Shares of ARM Holdings, Johnson Matthey, DS Smith and Aveva Group, all up between 3.1% and 6.7%, received a number of favourable broker reviews. BNP Paribas and UBS assigned a “Neutral” rating to ARM Holdings, while Morgan Stanley maintained its “Overweight” stance on the stock and set a target price of 725.0p.
Deutsche Bank advocated a “Buy” on Johnson Matthey and set a target price of 2,650p. UBS upgraded DS Smith to “Buy” and increased the target price to 240p from 146p, while Morgan Stanley retained its “Overweight” stance on the stock.
Panmure Gordon advised investors to “Hold” on to Aveva Group’s stock with a target price of 1,599p. However, Greene King, down 0.8%, was downgraded to “Neutral” by Citigroup, which set a target price on the stock of 630p.
Blinkx surged 21% and emerged as the top gainer in the Cambridge Index. The company announced that it has entered into a partnership with SNTV, enabling users to have access to premium sports content.
Other prominent gainers included Bango, Phytopharm and HiWave Technologies, all up between 7% and 20%. Kier Group, up 6.3%, announced that its full year revenues fell slightly to £2,030.5m, while profit stood at £55.3m (2011: £62.3m).
Elektron fell 14.5% as the company announced that its first half revenues fell to £29.9m from £34.4m and pre-tax profits fell to £0.8m from £2.8m recorded in the same period a year ago. Sareum Holdings, down 8.3%, announced that it has entered into a financing deal worth £4m with YA Global Master SPV.
CSR, down 1.7%, announced the release of two new wireless modules by Bluegiga, based on CSR’s Wi-Fi technology. Domino Printing Sciences, down 2.5%, announced that sales for the ten months ended August 2012 rose 1% YoY. The company also advised that its gross profit margin was stable and in line with expectations.
ANT, down 2.1%, announced that its first half revenues increased 15% to £2.5m and pre-tax losses widened to £0.4m from £0.3m recorded in the same period a year ago.
In the UK, the FTSE 100 index closed 2.1% higher, at 5,915.6, as the announcement of fresh stimulus measures by the US Federal Reserve and German court’s ruling on ESM reignited risk appetite amongst investors. Indices registered these gains despite data earlier in the week indicating that UK business confidence fell to a record low in August. The FTSE techMARK 100 Index advanced 2.1% to 2,459.9, while the FTSE AIM 100 Index gained 2.3% to 3,249.5.
US markets ended higher last week, after the US Federal Reserve announced that it would expand its holdings of long-term securities with open-ended purchases of $40 billion of mortgage debt per month to boost economic growth and reduce unemployment. The Dow Jones Index rose 2.2% to 13,593.4, while the Nasdaq Index added 1.5% to 3,184.0.
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