M&A activity again helped the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index close higher last week, as it ended Friday up 0.7% to 82.36. Polaris Software and GL Trade led the gainers after the Indian software company outlined acquisition plans following on from strong results and the French dealing systems vendor announced an acquisition offer from SunGard. Meanwhile, poor quarterly results for Online Resources and Total Systems Services saw them lead the index's few fallers.
Gainers
India's Polaris Software finished Friday the index's strongest performer, up 24.42% on the previous week to Rs99.10. It had announced strong quarterly results the week before, with net profit up 45.4% year-on-year. Last week it announced a 30% dividend approved at the annual general meeting. And in an interview with The Asian Banker Journal, the company's president and COO Arup Gupta said that Polaris is looking at two to three acquisitions ranging from $10 million to $20 million each. In particular, it is likely to acquire an insurance technology provider with products built around service-orientated architecture (SOA) to complement its existing products and services for retail, corporate and investment banking.
GL Trade also rose sharply after news that SunGard had made an offer to acquire the French dealing systems vendor. SunGard's offer on Friday of EUR41.70 represented a 24% premium to the stock's closing price on Thursday. The deal values the Paris-listed vendor at around EUR400.7 million. Shares in GL Trade closed the week up 17.61% on the previous week to finish at EUR40.28.
Other companies to see significant increases last week include:
- Advent Software, which closed up 15.68% to $45.08 after Q2 results beat analyst estimates. The company reported quarterly net income of $7.4 million, up 44% year-on-year.
- Mphasis, which ended Friday up 12.74% to Rs218.95 after announcing Q1 net profit grew 54% to Rs.790 million. The share price was also helped by news that the board of its majority shareholder EDS had approved the sale of EDS to HP. Mphasis is 63% owned by EDS.
- EDB Business Partner, which closed Friday 10.71% higher to Nkr31.00
- Fundtech, which closed up 9.12% to $15.20
Losers
Only two companies saw significant falls last week - both on the back of poor quarterly performance and pessimistic guidance.
Online Resources, a US provider of web-based financial services fell 25.38% to $7.44, after reporting quarterly net loss had widened to $3.2 million, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million a year ago. This is despite a revenue increase of 16%.
Total System Services also reported falling quarterly figures and it shares fell 13.73% to $19.23 as a result. The payments proccessor saw a small drop in Q2 net income from $65.7 million a year ago to $63.9 million for Q2 2008. It also dropped its forecast for full-year earnings-per-share growth to a range of 5% to 7%, from a previous forecast of 7% to 9%.
Methodology
More information on the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index methodology and constituent stocks can be found here.