European shares steadied on Thursday after rising for the past seven sessions, with gains in airlines stocks offset by weaker miners and a slump in British engineering group Cobham following a poor update.
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The pan-European STOXX 600 index was little changed in percentage terms at 371.34 points by 0821 GMT after recent strong gains to a two-month high in the previous session.
Cobham slumped more than 21 percent to its lowest since late 2004 and headed for its biggest-ever daily fall. The company said it would take a 150 million pound ($187 million) charge on its work on Boeing’s troubled KC-46 tanker programme and downgraded its likely 2016 trading profit again.
European miners fell 0.9 percent, the biggest sectoral decliners, tracking weaker metals prices.
However, losses were offset by a rally in airline stocks after Air France-KLM reported better than expected operating profit for 2016 and said it had made a "resilient" start to 2017.
Shares in International Consolidates Airlines Group and Lufthansa rose 2.2 and 2.4 percent higher respectively to feature among top risers on the STOXX 600.
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IT services group Capgemini was up 3.3 percent after saying that it was targeting higher earnings in 2017.
(Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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