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Proactive news summary: 7digital, Alliance Pharma, Atlantic Coal, Collagen Solutions, CloudTag ...

Published: 11:43 21 Jan 2016 EST

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A recent round of investment is paying off for specialist staffing group Empresaria (LON:EMR), which said full-year profitability will come in ahead of City forecasts.

It overcame “adverse currency head winds” created principally by a weaker euro to post a 23% advance in adjusted pre-tax earnings, while fee income rose 10%.

Postal service software specialist Escher (LON:ESCH) rebounded as underlying earnings doubled in 2015.

Shares dived in December when it warned that a lack of licence sales had hurt revenues, but it met the lowered sales expectations of US$22mln while underlying earnings [EBITDA] rose to US$4mln (US$2.1mln).

Music firm 7digital (LON:7DIG), in an update ahead of its full year financial results, highlighted an improvement to higher margin licensing revenues.

As a result it expects financial results for 2015 to be in line with management expectations.

Gaming and slot machine software group Quixant (LON:QXT) reported a bright start to 2016 aided by recent acquisition Densitron.

Quixant paid £7.7mln for the electronic display group in November to broaden its customer base away from casino and slot machines. Nick Jarmany, Quixant’s chief executive, said Densitron had done well in the two months under its ownership and overall group earnings in 2015 would be ‘comfortably in line’ with market forecasts.

Health monitoring wearable gizmo developer CloudTag (LON:CTAG) has raised £250,000 through a share subscription at 2.125p per share.

Talking of healthcare, drug developer Summit Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SMMT, LON:SUMM) has received regulatory clearance to initiate a Phase 2 proof of concept clinical trial of its SMT C1100 candidate for the treatment of muscle-wasting disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Pharmaceutical products group Alliance Pharma (LON:APH) said profits this year are on track, with annual sales 10% higher.

Collagen Solutions’ (LON:COS) chairman David Evans has delivered on his commitment to up his stake in the med-tech group and bought 1mln shares at 7.5p.

Evans’ total shareholding rises to around 13.89mln shares or 8.1% of the amount in issue.

The order book is filling up at Fox Marble (LON:FOX), with the company seeing increased interest in its products since the Veronafiere exhibition in September.

Confirmed orders to date for 2016 currently total €3.5mln, for which, as previously announced, an advance payment has been received from Banyan Stone.

Elsewhere in the resources sector, San Leon Energy (LON:SLE, which flagged in August that it had received a bid approach, confirmed this morning that no offer has been made and the potentially interested party had terminated all discussions with San Leon regarding the matter.

Atlantic Coal (LON:ATC) is due to de-list from AIM today, January 21, and it will subsequently change its name to Atlantic Carbon Group.

It told investors today that it has implemented new quality management systems at its Stockton anthracite coal mine, in Pennsylvania.

Xtract Resources (LON:XTR) is still waiting for final approval to re-start processing at its Chepica mines in Chile.

Two staff died in an accident at the plant in December, which led to its closure while remedial work was undertaken. 

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