Index heavyweight, ARM Holdings, down 12.5%, unveiled its ‘AMBA 5 Coherent Hub Interface specification’ and offered a POP technology for its Cortex-A12 and Cortex-A7 processors. It also announced the appointment of Eric Meurice as an independent Non Executive Director, with effect from 1 July 2013. However, the shares were subjected to mixed broker ratings, with Bank of America Merrill Lynch recommending the stock as a “Buy”, while Societe Generale rated it as a “Sell”.
Johnson Matthey rose 5.6% as a recovery in the US truck market more than offset the impact of lower platinum prices and a fall in its annual pre-tax profits. Full year revenues declined 11% to £10,729m and pre-tax profit fell 13% to £354.9m. Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgraded the stock to “Buy”, and increased the target price to 2,950p. Deutsche Bank also rated the stock as “Buy”, while Beaufort Securities and Citigroup recommended the stock as “Hold” and “Neutral”, respectively.
DS Smith lost 3.6%, as Goldman Sachs downgraded the stock from “Buy” to “Neutral”. Greene King fell 1%. Deutsche Bank reiterated a “Buy” rating on its shares while keeping the target price unchanged at 750p. Berenberg rated Aveva Group, down 3.7%, as “Hold” and reduced the target price to 2,246p.
Cyan Holdings surged 30.2% and bucked the overall market trend to emerge as the top gainer on the Cambridge Index. The company’s Executive Chairman, John Cronin, purchased 5,000,000 shares at 0.6p per share while two of its Non Executive Directors, Simon Smith and John Read purchased 2,000,000 and 1,000,000 shares at 0.6p, respectively.
Bango, up 1.5%, signed a global payment services agreement with Mozilla Corporation and partnered with Telefónica to power payments across Firefox OS launch territories in Europe and Latin America.
Abcam, down 5.9%, revealed that its Director, Jonathan Milner, sold 7,500 shares for a consideration of £0.03m, bringing his shareholding down to 13.6%. Sepura, down 3.9%, announced a 26% rise in its full-year revenue to €104.8m and a 72% surge in its pre-tax profit to €7.9m. Meanwhile, Investec and Liberum Capital reiterated a “Buy” rating on the stock.
Ubisense, up 0.8%, announced that it had won a contract worth $3.5m, to outsource a Network Mapping Software solution. Elektron Technology, flat at 13.8p, announced the sale of its subsidiary, Total Carbide, to Versarien, in a deal worth £2.3m.
In the UK, the FTSE 100 index slid 2.6% to 6,412.0 during the week ended 07 June 2013, pressurised by a decline in the shares of banks and miners. Meanwhile, the Bank of England kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 0.5% and maintained its asset purchase programme unchanged at £375bn. The FTSE techMARK 100 Index shed 3.7% to 2,771.6, while the FTSE AIM 100 Index slid 1.9% to 3,286.5.
US markets rose, bucking the weak trend witnessed elsewhere, as an upbeat rise in its non-farm payrolls data overshadowed a more-than-expected decline in the ISM index for domestic manufacturing sector during May. The Dow Jones Index rose 0.9% to 15,248.1, while the Nasdaq Index ticked 0.4% higher to 3,469.2.
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