CMC Markets shares spiked 9% to 263.3p in early morning trading after the firm’s trading update for the past quarter revealed results at the high end of company projections.

CMC announced an expected FY 2022 net operating income of £280 million, hitting a record performance outside the Covid-19 pandemic.

The financial services company said it currently anticipates a gross leveraged client income of £288, representing a 14% year-on-year decline compared to its £335 million intake in 2021.

CMC also highlighted a projected leveraged trading revenue of £230 million at a 34% year-on-year fall against £349 million in 2021, alongside a 12% lowered non-leveraged trading revenue of £48 million compared to £55 million in 2021.

The company’s operating costs are currently expected to hit £173 million against £168 million in 2021, apparently reflecting higher personnel costs in the course of reaching strategic objectives.

The group cautioned that its expenses were set to climb higher on its scheduled growth in marketing expenses, along with a ramped up investment in personnel.

The firm’s notable updates included its initial internal launch of CMC Invest, the company’s UK non-leveraged platform for its British staff. CMC noted that the platform was scheduled to roll out to the wider market over the upcoming quarter.

An additional investment platform is set for launch in Singapore this year, and CMC confirmed that it was currently eyeing two other jurisdictions to launch from in the next year in an effort to expand the company’s international presence.

“I am delighted to report another year of strong performance both strategically and financially,” said CMC Markets CEO Lord Cruddas.

“Outside of the pandemic year (Financial year ending March 2021), this is a record net operating income result for the company. The performance reflects the ongoing success of our B2B technology partnerships and focus across our leveraged and non-leveraged businesses.”

“This business continues to change as we look to utilise our technology to enter new markets and expand our non-leveraged offering. I look forward to updating investors as the strategy expands over both the short and long-term.”

The owner of The Cocktail Club, the Adventure Bar Group and the Barrio Familia group of bars, Nightcap said it will open The Cocktail Club in Birmingham later this year.

Nightcap will open a flagship location at 31 Temple Street, Birmingham, B2 5DB, following the successful openings of The Cocktail Club venues in Reading and Bristol in recent months.

This new ground-floor location is 4,600 square feet, divided into three bar areas, with a 2:00 a.m. licence Monday through Sunday and a capacity of 450 people.

The Cocktail Club will be the group’s third brand to open in Birmingham, following the Tonight Josephine brand and its enormous outdoor venue, Luna Springs, along with the Adventure Bar Group’s Tonight Josephine brand.

This is The Cocktail Club’s sixth new lease since Nightcap purchased it last year, bringing the total number of locations to sixteen.

Across all of its brands, Nightcap now has 31 sites in its portfolio, with another 25 ‘under offer’ or in legal negotiations, and continues to experience favourable market circumstances for site purchases across the country.

Sarah Willingham, Nightcap CEO said, “From the outset we felt that The Cocktail Club format had the opportunity to successfully operate larger sites.”

“Both Reading and Bristol exceeded our maturity net sales targets within their first three months of operation and we are confident that Birmingham will continue that trajectory with an even larger site.”

“We are continuing our expansion programme as scheduled and just as with the prime areas of London and Cardiff, we are excited to open multiple formats within prime areas of Birmingham, which is one of our main target cities for all of our brands.”

Nightcap shares rose 1% to 16.8p following the announcement of the opening of The Cocktail Club in Birmingham later this year.

The immunodiagnostics group, Oncimmune Holdings’ shares boosted 7% to 135p after the company announced signing two new ImmunoINSIGHTS commercial contracts.

The first agreement is to develop first-in-class cell immunotherapy for cancer patients using commercially available natural killer cells and CARNK cell products with a US-based clinical-stage bio-pharmacy company.

Based on this agreement, Oncimmune will use its unique high-throughput biomarker detection platform, SeroTag, to identify autoantibodies that can predict positive resistance whilst potentially addressing patient clinical response and engineered cell therapy in the haematology and oncology indications of solid tumours.

This new deal illustrates the company’s ImmunoINSIGHTS technology platform’s enormous potential in the engineered cellular treatment market.

The second agreement was made with a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in the United States that is developing a proprietary technology that utilises the immune system’s strength to battle cancer by leveraging their proprietary technology to ‘discover, develop, and commercialise transformative oncology treatments’.

The autoantibodies in patients treated with a virus-like substance that boosts anti-tumour T cells will be explored in this effort.

The project’s goal is to demonstrate how this medication affects the immune system by profiling patients over time.

“We are pleased to announce a further two contracts with our ImmunoINSIGHTS platform which demonstrates the progress that our Commercial team are making from our new US office in Boston,” stated Dr Adam M Hill, CEO, Oncimmune.

“We are particularly excited by the signing of our first contract within the allogenic and CAR-NK market segment which we believe could open up a new opportunity for our services in the engineered cellular therapy space.”

“Unlocking the utility of the ImmunoINSIGHTS platform in these cutting-edge therapies promises to substantially improve clinical outcomes for cancer patients.”

The BHP Group announced an update to its merger with Australian gas company Woodside on Friday, which included an explanatory memorandum and notice of a meeting for the Woodside shareholder vote on 19 May 2022.

Woodside also released the independent expert’s Report, which had drawn the conclusion that the merger was in the best interests of Woodside shareholders, short of a superior proposal.

The BHP Group confirmed that the merger’s completion was on track for 1 June 2022, pending approval by Woodside shareholders.

The company added that BHP would receive 914.8 million newly issued Woodside shares upon the transaction’s completion, and decide a fully franked in specie dividend of Woodside shares to BHP shareholders.

BHP said that company shareholders would be entitled to one Woodside share for each 5.5 BHP shares held on the Record Date.

According to the energy firm, Woodside’s current share price of 25,550c and BHP’s implied value of $23.4 billion would bring an in specie dividend of $4.62, with $1.98 in franking credits set for distribution per BHP share and a total of $10 billion in franking credits.

Woodside is reportedly set to retain its primary listing on the ASX, and is aiming for a standard listing on the LSE, alongside a sponsored Level 3 ADR program on the NYSE once the merger has been closed.

The disclosure release also said that a share sale facility would be in place for eligible BHP shareholders who decide to participate and for shareholders who are also not eligible to receive Woodside shares.

Woodside’s explanatory memorandum for shareholders advocated for the beneficial outcomes of the pending merger with BHP, including an anticipated $400 million in pre-tax synergies per year upon completion of the deal.

“Woodside Shareholders are being asked to consider this transformative opportunity and approve the Merger and the associated issue of New Woodside Shares,” said Woodside chairman Richard Goyder.

“After carefully considering all aspects, benefits and risks of the Merger and the Independent Expert Report, the Woodside Board unanimously recommends that Woodside Shareholders vote in favour of the Merger Resolution at the Meeting.”

“This is a significant decision for Woodside’s long-term future. The case for the proposed Merger is compelling, bringing together the best of both organisations to create a global independent energy company with the scale, diversity and resilience to create value for shareholders and increased ability to navigate the energy transition.”

Woodside shares were down 1.5% to 32.4 AUD and BHP shares were up 1.7% to 51.9 AUD in early morning trading on Friday, following the announcement.

Ferrexpo reported the company’s production report for the first quarter of 2022 leading the iron ore miner’s shares to gain 8% to 181p in early morning trade on Friday.

Ferrexpo had a total iron ore pellet output of 2.7m tonnes in the first quarter of 2022, down 11% from Q4 2021 due to operational and logistical restrictions resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is ongoing.

The group’s output continues to be fully composed of high-grade iron ore, with a Fe content of 65% or more.

Ferrexpo scaled its production efforts to satisfy accessible pellet demand in Q1 2022, resulting in sales of 2.6m tonnes.

The group’s logistics routes to Europe through rail and barge remain open, however, operations at the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi remain halted.

As of 31 March 2022, Ferrexpo had a net cash position of roughly $159m, with consistently available financing lines having a minor influence on the debt position.

The group has managed to maintain an acceptable liquidity balance between offshore and onshore funds, ensuring that payments for the group’s staff, operations, and tax obligations are completely paid on schedule. 

Ferrexpo’s top focus continues to be the safety of its employees.

The miner will continue to produce and transport its goods in compliance with the Government of Ukraine’s call for economic operations to continue as long as the capability continues and it is safe to do so.

Jim North, Chief Executive Officer, Ferrexpo said, “The safety of our workforce remains our highest priority.”

“Our operations and local communities are outside the main conflict zones within Ukraine, enabling us to continue our activities, including the delivery of iron ore pellets to customers in Europe via rail and barge, which have historically represented approximately 50% of sales.”

“The port of Pivdennyi in southwest Ukraine, where the Group’s berth is located, remains closed, and we are reviewing alternative methods of delivering our products to seaborne markets.”

The oncology drug development consultancy, Physiomics signed on the Servier Group, an international pharmaceutical company headquartered in France, as a new client on Friday.

Servier’s key therapy areas include cancer, with a particular emphasis on immunotherapies and monoclonal antibodies for difficult-to-treat diseases with significant unmet medical needs.

Physiomics will use its Virtual Tumour software platform to study and simulate the effect of a range of immuno-oncology combinations in development utilising Servier medicines in pre-clinical and clinical settings.

The project will be completed in the next 7-8 months, according to the forecast.

“We are delighted to have been selected by Servier, one of France’s leading pharmaceutical companies with a truly global outlook as its partner for this modelling and simulation project focused on pre-clinical and translational modelling of a novel immuno-oncology agent in development.  We look forward to working with its talented scientists,” said Physiomics CEO, Dr Jim Millen.

Physiomics’ shares fell 1% to 4.5p on the announcement of its contract with the Servier Group.

WANdisco announced a $213,000 contract win with a leading personal computer vendor on Thursday.

The software company commented that its LiveData Migrator solution would help its new customer to migrate a subset of data sourced from its existing Hadoop environment to cloud-native systems which can be run within the public cloud.

The group said that its current opportunity is to migrate 1.35 petabytes of data, with the figure set to grow over time with normal production usage, which means that there is reportedly potential for revenues to grow higher as more data is migrated.

According to WANdisco, the new customer selected its technology due to its capability to keep the data up-to-date without the requirement to manually refresh the new environment, which gave it the edge over its competition.

The group highlighted that its real-time updating gave it the advantage of less business disruption, alongside data consistency and security over the process.

“There is a clear business need for companies across sectors to move increasing amounts of data to cloud native systems,” said WANdisco CEO David Richards.

“Our LDM solution supports complete and continuous replication of data sets at any scale, ensuring these critical migrations can take place quickly with zero business disruption.”

“This capability makes WANdisco well placed to continue converting on a strong pipeline of cloud migration opportunities.”

The news follows the company’s $720,000 commit-to-consumer contract with a top-ten global retailer to use its LiveData migrator solution to create a focused work environment tailored for machine learning and other analytical tasks.

“We are delighted to announce another deal with one of our key retail customers, representing yet another proof point of the strong demand we are seeing from organisations across various sectors to migrate data to the cloud,” said Richards in a corporate statement released yesterday.

WANdisco shares fell 1.1% to 299.5p in late afternoon trading despite the positive update.

Greencoat Renewables announced the acquisition of 21MW Soliedra Wind Farm in Spain from Alfanar Global Development, bringing the company’s total installed capacity to 1,014MW on Thursday.

This deal marks the renewable infrastructure company’s second renewable energy acquisition in Spain.

The wind farm, which has been operating since May 2021, is located in Soria, Castilla y Leon, Spain, and consists of six GE-137 turbines. Long-term operations and maintenance will continue to be provided by GE.

The Soliedra Wind Farm is now contracted as a merchant asset, however, it has the option to contract the power produced through a corporate PPA in the future.

Greencoat Renewables’ European growth strategy is supported by this deal, which follows the company’s expansion into France, Finland, Germany, and Sweden.

Greencoat Renewables’ total borrowings will account for 40% of its Gross Asset Value following the transaction.

Paul O’Donnell, Partner at Greencoat Capital said, “We are delighted to secure such a high-quality asset from Alfanar and have sight of further value-accretive opportunities in Spain.”

“As the renewable generation market continues to develop, we expect to see greater opportunity in the unsubsidised renewables market and believe Greencoat Renewables is well positioned to benefit both across mainland Europe and in Ireland.”

Greencoat Renewables shares rose 1.5% to 117.75¢ on the acquisition of 21MW Soliedra Wind Farm in Spain.

Jamal Wadi, Managing Director, Alfanar Global Development stated, “We have been in Spain for many years now and are committed to its energy transition. This deal marks another milestone in our ambitious plans for the European markets.”