Collaborations software specialist WANdisco PLC (LON:WAND) has announced a partnership with Databricks, a specialist in analysing “Big Data”.
Shares in WANdisco rose 8.8% to 544p after the company said it would work with the US company to accelerate and dramatically simplify the migration of on-premises Hadoop analytics workloads to Azure Databricks; Hadoop is a software framework used for storing data and running applications on clusters of hardware units.
WANdisco's LiveMigrator enables petabytes of unstructured data to be migrated to the cloud with no downtime and a single scan of the data, compared to the inefficiency of multiple recursive scans. The joint solution will use LiveMigrator to provide reliable and continuous data migration from Hadoop to Azure Databricks' Delta Lake – a storage layer that ensures reliability for machine learning and data analytics.
2.00pm: Love me tender ... XLMedia offers to buy back shares at 80p a pop
Digital performance marketing outfit XLMedia PLC (LON:XLM) gave a boost to its share price by offering to buy back up to 19.7mln shares.
The company is proposing to tender for shares at 80p a throw; shares in XLMedia rose 6.2% to 77.25p on the announcement.
"The board is of the opinion that the full potential of the company is not reflected in the current share price and this tender offer accelerates our current share buyback programme, further capitalising on our current share price,” said Chris Bell, the chairman of XLMedia.
12.20pm: LiDCO gets the pulses racing
An announcement from LiDCO Group PLC (LON:LID), the blood flow monitoring company, got the pulses racing on Tuesday.
The company said its latest cardiac output monitor with non-invasive technology has received regulatory approval for commercial sale in China.
The shares were up 18% at 5.27p on the news.
11.30am: Hastings counts the cost of Ogden rate change
Shares in Hastings Group Hldg PLC (LON:HSTG) slid 4.7% to 195.3p as it responded to yesterday's announcement from the Lord Chancellor on personal injury awards.
The Lord Chancellor signalled a change to the discount rate applicable for personal injury damage awards – the so-called Ogden rate - from -0.75% to -0.25%.
The car insurance group said it expects the change to result in a one-off pre-tax charge of £8.4mln in the current fiscal year.
10.40am: CloudCall falls to earth
Shares in CloudCall Group (LON:CALL) fell to earth after the cloud-based software provider's trading update.
Profit-taking pushed the shares down 11% to 105.6p, effectively wiping out the gains over the last month, despite a solid first-half performance.
The second quarter saw monthly average net user growth accelerate to 1,027 from 837 in the first quarter.
9.45am: Albert Technologies plunges as it signals delisting plans
Marketing intelligence specialist Albert Technologies Limited (LON:ALB) is to delist from AIM to seek cash to continue its development.
Albert is looking for a strategic investor and "these types of investors are unlikely to be forthcoming while the company remains admitted to trading on AIM," said Or Shani, Albert’s chief executive.
Shareholders stampeded for the exits sending the shares plummeting 70% to 2.05p.
9.00am: Appointment of tech entrepreneur is sweet music to the ears of 7digital's shareholders
The president of eMusic.com, Tamir Koch, has been appointed as the non-executive chair of 7digital Group PLC (LON:7DIG), the struggling corporate radio services provider.
Shares in 7digital had plunged from 4.63p a year ago to 0.13p last night after the company lost a major customer in January of this year, but they recovered by 54% to 0.20p today on Koch's appointment.
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The company also added David Lazarus, an industrialist and international entrepreneur, to the board as a non-executive director. Mark Foster, who was acting as interim chairman, remains on the board as a non-executive director.
Surface Transforms PLC's (LON:SCE) share price was transformed by a contract award from a German original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
The carbon fibre-reinforced ceramic products specialist saw its share price soar 26% to 24.52p after it revealed it had been selected as a tier one supplier of a carbon ceramic brake disc to a major German automotive company.
Annual revenue from the contract is estimated to be in the region of €2.0mln per year before tapering off during 2026.
Proactive news headlines
Discount dining platform operator BigDish PLC (LON:DISH) has signed an exclusive partnership with Oceanic Media, which runs restaurant awards across the UK.
Clinigen Group PLC (LON:CLIN) expects profits to have soared by more than a third when it reports its full-year results in September, driven by better-than-expected performances from two of its new drugs.
Bushveld Minerals LTD (LON:BMN) has corrected the resource numbers for its Brits vanadium project in South Africa. The attributable resource numbers have been readjusted to take account of Bushveld’s 62.5% ownership in Brits.
European Metals Holdings Ltd (LON:EMH) has secured a €2mln convertible loan from CEZ Group, one of Central and Eastern Europe's largest power utilities.
INTOSOL Holdings PLC (LON:INTO) has completed the first tranche payment of €367,348 for its flagship Oceans Wilderness boutique hotel in South Africa.
Marketing intelligence specialist Albert Technologies Limited (LON:ALB) is to delist from AIM to seek cash to continue its development.
ClearStar Inc (LON:CLSU), the background and medical screening specialist, has promoted internally to a key director role with Todd Shoulberg becoming president of the medical information services (MIS) business with immediate effect.
ReNeuron Group PLC (LON:RENE) has secured international patents covering its exomes discovery. New protections for the cell technology cover China, Korea, Japan and Europe and include claims over the method of creating and producing exomes from certain types of stem cell.