LONDON, July 24 — UK stocks erased gains in the final hour and a half of trading as oil and gas companies fell, outweighing an unexpected rebound in euro-area manufacturing.

EasyJet jumped 4.4 per cent after saying full-year earnings may beat analysts’ projections. BG Group Plc and Tullow Oil Plc each lost more than 2.5 per cent. Renishaw Plc slid 2.6 per cent after posting full-year sales that missed analysts’ forecasts.

The FTSE 100 Index fell 11.26 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 6,586.18 at 3:33 p.m. in London. The equity benchmark has still climbed 9.3 per cent from a low on June 24 as the Bank of England provided forward guidance on interest rates for the first time. The FTSE All-Share Index also dropped 0.2 per cent today, while Ireland’s ISEQ Index rose 1.2 per cent.

“The earnings season is very important, much more so for individual stocks than overall markets,” Jonathan Stubbs, head of European and UK equity strategy at Citigroup Inc. told Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television. “The macro backdrop for corporates isn’t consistently strong. So they’re having to do self help — restructuring and cost cutting — to keep margins and profitability high. They’re generally succeeding in doing that pretty well.”

The volume of shares changing hands in FTSE 100 companies today was 11 per cent lower than the 30-day average, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Euro Area

In the euro zone, a measure of manufacturing unexpectedly expanded this month, indicating that activity increased for the first time since July 2011. Factory indexes based on surveys of purchasing managers exceeded estimates in Germany and France, the 17-nation bloc’s largest economies. The German manufacturing PMI rose to 50.3 this month, signalling expansion for the first time since February for Europe’s biggest economy.

EasyJet surged 4.4 per cent to 1,395 pence after Europe’s second biggest discount airline said fiscal third-quarter sales rose 11 per cent to 1.14 billion pounds (RM5.74 billion). The company forecast full-year pretax profit of 450 million pounds to 480 million pounds, exceeding the average analyst forecast of 431 million pounds.

Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest discount airline, rallied 4.6 per cent to 7.35 euros in Dublin. International Consolidated Airlines Group SA, the owner of British Airways and Iberia, climbed 1.6 per cent to 290.6 pence. A gauge of travel and leisure companies posted the best performance of the 19 industry groups in the Stoxx Europe 600 Index.

Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle Plc gained 3 per cent to 848 pence after the maker of Splenda sweetener said volume and revenue at its specialty-food ingredients unit rose at a faster pace than the rest of the market in its fiscal first quarter.

“We continue to expect to deliver another year of profitable growth,” the company said in a statement.

BG Group, the UK’s third-biggest natural-gas producer, slid 2.9 per cent to 1,175 pence and Tullow Oil, which owns wells in Mozambique and French Guiana, lost 2.6 per cent to 1,014 pence.

Renishaw decreased 2.6 per cent to 1,526 pence after the maker of precision tools reported full-year sales of 346.9 million pounds. That trailed the consensus estimate of 351.7 million pounds. — Bloomberg