Shares in ARM Holdings finished 2.6% higher during the week. ARM’s Chief Executive, Warren East, stated that ARM’s new energy-efficient 64 bit processor has achieved excellent traction amongst chip designers. Numis Securities forecasted that ARM would report a solid fourth quarter, and rated the stock as “Hold”, whilst increasing its target price to 820p.
DS Smith, up 4.6%, announced the appointment of Chris Britton as a Non Executive Director, with effect from 6 March 2013. Amongst the fallers, Johnson Matthey, down 2.7%, announced that trading in the third quarter was challenging, with sales (excluding precious metals) down 2% to £635m. Pre-tax profit fell 19% to £84.3m. JP Morgan Cazenove and HSBC issued a “Neutral” rating on the stock, while Deutsche Bank and Liberum Capital advised investors to buy the stock.
Aveva Group, down 0.7%, announced that while the performance at its Engineering & Design Systems and Power division was good, performance at the Marine division was disappointing.
Amino Technologies rose 6.2% and emerged as the top gainer in the Cambridge Index. The company swung to an operating profit of £2.8m and proposed a 50% increase in final dividend to 3p, while indicating that it expects continued dividend growth of at least 15% per annum for each of the next two years. Domino Printing Sciences, up 3.1%, confirmed that it will hold its AGM on 19 March 2013. Elektron Technology, down 16.9%, announced that annual sales from continuing operations fell to £55m from £63m, and stated that it expects a further reduction in sales.
HiWave Technologies, down 11%, announced that revenues declined 39% to £1.2m but that operating losses narrowed 15.4% to £3.3m. Cyan Holdings fell 5.6% during the week. Cyan’s Directors John Read, John Cronin and Simon Smith acquired 259,783, 909,091 and 562,348 shares at 0.66p, increasing their shareholdings to 1.05%, 1.56% and 0.90% respectively.
Sepura, down 0.1%, announced that demand for its products remained resilient, and that cumulative revenues for the first nine months of the financial year were in line with its expectations. On the outlook, Sepura stated that it expects continued robust demand in the current quarter, giving it a solid platform to achieve the market’s expectations for the full year.
In the UK, the FTSE 100 index closed 1% higher, at 6,347.2, as better-than-expected German business confidence and UK mortgage approvals, coupled with robust US corporate earnings reports, helped overshadow a slight contraction in UK economic growth. The FTSE techMARK 100 Index added 1.4% to 2,677.5, while the FTSE AIM 100 Index added 0.3% to 3,316.
US markets finished higher during the week, after better-than-expected US corporate results helped to reduce concerns over an unexpected decline in US fourth quarter GDP. Robust manufacturing activity also boosted sentiment and the Dow Jones Index rose 0.8% to 14,009.8, while the Nasdaq Index added 0.9% to 3,179.1.
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