Johnson Matthey, down 0.4%, announced that its half yearly revenues fell to £5.62bn from £5.76bn, while its profit before tax declined to £210m from £330.2m reported in the previous year. The Board proposed an interim dividend of 20.5p per share. The Board expects the Group's trading performance to be slightly ahead of last year.
UBS reiterated its “Neutral” rating on DS Smith, up 1%, with a target price of 420p. Investec reissued its “Buy” rating on Greene King, up 3%, with a target price of 882p. Kier Group, up 1.7%, announced in its trading update that the Group’s trading is on track to meet expectations for the current financial year, even though there is economic uncertainty in the UK following the EU referendum. The stock was subject to positive rating from brokers.
Sepura, up 16%, announced that it has been awarded various contracts from ASTRID, the government-owned company for Belgium's TETRA public safety network, worth around €2m.
RhythmOne, up 11.1%, announced that their half yearly revenues decreased by 13.2% to $80.7m. However, its loss before tax narrowed significantly to $10.5m from $79.3m reported previous year. The Board restated its expectations for a top-line revenue growth as well as a return to profitability in FY2017. N+1 Singer reiterated its “Buy” rating on the stock with a target price of 55p, while Numis Securities raised its target price to 43p from 41.5p and maintained its “Add” rating.
AVEVA Group, up 2.7%, had target prices of 1750p and 2080p set by JP Morgan and Citigroup respectively.
Frontier Developments, down 0.2%, announced that it has launched the second self-published franchise of coaster park simulation PC game, Planet Coaster. Cyan Holdings, down 2.4%, announced that it has changed its name to CyanConnode Holdings Plc, with immediate effect. They also announced that they have received two Frost & Sullivan best practices titles. Beaufort Securities restated its “Speculative Buy” rating on the stock with a target price of 0.6p.
Horizon Discovery Group, down 3.9%, announced that it has signed partnership agreements with three leading Chinese diagnostic kit developers to assist the development of HDx Reference Standards for novel Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) assay. Separately, it announced a partnership deal with Sophia Genetics. Numis Securities reaffirmed its “Buy” rating on the stock with a target price of 260p, while Beaufort Securities maintained their “Speculative Buy” rating on the stock.
UK markets finished higher in the prior week, after retail sales climbed to a 14-year high on an annual basis in October. The nation’s ILO unemployment rate surprisingly fell to its lowest level in 11 years for the three months ended September. The FTSE 100 index added 0.7% to 6,775.8, while the FTSE AIM 100 index advanced 1.6% to close at 3,881.5. The FTSE techMARK 100 index gained 0.6% to 4,267.1.
US markets ended stronger in the last week, as investor sentiment was boosted by comments from the Federal Reserve Chair, Jan Yellen, indicating that the central bank might hike interest rates “relatively soon”. Also, positive inflation and housing market data along with upbeat retail sales in October, added to the momentum. The DJIA index rose 0.1% to 18,867.9, while the NASDAQ index jumped 1.6% to 5,321.5.
View the report in full
_________________________________________________