EZY supplies 40 more PCS to Trinity

TOKYO, March 9 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei average rose as much as 1.5 percent to a fresh seven-month high on Friday after Greece, according to several senior officials, successfully closed its bond- swap offer to private creditors, key to securing an international bailout to avoid a messy default. A weaker yen also boosted Japanese exporters, with industrial robot maker Fanuc up 0.6 percent, Toyota Motor Corp adding 1.4 per-

cent and Honda Motor Co gaining 1.3 percent. The Nikkei was up 0.9 percent at 9,856.90, after trading as high as 9,913.54, while the broader Topix advanced 0.8 percent to 842.48.

“What we are seeing is that SQ (March's settlement of options and futures) is part of it but also the beta rally continues in Japan,” a trader at a foreign brokerage said.

“We are still finding people who are underweight. They missed the Japan rally, so in a sense they are playing a catch-up trade.” The slow Stochastics, a short-term momentum indicator, gave a bullish signal, indicating the Nikkei could trend higher, while another technical indicator, moving average convergence- divergence, also looked set to turn bullish.

Nikkei's trading volume in mid-morning was 89 percent of its full daily average for the past 90 days, because of the settlement of March options and futures.

The benchmark ikkei is up more than 16 percent

this year, buoyed by a run of strong U.S. eco- nomic data and accommodative monetary policies by global central banks that have sent investors back into risk assets.

PRICED FOR EPS GROWTH

The yen, on the other hand, has lost 6 percent against the greenback. Stock valuations on the Nikkei at Thursday's close imply a five-year earnings-per- share compound annual growth rate for the index as a whole of 0.9 percent, data from Thomson Reuters Starmine showed. That means the market is pricing the index as if EPS growth will be 0.9 percent every year over that five-year period, on a compound basis. It was minus 0.8 percent eight weeks ago.

Implied five-year EPS CAGR on S&P 500 is 3.7 percent. Investors will shift their focus to a slew of Chinese economic data, including inflation figures, and the U.S. February non-farm payrolls data later in the day.

Among other gainers was Toray Industries Ltd, up 2.3 percent, after the Nikkei business daily reported that the synthetic fibre maker planned to increase its carbon fiber production by 50 percent by 2015/16.

Sri Lankan Personal Computer ( PC) manufacturer EZY recently delivered 40 of its Optimax range of computers to Kandy's Trinity College, according to a statement by the company. It also added that this was the next phase of a project which began in 2010 when EZY, in conjunction with its reseller Browns, supplied 50 computers for Trinity's Primary school lab. Additionally noted, this new installation of 40 computers was for Trinity's upper school lab, and was delivered in coordination with EZY authorised reseller Tektron.

The statement also indicated that these two new computer labs were a result of a project " spearheaded by the Alumni of the 1987 class of Trinity College who were instrumental in designing the requirements and sponsoring this project." It also went on to add that EZY'S involvement was a result of the PC manufacturer offering up a winning bid, which also followed a series of presentations.

Further added, Tektron contributed the 40 EZY Optimax computers in addition to the " Microsoft Windows licence, the entire network infrastructure with server installation along with the deployment of classroom management software for teacher use."

Meanwhile, according to Fazley Azhar, Trinity's project chairman, who was quoted in EZY'S statement, “EZY’S aggressive involvement in computer product research" and the "fact that EZY has many computer systems installed in leading schools and academic institutions together with their nationwide service network" were some of the key reasons behind Trinity's selection of EZY'S proposal.

(JH)