Europe midday: Shares extend rally after bruising week for tech stocks

(Sharecast News) - European shares extended gains on Friday as corporate earnings and a rebound in US shares overnight boosted sentiment after a sell-off in tech shares earlier in the week over artificial intelligence financing fears.

The pan-regional Stoxx 600 index was up 0.65% to 644 at 1100 GMT with most major bourses higher.

Britain's FTSE reversed morning losses after an initial fall triggered by reports that Finance Minister John Healey was set to tax massive bank profits in his upcoming budget to raise much needed cash. The news sent shares in Barclays, NatWest and Lloyds slightly lower indicating that traders have already priced in the impact of a higher levy.

In the US overnight the Dow jumped more than 1% despite hotter-than-expected inflation figures and ongoing concerns about AI-related spending. The S&P 500 gained 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.1%.

In other equity news, shares in Schneider Electric fell slightly despite the French industrial group raising its 2026 core profit and revenue targets for the second time this year as it looks to cash in on supplying power to cloud companies building AI data centres.

Chipmaker Aixtron rose after beating order intake estimates for the third quarter, while Nordex surged as the onshore wind turbine maker posted a better-than-expected third-quarter `core profit.

On the economics front, eurozone inflation was confirmed at a three-year high in September, according to Eurostat's final estimates released Friday, as price growth accelerated sharply on the back of surging energy prices.

The annual change in the harmonised consumer price index was 3.8% last month, in line with the preliminary estimate released two weeks ago but much higher than the 3.2% rate seen in August.

This was the steepest annual rate of inflation across the single-currency bloc since September 2023. On a monthly basis, consumer prices increased by 0.6%.

Energy prices were the biggest driver, rising 18.9% year-on-year after growing by 14.3% in August, contributing 1.71 percentage points to the overall annual inflation rate.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com