Barclays lifted its target price on AVEVA Group, up 0.4%, to 4100p from 3370p and gave an “Overweight” rating.
DS Smith, up 0.7%, announced the appointment of Celia Baxter as a Non-Executive Director with effect from 9 October 2019, following the retirement of Kathleen O'Donovan from the Board on 3 September 2019. BNP Paribas lowered its target price on the stock to 300p from 340p and gave an “Underperform” rating.
Bango, up 27.9%, in its trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2019, announced that it expects a robust revenue growth of 64% to £4.3m, with end user spend more than doubling to around £465m.
CyanConnode Holdings, up 15.7%, announced that it has received a follow-on order from Genus Power Infrastructures Ltd to deploy 4,050 smart metering units in India. Moreover, it bagged a £200k order from Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd for service enhancements. Separately, the company secured a follow-on Nordic order worth nearly €500k.
Xaar, up 10.1%, announced that its half-yearly performance remains on track to meet the Board’s forecast and anticipates revenue of around £23m. Peel Hunt reaffirmed its “Hold” rating on the stock.
Horizon Discovery Group, up 6.2%, announced that Celyad’s CAR-T cell-based therapies development, that utilises Horizon's optimized SMARTvector shRNA technology, has secured FDA Acceptance of Investigational New Drug (IND) application for the autologous NKG2D based CAR-T cell therapy CYAD-02. The company is entitled to receive an undisclosed milestone payment for the successful IND filing.
Amino Technologies, up 3%, announced that its half-yearly revenues declined to $34.6m from $41.2m reported in H1 2018. However, Amino reported a profit before tax of $2.5m, against a loss of $0.2m in the previous year. The board declared an interim dividend of 1.68p per share.
Science Group, unchanged at 199p, announced that it is unlikely for Frontier Smart Technologies Group Limited’s (Frontier) discussions with the alternative company to result into a possible offer. The company does not intend to raise its offer of 35p per share and urges Frontier shareholders to accept its offer or sell their shares through the Panmure Gordon Trading Facility. Separately, it purchased 2.4m shares of Frontier for 35p per share, taking its shareholding to 35.8%.
Marshall Motor Holdings, down 4.1%, in its trading statement for the six months ended 30 June 2019, announced that it anticipates to report profit before tax in line with Board’s expectations, as a positive performance from its retail as well as new fleet vehicle unit sales helped offset the impact of challenging market conditions.
UK markets closed lower last week, led by losses in financial and utilities sector stocks. The British economy grew more than expected in the March-May period, while the nation’s trade deficit unexpectedly narrowed in May. Meanwhile, UK’s industrial production rose less than anticipated in May. The Bank of England warned that the increasing likelihood of a no-deal Brexit could cause massive disruption to the UK economy. The FTSE 100 index declined 0.6% to settle at 7506.0, while the FTSE AIM 100 index fell 0.1% to close at 4727.5. Meanwhile, the FTSE techMARK 100 index lost 0.9% to end at 5181.6.
US markets ended higher in the previous week, supported by gains in healthcare and technology sector stocks. US core inflation advanced by the most since January 2018 in June, whereas the consumer credit rose more than expected in May. The US NFIB small business optimism index fell in June. The DJIA index rose 1.5% to end at 27332.0, while the NASDAQ index gained 1% to close at 8244.1.