Cloudcoco Group PLC chairman adds to his nest egg

Cloudcoco Group PLC (LON:CLCO) shares advanced 7.5% to 1.075p after the company chairman topped up his holding.

Fairly hot on the heels of the information technology and communications services provider’s interims on Tuesday, Simon Duckworth splurged £6,000 on 600,000 shares at a penny a pop.

The purchase takes the non-executive chairman’s stake in the company to 7.5mln shares, equivalent to around 1.51% of the company’s current voting rights.

12.30pm: Essentra wanted after second-quarter performance steadily improves

() jumped 10% to 323p on the back of a trading update that revealed a steady recovery from the shock impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The supplier of specialist plastic, fibre, foam and packaging products anticipates some continued disruption to its trading in the coming months despite seeing some recovery as the coronavirus pandemic lockdown eases.

The FTSE 250 company expects like-for-like revenue to be down 9% in the six months to June 30, 2020, with the second quarter dropping by 10%.

11.30am: CMC raises full-year guidance

() shares were bid up 19% to 334.5p after the online trading platform operator said it raised full-year guidance.

The company did not give a specific figure for net operating income for the first quarter (three months to the end of June) but did note that it was higher than the £102.3mln reported for the first six months of the previous fiscal year, with trading activity around double the level seen in the corresponding quarter of 2019.

Sticking with the theme of comparing this year’s first quarter with last year’s first half, CMC said client income retention was materially higher than the 82% reported in the first half of fiscal 2020 while stockbroking net trading revenue also continues to benefit from the market conditions.

10.30am: ‘s output slides in June

PLC () shares eased 3.9% to 25p after the oil and gas producer’s production report for June.

The average production in June was 3,248 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which was 4% lower than the previous month.

The decline was attributed to the gas plant working at lower capacity for seven days due to planned maintenance on Gazprom’s facilities.

9.30am: TrakM8 drags its delayed food retailer deal over the line

TrakM8 Holdings PLC (), up 26% at 21.5p, topped the early risers in London on Friday morning after winning a new contract.

The telematics and data insight provider had said back in April that a possible contract with a major food retailer in the UK had been delayed because of the mad rush to supply British shoppers with toilet roll, hand sanitisers, pasta and so on but the company has now got the contract over the line.

The contract is initially for two years and uses Trakm8’s algorithm to optimise home deliveries. There will be some initial customer-funded engineering integration activity in advance of the product going live later in the year.

() climbed 17% to 8.03p after it unveiled two significant developments – one commercial, the other technological.

The blockchain specialist has agreed on a deal with a newly-incorporated firm called Afrik-ID, set up by Botswana’s former US ambassador David Newman. Afrik-ID will pilot test over the next four months Catenae’s Onsite ID and Cov-ID technologies in the country “to ascertain their commercial viability”.

Catenae also revealed it has completed work on its Onsite ID product having slowed progress to develop, pilot and launch the Cov-ID coronavirus passport app.

Proactive news headlines:

() has unveiled two significant developments – one commercial, the other technological. The former first: the blockchain specialist has agreed on a deal with a newly-incorporated firm called Afrik-ID, set up by Botswana’s former US ambassador David Newman. Afrik-ID will pilot test over the next four months Catenae’s Onsite ID and Cov-ID technologies in the country “to ascertain their commercial viability”. In a…