News

Veterinary and farming supplies company Animalcare expects full year results to be in line with expectations.

The performance of the agricultural business improved considerably in the second half of the company's financial year after a difficult first half in which the farming community dealt with outbreaks of Bluetongue and Foot and Mouth disease.

ImmuPharma, the specialist drug discovery and development company, has raised about £1.1m principally from institutional investors based in Switzerland through a placing of 1.876m new shares at a price of 60p each.

The placing follows a fundraising announced on 2 July. The group said it has now raised a total of £2.7m for the continued development of its clinical and preclinical pipeline.

A new licensing agreement with Eli Lilly perked up shares in life sciences group Entelos on Thursday. Eli Lilly has exercised its right to a perpetual licence to Entelos's DrugMatrix database and supplementary customised report services from ToxFx. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The DrugMatrix database keeps track of gene expression profiles for benchmark drugs and compounds, and is populated with the results from thousands of tests and experiments.

Hospital management software supplier Craneware's results for the year ended 30 June 2008 will be in line with expectations.

"We are delighted with the strong growth achieved in the year, underlining our position as the leader in revenue cycle management software in the US. We have exceeded our goals as stated at the time of the company's IPO in September last year, and are confident in our ability to continue to execute upon our strategy in the year ahead, " Keith Neilson, chief executive commented.

Carbon trading specialist Ecosecurities is happy with the pace of registrations of its projects during the first half of 2008, but says the process for new projects remains complex and slow.

Most of the carbon credits anticipated to be issued in the second half of 2008 will be concentrated in the final quarter of the year and will be from projects undergoing their first verification. As such, precise projections of CER production from the portfolio for the full year are difficult to make, it said.

China-based mobile phone retailer EBT Mobile China said it has delivered an overall improved performance in the six months to 30 June.

Revenues in the first half was approximately RMB300m (Chinese yuan). The group said revenue and new store openings have been slower than originally expected due to a number of adverse factors outside its control.

"Despite those challenges, the company remains well positioned and expects to post a modest full year adjusted net profit in 2008," it said.

Billington Holdings, formally Amco, said overall trading remains in line with expectations and that it is confident in the outlook for the full year.

"Despite the present challenging conditions which have had significant effects upon all businesses operating within the UK construction industry, certain sectors, such as education, continue to offer growth," said the group.