Berenberg Bank and Kepler Capital Markets reaffirmed their “Buy” ratings on the shares of ARM Holdings, down 2.5%. Meanwhile, BNP Paribas restated its “Neutral” rating. Johnson Matthey, up 1.8%, in its preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2014, said that its annual profit before tax rose to £406.6m, from £348.6m in the previous year. Revenue for the year rose to £11.16bn from £10.73bn in the prior year. Separately, Deutsche Bank reaffirmed its “Buy” rating with a price target of 3,650p, while Credit Suisse reiterated its “Neutral” rating with a target price of 3,000p. Citigroup restated its “Buy” rating on the shares of DS Smith, up 2.7%, with a price target of 350p. Meanwhile, Jefferies Group restated its “Hold” rating with a price target of 335p.
Bango advanced 9.5%. The company and Etisalat Group, the telecoms giant, have entered into a partnership to enable Direct Operator Billing across Etisalat's markets in Asia, Middle East and Africa.
Amino Technologies, up 5.6%, projected its first half pre-tax profit to be in line with expectations and a strong first half closing net cash balance of £19.7m, compared to £18.2m last year. Northland Capital Partners and N+1 Singer restated their “Hold” ratings with respective price targets of 100p and 93p. Numis Securities restated its “Buy” rating on the shares of Abcam, up 4.1%, with a current price target of 510p. WH Ireland reiterated its “Buy” rating on the shares of Kier Group, up 4.1%.
Oriel Securities, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup reiterated their “Buy” ratings on the shares of Greene King, up 2.2%. The latter two had target prices of 1,045p and 1,000p respectively. Sphere Medical Holding, up 1.8%, announced that its Proxima blood analyser system had been granted CE marking in the EU. The CE marking indicates that the product is compliant with EU legislation, and can be freely sold within the European market. Frontier Developments, up 0.9%, has achieved the next milestone in the development of its forthcoming ‘Elite: Dangerous’ title.
Horizon Discovery Group remained unchanged at 166.5p. The company has completed the acquisition of the CombinatoRx service business for £4.74m. Beaufort Securities restated its “Speculative Buy” rating on the shares.
Cambridge Cognition Holdings, down 4%, announced the launch of the first two iPad-based products on its new Cantab Connect digital platform, for use in clinical trials. The company projected the addressable market in excess of £60m. Separately, it also announced the signing of a significant contract worth £1.6m for a global multi-year study in which Cantab Solutions technology would be used to assess the cognitive safety of a new medicine under development for cardiovascular disease.
In the last week, UK markets closed mostly higher, as the Bank of England kept its interest rate and its asset purchase facility program unchanged. Investors also digested May data that revealed the biggest jump in 11 years in UK home prices and a widening of the British trade deficit for April. In the UK, the FTSE 100 index ticked 0.2% upwards at 6,858.2 and the FTSE techMARK 100 Index rose 1.7% to 3,280.4. Meanwhile, the FTSE AIM 100 Index dropped 3% to 3,519.7.
The US markets ended the week on a positive footing, as the unemployment rate in the US remained unchanged at 6.3%. The DJIA index rose 1.2% to 16,924.3, while the NASDAQ index added 1.9% to close at 4,321.4.
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