UPDATE 1-EARNINGS AND THE ECONOMY-CEOs wary on recovery talk

(Adds further comments from CEOs)

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - Top executives mostly held out little hope for an early recovery in their companies' prospects and in the global economy when they reported results on Monday. Some reports in the past week have suggested the economy may be stabilizing, but the executives aren't counting on it. Here is a compilation of comments:

"We continue to face extremely difficult challenges, primarily from deteriorating credit quality driven by weakness in the economy and growing unemployment." -- Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) CEO Kenneth Lewis in a statement.

"Make no doubt about it, credit is bad, and we believe credit is going to get worse." -- Lewis on a later conference call.

"It's too early to call stability in this cycle." -- Bank of America Chief Financial Officer Joe Price on the same conference call.

"The economic recession is gripping industrial markets even more ferociously than had been forecast," -- Eaton Corp (ETN.N) CEO Sandy Cutler in an interview with Reuters. "You will not see an economic recovery at the end of 2009; it's really been pushed out into 2010."

"There can be no certainty on when the decline in activity will bottom out." -- Halliburton Co (HAL.N) CEO Dave Lesar on a conference call. "This downturn so far is worse than previous cycles in terms of the speed of the decline."

"In the last few weeks of the quarter demand got a little better in a few areas ... 3G base stations, notebook computers, some parts of the handset market and LCD-based televisions." -- Texas Instruments (TXN.N) Chief Financial Officer Kevin March said in an interview.

"Frankly, when we look out at the macro economic environment it remains unclear what direction the economy wants to go in."

"We do believe that the first quarter represents a peak in terms of the gross margin improvement." -- Eli Lilly & Co (LLY.N) Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice on a conference call. "We do not anticipate that we'll be able to sustain that level of gross margin for the remaining three quarters of the year."

"Based on the strength of our product line, we believe the two most recent quarters will prove to have been the most challenging for Hasbro in this economic cycle." -- Hasbro Inc (HAS.N) Chief Financial Officer David Hargreaves in a statement.

"We are not declaring a bottom. That's why we want to be cautious." -- Stephen MacMillan, CEO of medical implants maker Stryker Corp (SYK.N), on a conference call.

"We are going to invest less than we invested in 2008, around $70 million, when last year we invested around twice that figure." -- Patricio Jottar, the CEO of Chile's largest brewer, CCU CCU.SN, told reporters.

"In a scenario in which it is harder to make volumes grow due to the international crisis, we do not today need to make investments in capacity." (Reporting by Martin Howell; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Gary Hill)