The performance of European stock indices varied following a set of economic data.

The performance of European stock indices showed a clear divergence during trading on Friday, as investors absorbed a set of economic data released across the continent on one hand, and losses in the technology and healthcare sectors on the other hand.

Regarding trading, the performance of European stocks was as follows:

• The EURO STOXX 600 index fell by about 0.35% to record 505.25 points, pressured by losses in the technology and healthcare sectors, and the index is currently heading towards its fourth consecutive weekly loss.
• The German DAX index remained stable at 19,266.74 points.
• The British FTSE 100 index remained stable at 8,073.66 points.
• The French CAC index remained stable at 7,310.38 points.
• The Italian FTSE MIB index rose by about 0.14% to 34,304.28 points.
• The Spanish IBEX index surged by about 1.01% to record 11,648.80 points.

The sub-sector technology index (SX8P) decreased by 1.7%, with chipmaker ASML among the biggest losers, following the forecast from American company Applied Materials of a slowdown in demand for semiconductor manufacturing equipment used outside of the artificial intelligence field.

The healthcare index (SXDP) decreased by 2.1%, with shares of the Danish biotechnology company Bavarian Nordic dropping by 17%, after the company reported lower-than-expected earnings in the third quarter and forecasted lower sales in 2025.

Among individual stocks, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi saw its shares decline by 2.9%, while British GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) lost 2.2%. On the other hand, shares of German drug development company Evotec surged by about 20% after Halozyme Therapeutics proposed to acquire it for 2 billion euros (approximately 2.11 billion dollars).

Meanwhile, shares of Italian insurance company Generali rose by 5.5% after the largest insurance company in Italy exceeded expectations in profits during the first nine months of the year, despite suffering losses of 930 million euros due to natural disasters.

This comes at a time when data showed that annual inflation in France accelerated to 1.6% in October, while the inflation rate in Italy remained stable at 1.0% during the same period. Despite the contraction of the UK's GDP in October, the data also showed stronger growth during the third quarter of the year on an annual basis.