Very few stocks posted gains last week as the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index lost ground to close at 100.21. Double-digit percentage falls from i-flex and Vasco Data Security led the downward trend, while Online Resources, Nucleus Software and Chordiant Software also saw significant share price reduction.
Major gainers
Most major markets ended down last week, after rising in early October, and the Finextra50 performed largely in line with this trend. London-listed financial technology stocks represented most of the modest gainers this week, with portfolio analytics vendor Statpro seeing the largest rise of 3.44% to close Friday at 96.2p.
On Friday it announced that trading for the nine months to end-September is in line with expectations and significantly ahead of last year, with strong organic revenue growth across the group. Organic revenue growth stood at 19% per year in the period, or 21% at constant exchange rates, and the company points to a strong sales pipeline as new opportunities arise for its enlarged product suite.
Insurance software vendor Software Solution Partnership (up 2.05% to 148.49p) and derivatives trading system firm Patsystems (up 2% to 35.5p) round out the London gainers. US payments hardware vendor Hypercom also posted a modest gain of 2.98% last week, closing at $5.18.
Major losers
Shares in Indian core banking system vendor i-flex lost 11.02% of their value last week, as they ended Friday at Rs1615. The company will report Q2 FY08 earnings on 26 October, but in an earnings preview published on the 13th Citigroup said it expects the company to post revenues of around Rs 595.1 crore (Rs 5,951 million), up 11.9% quarter-on-quarter.
Vasco Data Security also fell ahead of earnings announcements this week (25 October). It posted its biggest one-week decline since the inception of the index, paring back recent gains to drop 10.61% to $37.56. The company was downgraded to market perform by research company Avondale Partners during the week, as it marked its entry to the UK banking market with the launch of a new smart-card reader compliant with guidelines from UK payments trade association Apacs.
Other companies to see significant share price decline last week were:
- Online Resources down 8.94% to $12.02
- Nucleus Software down 8.05% to Rs269.45
- Chordiant Software down 7.84% to $14.22
- Computershare down 7.54% to AUD$8.95
- ACI Worldwide down 7.54% to $22.57
- S1 down 7.35% to $8.70
- Morningstar down 7.34% to $68.28
Index comparison
MethodologyMore information on the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index methodology and constituent stocks can be found
here.