Medtech summit in Dublin draws big and small players

Monday

Results: Halliburton, Hasbro, Hyundai, Office Depot, Villeroy & Boch, Volvo

Indicators: German business climate (Apr); UK business optimism (Q2), industrial trends orders (Apr)

Meetings: Insurance Ireland annual industry lunch (Clayton Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin)

Full-year losses rise at Irish start-up Beats Medical

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Start-ups to battle it out to find Ireland’s best business idea

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UK retail sales record largest decline in seven years

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Euro-area economic momentum accelerates to fastest pace in six years

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Tuesday

Results: Novartis, Whitbread, AT&T, CIT Group, Canon, Caterpillar, Chubb, Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse Group, Lockheed Martin, McDonald's, Neff, Xerox, Puma

Indicators: UK public sector borrowing (Mar); US house price index (Feb), consumer confidence (Apr), new home sales (Mar), fed manufacturing index (Apr)

Meetings: The Irish Economy – Recent Developments and Outlook briefing hosted by Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA, Iveagh Court, Harcourt Road, Dublin 2); Medtech Strategist Innovation Summit 2017 (Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin)

Medtech start-ups vie for funding

Ireland’s positioning in the global medtech sector is being pitched as a central component of an event that will see more than 40 start-ups vie for billions of euro in available investment funds on Tuesday.

The Medtech Strategist Innovation Summit 2017 will bring together some of the dominant multinationals and burgeoning pretenders with a view to laying the foundations for the world’s next great innovations – fresh ground considered a rare positive note of opportunity in the wider Brexit landscape.

"Eighteen of the world's top 25 medical technology companies have a base in Ireland," said Aidan Meagher, EY's head of life sciences.

“With a host of new start-ups emerging every year and a significant opportunity on the horizon for Ireland in the shape of Brexit, affording this entrepreneurial community the opportunity to get in front of some of the world’s leading medtech investors.”

Among those attending will be Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Baxter, and Venture Capitalists Fountain Healthcare Partners, Lightstone Ventures and Sofinnova Partners.

Irish companies pitching at the conference will include Mainstay Medical, which is developing an implant to treat people with chronic lower back pain; Ponce De Leon Pharmaceuticals, developing a product formulation aimed at postponing the onset of human frailty and the extension of human lifespan; and Galway-based Loci Orthopaedics, that has made an orthopaedic implant for the treatment of thumb base arthritis.

Wednesday

Results: Gan, Axis Capital Holdings, Banco Santander, Bayer, Boeing, Citrix Systems, Daimler, Deutsche Boerse, Lufthansa, Fiat Chrysler, GlaxoSmithKline, Groupon, PayPal, Twitter, T-Mobile, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Nintendo

Indicators: French consumer confidence (Apr); US mortgage applications (Apr);

Meetings: Glanbia AGM (Lyrath Estate Hotel, Old Dublin Road, Kilkenny);

Meetings: Tullow Oil annual meeting (London)

Twitter struggles to secure its financial foothold

Twitter unveils its latest results on Wednesday and if a little bird can tell you anything, it’s that things remain challenging at the social media leviathan.

Here you have a world leading technology brand and yet one that struggles to secure a financial foothold. Things are not expected to turn around this week with median earnings estimates falling from 15 cent per share in Q1 last year to just 1.1 cent this year (on a range of a 4 cent loss to a 10 cent gain, according to Bloomberg).

“I struggle to see it as a business,” one trader said ahead of the results. “The major issue is how to you monetise it and they have struggled to do that.”

When you give something away freely for too long it becomes hard to charge and plying it with advertising only alienates users.

In its last results in February the company reported sales totalling $717 million (€672 million) in the fourth quarter, up only about 1 per cent compared with the previous year. It lost about $167 million over that period, or 23 cents per share, from a loss of about $90 million in the quarter last year.

Twitter added just two million users in Q4 2016, taking its total number to 319 million. That compares to the advertising-eating monster Facebook now closing in on two billion worldwide accounts.

Thursday

Results:Donegal Investment Group (half year), Danske Bank, Airbus, Alphabet, Amazon, American Airlines, Boston Scientific, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Deutsche Bank, Expedia, Ford, Fujitsu, UPS, UBS, Starbucks, Sony, Sharp

Indicators: Euro-zone business confidence (Apr), consumer confidence (Apr), economic sentiment, industrial sentiment (Apr); German consumer confidence (May), inflation (Apr); UK housing prices (Apr); US continuing jobless claims (Apr)

Meetings: European Central Bank interest rate decision; Allied Irish Banks AGM (RDS Ballsbridge, Dublin 4); Kingspan Group AGM (Herbert Park Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4); CRH AGM (Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin)

Friday

Results: Electrolux, Exxon Mobil, Fuji, General Motors, Goodyear, Thomson Reuters

Indicators: Euro-zone loan growth (Mar), core inflation (Apr); UK consumer confidence (Apr), preliminary GDP growth (prelim Q1), mortgage approvals (Mar); German retail sales (Mar); US GDP growth (Adv Q1)

Meetings: Mincon AGM (Park Inn Radisson, Shannon); Bank of Ireland AGC (Aviva Stadium, Lansdowne Road, Dublin)