Despite the turbulent markets there were a few bright spots last week, such as S1, Computershare and Hypercom, which ended the week up. Some fintech stocks benefited from the market recovery on Friday to pare back their losses. But prevailing market conditions and profit warnings led to some significant drops for many constituents as of Friday, led by ACI Worldwide, Cognizant, Ingenico and Diebold. This caused the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index to fall 2.58% to 93.28.
Major gainers
S1 was the index's biggest gainer last week, rising 13.48% to end at $7.41. The stock had been as low as $5.65 on August 9, before the company reported positive earnings. Revenue for the second quarter of 2007 was $52.6 million, compared to $46.7 million in the second quarter of 2006, a 13% increase. And EBITDA for the second quarter of 2007 was $7.7 million, compared to $1.3 million in the year previous. As a result, S1 raised its 2007 profit view to a range of 26 cents to 29 cents per share
These figures saw S1 stock rise steadily last week, despite the turmoil in the market.
In Australia, Computershare reported a 71% rise in full-year profit and assured investors of EPS growth of more than 15% in fiscal 2008 despite the recent volatility in world markets. This combined with a 6.69% fall in the Australian doller against the US dollar, saw Computershare end last week at AUD$9.39, up 6.7% on the previous week.
The positive earnings announcement came at a good time for Computershare, as its shares had been sliding amid concern that the volatile markets would mean less M&A activity and therefore less revenue for its share registry business, which contributed the bulk of the company's earnings.
Hypercom also rose late last week to end at $5.15, up 6.41%. The stock had been on a steady decline since mid July. Since then the vendor has lost its CEO, posted a Q2 loss in early August and reached a termination agreement with a senior vice president. It fell sharply the previous Friday and hit a low of $4.30 on Wednesday last week, but it rode the market rebound late last week to finish the week stronger.
Major losers
Shares in ACI Worldwide (TSA) continued to slide last week, ending down 10.89% to $26.36, after its 9 August reporting of a net loss of $0.4 million for the quarter ended March 2007. Organic revenues slipped by $9.5 million.
Diebold fell 8.47% last week to end at $45.59, as it reduced fiscal year profit outlook by 27 cents a share due to weakness in its elections machine business.
The company announced that it had been unable to sell its Diebold Election Systems unit as planned, and will now restructure it as an independent entity, with Diebold maintaining a financial interest.
Cognizant (down 8.98% to $74.95) and Ingenico (down 8.9% to EUR17.3) also failed to rally with the rest of the market at the end of last week.
Three other companies fell more than 7%: Vasco Data Security (down 8.16% to $27.81; i-flex (down 7.27% to Rs1925); and Temenos Group (down 7.22% to CHf24.40)
Index comparison
Methodology
More information on the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index methodology and constituent stocks can be found here.