EUROPE MARKETS: Ryanair Tops Stoxx 600 After Profit Soars 152%

By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Ryanair Holdings PLC jumped to the top of the Stoxx Europe 600 index on Monday after Europe's largest discount airline reported a 152% surge in first-quarter profit.

Shares of the carrier climbed 3.9%, setting them on track for the first rise in four days.

The solid quarterly reports from Ryanair comes after a rough year marked by surprise profit warnings and the airliner now promised it would pay a special dividend of 520 million euros ($698 million), or 37.50 euro cents per share.

Rebecca O'Keeffe, head of investment at stockbroker Interactive Investor, cautioned in a note, however, that "the airline industry is more exposed to geopolitical risk than many sectors, so considerable caveats are included in their forecast numbers."

Rival budget airline easyJet PLC was further rising, up 1.3%, after Citigroup lifted the shares to buy from neutral.

Also in London, Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC put on 2.8% after the company said it will pursue a demerger of its pharmaceutical unit to focus more on its core consumer health and hygiene business.

The gains helped lift the U.K.'s FTSE 100 index bv 0.1% to 6,800.08.

Elsewhere, France's CAC 40 index climbed 0.4% to 4,349.64, while Germany's DAX 30 index was slightly lower at 9,640.70.

The Paris benchmark was partly buoyed by diary maker Danone SA rising 1.6% after news it is in talks with U.S. pharmaceutical group Hospira Inc. (HSP) to sell its medical nutrition business. The deal could be worth $5 billion and would mark the latest transaction in a wave of deals designed to avoid U.S. corporate taxes.

Publicis Groupe SA gave up 1.8% in France after Citigroup downgraded the advertising company to sell from neutral.

Outside the main indexes in Europe, shares of Bankia SA put on 1.3% after the Spanish lender said second-quarter net profit nearly doubled compared with a year earlier as loan losses fell.

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