LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - UBS reiterated its 'buy' recommendation on 'big data' software company WANdisco but slashed its target price by more than half to 330p, though this still offered a 69% upside on Thursday's closing price.
Sheffield-based WANdisco reported second-quarter bookings of $2.4m, down 29% year-on-year, including $1.0m of Big Data bookings awarded by eight different new customers, the most ever in a quarter, with all new customers having "intentions to scale up their subscriptions over time."

While management kept costs below the first quarter, bookings of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) fell 59% to $1.4m as the division suffered from changes in the sales team, which was disappointing but UBS hopes for an improvement in the second half.

The Swiss bank said while the early traction of WAND's new Fusion Big Data solution was encouraging, customers were
scaling-up more gradually than it had modelled.

"In part at least we attribute this to the changes in the go-to-market partnerships announced in March and Fusion's recent launch."

For ALM, UBS has trimmed its model to $18m of bookings in the full year and $36.7m for 2016, down from $69.4m previously, but also cut its cost forecast to $38.1m in 2015 from $43.9m, and $37.0m in 2016 from $51.8m.

A lower $2.3m cash position is now expected at year end and $9.5m debt position at the end of 2016, while it was noted that WAND has a $10m credit facility with HSBC.

The new price target, which was derived from a sum-of-the-parts valuation, of 330p was cut from 775p as a 15-year adoption curve for Big Data solutions was assumed rather than the former 10 years.

Analysts at Charles Stanley raised their rating for Smith & Nephew from 'hold' to 'accumulate' and lifted their price target to 1167p from 1143p.

Medical products suppler Smith & Nephew posted revenue up by 5% to $1,168m and trading profit up 6% to $512m.

Charles Stanley analyst Rae Ellingham kept full year guidance unchanged and said steady progress was being made.

Ellingham said in a note to clients it was particularly pleasing to see a good performance in the knee implant's franchise.

Smith & Nephew was growing in emerging markets and would benefit from restructuring in its advanced wound care division, Ellingham said.

Goldman Sachs iterated a 'buy' rating and said it had a "better spring in its step" in the second quarter but there was momentum to improve further.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs lowered their full year earnings per share by guidance for 1% but left later forecasts unchanged.

Shares in Smith & Nephew were up 1.11% to 1,180p at 1426 BST.

Investec upgraded its rating for property investment company Great Portland to 'buy' from 'hold' and upped its price target to 912p.

Analysts from Investec said in a note strong investment demand continued to place downward pressure on yields while an occupational market supply squeeze persisted.

Great Portland was underperforming the sector but outperformed the market, Investec said.

The property firm raised guidance in its latest trading update to a 'higher rate of rental growth compared to last year' from 'rental growth to be sustained at the level achieved in FY15.'

Investec forecast 7% net asset value upgrades to 841p in the 2016 financial year, 916p for financial year 2017 and 989p in 2018.

Analysts said the company's portfolio would benefit from high growth in the city and Southwark areas, and its West End properties would benefit from strong expected performance in retail. Retail made up 22% of Great Portland's total portfolio.

Shares in Great Portland were up by 0.66% to 833.50p at 1623 BST.

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