A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Iona reports loss of $1.4m
Iona Technologies has reported fourth-quarter revenues of $18.1 million (€12.2 million) for a pretax loss of $1.4 million.
Full-year revenues for 2007 were $77.7 million, flat on 2006, which resulted in a loss of $1.7 million. The loss includes costs of $4.7 million related to share-based compensation for staff, and a one-off charge related to disposal of facilities of $1.2 million.
Chief executive Peter Zotto admitted the company had disappointed investors with its fourth-quarter performance. The company would now focus on transactions of a smaller scale. Iona's average sale price is $73,000.
Iona has also decided to no longer give quarterly guidance to the market, but instead will provide it on an annual basis. Christopher Mirabile, Iona's chief financial officer, said 2008 revenues were expected to be in the range of $80-$85 million, while expenses would be between $79-$81 million.
Spanish mining site ranks highly
Ormonde Mining yesterday said an early estimate from its Barruecopardo project near Salamanca in western Spain potentially ranks it among one of the world's top producers of the hard metal tungsten.
The Dublin and London-listed company said it expected deeper drilling would yield up to four million tonnes of the metal used in the manufacture of cutting steels, electronics and chemical products. Analysts at Davy stockbrokers said the estimate exceeded their own forecast of 1.7 million tonnes.
€500m for R&D grant scheme
The Government has confirmed it is to provide €500 million in support for research and development by private companies between now and 2013. The new R&D grant scheme has been streamlined and will be administered jointly by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Grants will no longer be repayable and funding will be made available for services companies for the first time.
Croughan gets key lobby post
Ibec's head of economics and taxation David Croughan has been appointed chairman of the Economic and Financial Affairs Committee of BusinessEurope in Brussels. BusinessEurope is the principal business lobby in Europe.
The Economic and Financial Affairs Committee has responsibility for developing and articulating the view of European business on key issues including the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, green taxation and competitiveness.
Credit unions must go alone
Credit unions must individually take cases to recover any losses over Davy investment products that may have been wrongly sold to them, according to the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) and the Financial Services Ombudsman.
To date, only Enfield Credit Union has pursued its case over the sale of the open-ended perpetual bonds, but it is felt that its winning of the case may prompt others to follow suit.
Earlier this week the ombudsman Joe Meade upheld a complaint by Enfield Credit Union about advice it received from Davy to invest in open-ended perpetual bonds. Davy is appealing the ruling in the High Court.
Analysts back Kingspan stock
French bank Exane BNP Paribas has kicked off coverage of Irish insulation and building materials specialist Kingspan, by recommending that investors buy the stock.
Analysts Benoit Huet and Nicolas Godet say that the Cavan-based company sets the benchmark in European terms for sales of insulation products.
They also state that its price earnings ratio was halved between May and December and that it is now on an attractive rating.
