Beyond the Footsie: Thursday close
A FALLEN giant weighed heavily on sentiment among the smaller companies today.
It said it will decide in three to six months whether to put the company up for sale or to continue as an independent entity. Its shares fell 1p to 8p.
At the close, the FTSE Small Cap index was 10.5 points weaker at 2,592.1.
Shares in Medi@Invest, which barely rates as a penny share these days, tumbled 0.21p, or 30%, to 0.51p on yesterday's news it is liquidating its Creations games operation and touting itself around as a reverse takeover candidate.
Financial Objects, down 20 1/2p at 60 1/2p was on the sick list after it warned that it would make a first-half loss. Not even the promise of a return of cash to shareholders was enough to sweeten the pill.
Another casualty was Kleeneze, down 31 1/2p at 123 1/2p, as its promise of profits of £8.5m for the financial year just gone proved something of a disappointment. Last year it posted a pretax profit of £10.8m.
Small cap winners included ID Data, up 1 1/2p at 6 1/2p, which had good news on second-half sales. The group said it has been making significant progress with additional orders, including the company's first order for multi-application smart cards with an initial order value of £2m.
CybIT rose 1/4p to 1 1/2p after announcing the 300th mandate for its fleet management and open platform telematics service from Strongserve, a Stoke-on-Trent-based transport and logistics company.
