Last week I had a long conversation with my 8 year old niece about ‘crying wolf’. Moral of the story, of course, is that eventually nobody will believe you when you really are on the edge of Armageddon. This month, for the nth time in the last two years we had “one week to save the Euro”. Markets crashed (again) then rebounded on the last day of the month as Merkel ‘gave in’ at yet another Euro Summit. If that hadn’t happened, I would be writing a rather different review of the share indices for June.
As it turned out, the month was pretty good. The FTSE100 was up nearly 5% and is now back to where it started the year. NASDAQ was up 3.8% and is now up 12.7% YTD. The FTSE SCS Index – which most closely tracks the SITS stocks that we follow here in the UK – actually managed a 2.2% rise and is now up nearly 14% YTD.
Triad recorded the largest gain – up 52% (See Triad breaks even for year) – as signs of hope return as it, hopefully, puts three years of losses behind it. It was the 8% rise in Sage’s share price – the largest constituent of the FTSE SCS Index - that moved the dial the most. The acquisition of Folhomatic in Brazil was ‘classic’ Sage. Sage became great by following a simple recipe of buying the leading supplier(s) of accounting systems to SMEs in a particular territory and applying the Sage tried-and-tested subscription and support model. Problem is they went against the recipe too many times in recent years and paid the price. But here was a return to the good old days. Investors (and we) loved it! Other FTSE SCS Index constituents MicroFocus and Kewill also contributed. Microfocus was up 19%. (See Software focus starting to pay off). Although revenues were flat in latest results, profits were up 30%. Kewill was up 8% as a result of that, now winning, counter-bid by Fransisco Partners – See Music stops for Symphony..
At the other end of the scale, poor old Mouchel was down another 45% as it really does struggle for its very survival. See Investors dump stock. Promethean World, however, was the biggest faller – down 48%. Promethean goes from bad to worse hardly does justice to the awful performance of one of the last IPOs of the LSE. LSE IPOs have effectively dried up with most UK companies now looking to NASDAQ instead. Not a good sign for the future
On the global scene, Oracle recorded one of the best share performances this month– up 12%. See Oracle delivers in Fiscal 2012. This seems to have been more for relief that they had met Street expectations as revenues were flat. HP was down 11% as CEO Meg Whitman painted a pretty gloomy picture for their future.
Nokia lost 22% with RIM fell over 30%. See How the mighty have fallen. The difference in performance with Apple and Samsung is now pretty stunning.
Still, now the Euro is saved, we can all rest easy in our beds ...and Nokia and Blackberry will once again lead the smartphone market and pigs will fly.