EARNINGS AND THE ECONOMY-2009 seen challenging for most

LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) - Company executives in Europe and Asia continued to describe a challenging a year ahead when reporting earnings on Thursday, although, depending on the sector, some were cautiously optimistic.

Following is a compilation of their comments:

"The first quarter brought further deterioration of the economic environment, which led to a significant decrease in our new licence activity across brands and geographic regions," said Bernard Charles, chief executive at French software firm Dassault Systemes (DAST.PA).

"Looking ahead, we believe the environment will continue to be difficult," added Chief Financial Officer Thibault de Tersant.

"Looking ahead to the rest of calendar 2009, we expect conditions to remain challenging," said Jeremy Darroch, chief executive at British pay-TV operator BSkyB (BSY.L).

"On the whole, our performance in the first months of the year gives us confidence that the company will operate in a stable way throughout 2009," said Viktor Rashnikov, chairman of Russia-based Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MAGN.MM).

"Across quite a few of our product lines, there are strong pipelines of new business. We're optimistic as regards the pipeline that we have," said David Nish, finance director at British life insurer Standard Life (SL.L).

"For us to return to a profit on our operations, that might be in the second half of this year," Jerry Shin, chief executive at Netbook PC pioneer Asustek (2357.TW), told an analysts' meeting. "It might be difficult in the second quarter."

"So far the effects are limited, but we see some," Ericsson (ERICb.ST) Chief Executive Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters. "We see some operators are delaying longer-term investment in fixed, and the fixed operators are affected on revenues."

"Looking forward, market conditions remain uncertain ... Many major project investment decisions are subject to delays as certain clients look to their suppliers to bring down overall project costs before making final investment decisions," said Thierry Pilenko, chief executive at French oil services group Technip (TECF.PA).