Wall St. mixed as lackluster earnings offset biotech M&A bid

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks were mixed on Tuesday, with the Dow industrials pulled down by a handful of uninspiring earnings reports, while the Nasdaq was pushed higher by a proposed biotech merger.

Travelers , DuPont and IBM shares weighed most on the Dow. DuPont reported lower sales in all of its businesses and said a strong dollar would take a toll on its full-year earnings. IBM also mentioned currency effects when it reported a fall in revenue late on Monday.

DuPont was down 2.97 percent at $70.67 and IBM fell 0.85 percent to $164.74.

March-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with almost 73 percent of the S&P 500 components that have reported so far beating bottom-line expectations, but just 42.2 percent beating expectations for revenue, suggesting that businesses are struggling to expand.

?Top-line growth is still a struggle," said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Robert W. Baird & Co. "If that continues into the second quarter, that would be a problem. It tells you the economy is not doing that well."

The dollar <.DXY> has gained almost 9 percent since the beginning of the year against a basket of major currencies, hurting companies with large overseas operations.

Travelers reported a drop in quarterly net profit and its shares fell 3.02 percent.

At 1:02 p.m. the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 59.95 points, or 0.33 percent, to 17,974.98, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 1.04 points, or 0.05 percent, to 2,099.36 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 23.28 points, or 0.47 percent, to 5,017.88.

Mylan shares rose 9.95 percent to a record high of $74.84 after Israeli drugmaker Teva made an unsolicited offer of $82 per share, in what could be the drug industry's largest takeover this year. Teva rose 1.50 percent. The Nasdaq Biotech index <.NBI> rose 1.75 percent.

Chipotle , Yahoo and chipmaker Broadcom were expected to report their quarterly results after the bell on Tuesday.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,531 to 1,420, for a 1.08-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq, 1,382 issues rose and 1,277 fell for a 1.08-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.

The benchmark S&P 500 index was posting 9 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 78 new highs and 22 new lows.

(Additional reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Meredith Mazzilli)

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