DS Smith, up 7.1%, announced that its half yearly revenues grew to £2.36bn from £1.95bn reported in the same period a year ago. Its profit before tax jumped to £146m from £91m. The Board declared an interim dividend of 4.6p per share. The company also announced a proposed acquisition of Parish Manufacturing Inc. and expects the deal to complete during the first quarter of 2017.
Deutsche Bank reaffirmed its “Buy” rating on Greene King, up 2.4%, with a target price of 950p.
Horizon Discovery Group, up 23.2%, announced that it has signed new service agreements worth more than £1m for its Genetic Screening Platform. Additionally, they expect strong growth in 2017 as they possess an order book of more than £0.6m for H1 2017.
Dialight, up 17.6%, announced in its trading update that it anticipates the underlying EBIT for the year ending 31 December 2016 to be significantly ahead of expectations while the revenues are expected to post modest growth.
Frontier Developments, up 3.5%, announced that Elite Dangerous, its multiplayer space game, will be released on the PlayStation 4 computer entertainment system in Q2 2017. The company separately announced that Martin Harriman has been appointed as the Non-Executive Director to the Board with immediate effect.
Amino Technologies, up 1.7%, in its annual trading update announced that the Board expects their revenue and profit to be slightly ahead of the previous market expectations. Finncap gave a target price of 200p.
Brady, down 0.7%, announced that Mr. Lavelle has resigned from the Board and will leave the company on 31 December 2016. Sepura, down 1.2%, announced that a further extension has been granted by the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers for the PUSU Deadline to 16 December 2016 from 9 December 2016.
CyanConnode Holdings, down 2.4%, announced that it received a purchase order from E.ON for its IPv6 6LoWPAN Panmesh solution in Hyllie, Sweden. The company also received a follow-on purchase order from Landis+Gyr worth €230,000 for its legacy C3 solution. They also announced a purchase order from Larsen & Toubro to deploy CyanConnode's Advanced Metering Infrastructure smart metering solution at Tata Power, Mumbai for an additional 4,700 smart meters.
Numis Securities Ltd reaffirmed its “Under Review” rating on RhythmOne down 8.7%. N+1 Singer reiterated its “Buy” rating on the stock with a target price of 56p.
UK markets closed firmer in the last week, led by an advance in banking stocks. The nation’s NIESR estimated GDP growth remained flat for the three months ended November. Additionally, the services sector rose at its fastest pace in the last month since January 2016. The FTSE 100 index advanced 3.3% to 6,954.2, while the FTSE AIM 100 index gained 0.8% to close at 3,929.1. The FTSE techMARK 100 index added 1.3% to 4,213.6.
US markets finished stronger in the last week, driven by gains in the telecom and financial shares. Furthermore, the ISM non-manufacturing sector and the Michigan consumer confidence index posted positive data in November and December. The DJIA index gained 2.9% to 19,756.9, while the NASDAQ index rose 3.6% to 5,444.5.
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