AVEVA Group, up 0.7%, announced that it has entered into a partnership deal with Bengaluru-based Titan Engineering & Automation Limited (TEAL) and Utthunga Technologies Pvt. Ltd., to deliver its flagship Monitoring and Control portfolio to customers in India. Separately, the company announced that it successfully completed the acquisition of OSIsoft on 19 March 2021.
1Spatial, up 16.3%, announced that it has completed the integration of Geomap-Imagis (G-I), which was acquired in May 2019. Meanwhile, the company announced the launch of 1Integrate v2.8.1, which enables users to assess the quality of data to ensure it meets defined specifications and is fit for purpose.
Checkit, unchanged at 50p, announced that it intends to adopt electronic communication methods for shareholder documents as reducing the number of communications sent by post would not only result in cost savings but would also reduce the environmental impact of printing and distributing documents.
LPA Group, down 7.3%, in its AGM trading update, announced that despite being affected by Covid-19, no business has been lost and its medium and longer term prospects have been enhanced, but at the expense of the near term.
Bango, down 5.9%, in its final results for the year ended 31 December 2020, announced that revenues rose 7% to £12.17m from £7.17m recorded in the previous year. Profit before tax stood at £0.61m compared to a loss of £2.61m. Cash as at 31 December 2020 stood at £5.8m.
CyanConnode, down 2.1%, announced that Arden has published a research note on the company website.
UK markets ended mostly lower last week, as the Bank of England (BoE) warned that the outlook for Britain’s recovery remained unclear. On the data front, the British consumer sentiment index climbed to a 1-year high in March, following rapid vaccine rollouts across the country and extension of near-term fiscal support. Additionally, the UK house prices rose on a monthly basis in March.
Meanwhile, the BoE kept its benchmark rate unchanged at 0.1% and maintained its quantitative easing at £895b. Further, the central bank indicated that it does not intend to tighten its monetary policy until there’s clear evidence of a recovery and it is close to achieving the 2% inflation target. The FTSE 100 index declined 0.8% to settle at 6708.7, while the FTSE techMARK 100 index dropped 0.3% to end at 6437.6. Meanwhile, the FTSE AIM 100 index rose 0.3% to close at 5893.6.
US markets ended lower in the previous week, amid persistent worries over rising US Treasury yields and higher inflation. On the macro front, the US retail sales dropped more than expected in February, while housing starts fell to a six-month low in February, due to extreme cold weather across various parts of the country. Also, the nation’s weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose to a 1-month high in the week ended 12 March 2021. In contrast, the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index unexpectedly jumped to a 50-year high in March.
The US Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged at 0.25% and reiterated that it would not hike its interest rates atleast through 2023, even though inflation rises. Also, the Fed stated that it would not extend temporary relief from capital-requirement rules for banks. Moreover, the central bank indicated that it expects the US economy to grow 6.5% in 2021, 3.3% in 2022 and 2.2% in 2023 and unemployment rate to fall to 4.5% from 6.2%. The DJIA index fell 0.5% to end at 32628, while the NASDAQ index lost 0.8% to close at 13215.2.