parts and tyre maker Continental gained 1.5% after saying its profit margin could slightly beat targets this year as core European auto markets keep growing.
Banco Santander added 1.1% after the eurozone's biggest bank posted a 32% rise in nine-month net profit, beating forecasts, as charges set aside against problematic debts fell from a year ago.
Securitas surged 5.7% after the Swedish security firm posted a bigger-than-expected rise in third-quarter core profit.
Bucking the trend, shares in Hugo Boss featured among the top losers, down 5.7% after the German fashion house cut its 2014 sales and profit outlook.
L'Oreal also fell, by 1.9% after the world's biggest cosmetics group reported the lowest sales growth since 2009 in the third quarter.
READ: L'Oreal manages sales growth, despite setback
"Earnings have been better than expected overall, and this is offsetting the bad macro data seen in Europe lately," said Alexandre Baradez, chief market analyst at IG France.
"The dollar is on the rise again, and investors are starting to price in the impact that the lower euro will have on exporters' profits but also on the eurozone's economic growth in the long term."
The euro inched 0.3% higher to $1.2519 against the dollar on Tuesday, after hitting a two-year low of $1.2439 on Monday. The single currency has tumbled 11% against the dollar in the past six months, fuelling expectations of a long-awaited rebound in European profits.
Half way into Europe's earnings season, 65% of companies managed to meet or beat profit forecasts, and 57% met or beat revenue forecasts, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.
In absolute terms, profits are up 12.2%, while revenues are down 0.7%, highlighting the fact that Europe's earnings rebound has mostly been coming from cost-cutting and lower financing costs.
At 11:11, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.4% at 1 345.42 points, after losing 0.9% on Monday following disappointing global economic data.
"Despite the recent gains on Wall Street and in Tokyo, there's a lot of hesitation in European equity markets, given the sluggish macro data we've been getting here, including yesterday's figures," Saxo Bank trader Andrea Tueni said.
"Following the BoJ's surprise (stimulus) last week, the market is waiting to see what the ECB will say on Thursday, and stocks could stay range-bound ahead of that."
Shares in oil majors BP, Total and Royal Dutch Shell fell 1.3% to 1.6%, tracking a slide in crude prices, which fell below $84 a barrel after Saudi Arabia cut oil prices to the United States.
Brent futures have tumbled nearly 30% in the last few months.
