Fidelity NIS and Thomson Reuters push Finextra50 up five per cent

The Finextra50 Financial Technology Index closed at 86.52 on Friday, after a good week for most fintech companies. Fidelity NIS and Gresham led the gainers, while Temenos and i-Flex saw the biggest falls.

The index closed up 5.05% last week - the largest single week gain this year - on the back of healthy price rises for a number of the index's large-cap stocks.

Fidelity National Information Services (Fidelity NIS) gained 21.33% to close Friday at $23.21 after beating analyst estimates for its Q2 results and raising its 2008 outlook. Consolidated revenue rose 19% to $1.3 billion, helped by revenue of $137.2 million from eFunds, which Fidelity NIS bought last September.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 13.0% to $331.5 million compared to $293.3 million in the second quarter of 2007. The EBITDA margin was 24.8% compared to 26.1% in the prior-year quarter. The company said margins were negatively impacted by revenue mix, declines in certain mortgage origination services and higher corporate expense.

The company now expects to earn $1.51 to $1.57 per share in 2008, up from its prior outlook of $1.48 to $1.54 a share.

In the first half of its 2008 financial year, Fidelity NIS off-loaded two businesses, FIS Credit Services and Certegy Gaming Services. It's completion of the spin-off of Lender Processing Services and sale of Certegy Australia will be reflected in Q3 results.

Thomson Reuters, the index's largest constituent by free float market capitalisation, ended Friday up 11.00% on the prior week to close at 1,503p.

Computershare was up 10.79% to AUD$9.65 ahead of its full-year results announcement this Wednesday.

At the small-cap end of the index, two UK companies saw significant gains.

Gresham rose 18.10% to 68.5p on small trading volume, amid investor optimism about full-year results, due next month, and the propsect of the company offloading some non-core assets, such as its storage and software testing businesses.

UK insurance software and services specialist The Innovation Group also rose last week, finishing up 15.94% to 20p.

Losers

Core banking system vendors Temenos and i-flex both fell last week, paring back recent gains on the back of positive quarterly results in July. Temenos closed Friday down 8.55% to CHF28.35, while i-Flex fell 7.17% to Rs1350.00.

The only other index firm to see a significant fall last week was business intelligence software vendor Actuate, which dropped 6.18% to $4.25.

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