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⚡ Insider buying · 9 Oct

Oxford Metrics

OMG · Technology · £40m · −10% in a year

Oxford Metrics is an Oxford-based AIM company founded in 1984. It makes Vicon motion-capture systems and machine-vision inspection tools for factories. Revenue hit a record £44m in FY23, then buyers slowed, and the company bought into factory inspection to widen its base. In October 2026 it cut FY26 guidance and announced a CEO change, with the shares near 35p against 110p in spring 2024.
share price · 12 months
In 3 acts
  1. A record year, then buyers paused
  2. Buying into factory inspection, launching AI capture
  3. A reset under new leaders
Targets ✓10 ✗3 Read the briefing →
⚡ Insider buying · 9 Oct

IG Design Group

IGR · Personal Care, Drug and Grocery Stores · £84m · +56% in a year

IG Design Group makes wrapping paper, Christmas crackers, greetings cards and stationery for retailers such as Tesco, Costco and Aldi. In May 2025 it sold its loss-making US arm, which was 60% of revenue, for $1 upfront. What remains is a smaller UK, European and Australian business with £217.9m of revenue, £54.6m of net cash and a reinstated dividend.

  1. A three-year turnaround that worked at first
  2. The US market turns against it
  3. Selling the Americas for $1
Targets ✓9 ✗6 Read the briefing →
⚡ Activists · 7 Oct

Capita

CPI · Industrial Goods and Services · £255m · −33% in a year

Capita runs outsourced services for UK government and regulated industries: pension schemes, training, road charging and customer contact. Since 2024 it has cut about £250m of annual costs and sold businesses to repair its balance sheet, but revenue has kept shrinking in contact centres. Its biggest new contract, the Civil Service Pension Scheme, has gone badly and pushed its cash-flow target out to 2027.

  1. New chief executive, deep cuts and asset sales
  2. The savings land, but the old problems linger
  3. A pension contract goes wrong, and the contact centres go
Targets ✓5 ✗5 Read the briefing →
⚡ Disposals · 28 Sep

XP Factory

XPF · Travel and Leisure · £32m · +24% in a year

XP Factory runs two leisure brands in the UK: Escape Hunt, which sells escape-room games, and Boom Battle Bar, a bar-and-games chain. Boom was about 70% of revenue, and on 28 September 2026 the company agreed to sell it for up to £11m, leaving a business built around Escape Hunt. The sale followed a year in which Escape Hunt grew while Boom's sales fell, and group profit fell with them.

  1. From under £1m to £57m: buying Boom and doubling twice
  2. A £10m credit line and a £90m plan
  3. Wage costs and a weak bar market hit profit
  4. Boom sold to concentrate on Escape Hunt
Targets ✓8 ✗5 Read the briefing →

Smiths News

SNWS · Industrial Goods and Services · £184m · +24% in a year

Smiths News is the UK's largest news and magazine wholesaler, a company that gets newspapers to shops before dawn for 22,000 customers. Its core market shrinks a little every year, so for the past three years it has locked in publisher contracts, paid down debt, returned cash and tried to find new uses for its delivery network. In mid-2026 it won four long-term contracts that will extend that network nationally, and the build-out has only just begun.

  1. Locking in the publishers to 2029
  2. Refinancing frees cash for shareholders and investment
  3. Collectables carry profit while new lines stay small
  4. 2026: contracts that take the network national
Targets ✓7 ✗0 Read the briefing →

Foresight Group Holdings Limited

FSG · Financial Services · £498m · −9% in a year

Foresight, founded in 1984 and listed in the FTSE 250, manages about £13bn for institutions and retail savers. It invests in energy-transition infrastructure, real assets and UK and Irish small companies. Over three years its assets under management (AUM) barely moved, yet core profit rose from £50m to £69m. In 2026 it sold its public-markets arm, and its flagship infrastructure fund is still only about half raised.

  1. Profit grew while assets stood still
  2. The big infrastructure fund raises money slowly
  3. Buying specialists, selling the public-markets arm
Targets ✓7 ✗1 Read the briefing →

NAHL Group

NAH · Industrial Goods and Services · £18m · +8% in a year

NAHL is a UK consumer legal group. It markets injury claims to law firms through National Accident Helpline, runs its own law firm, National Accident Law, and owns Bush & Co, which supports people with catastrophic injuries. In 2024 a jump in online advertising costs cut enquiries and led to a £39.9m write-down. By 2026 profit had recovered and net debt had fallen to £1.1m, yet the shares had roughly halved from their early-2025 level.

  1. Betting on its own law firm
  2. Google costs hit, 2024 write-down
  3. Repair in 2025
Targets ✓7 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Hollywood Bowl Group

BOWL · Travel and Leisure · £412m · −2% in a year

Hollywood Bowl runs ten-pin bowling centres, 77 in the UK and 16 in Canada at the half-year, and is the largest branded operator in both countries. Revenue has risen every year to a record £261.6m in FY26, but visits per centre have fallen and profit has grown more slowly than sales. The shares ended the period near where they started in 2023.

  1. Buying Canada and setting a 130-centre goal
  2. Record sales, thinner profits, falling cash
  3. New finance and Canada leaders, faster Canada plan
Targets ✓12 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Central Asia Metals

CAML · Basic Resources · £261m · −1% in a year

Central Asia Metals runs a low-cost copper operation in Kazakhstan and a zinc-lead mine in North Macedonia, both listed on London's AIM. In March 2026 it cut Sasa's mine life to 2034 and booked a $118m write-down, yet record copper prices lifted first-half 2026 EBITDA (operating profit before depreciation) by 89% to $75.5m. It is now buying Cygnus Metals, owner of a Québec copper-gold project, to replace assets that are running down.

  1. Rebuilding Sasa while looking for growth
  2. A lost bid and a grade problem
  3. Sasa written down, dividend cut
  4. Metal prices turn, and a deal arrives
Targets ✓13 ✗4 Read the briefing →

Cerillion

CER · Technology · £204m · −55% in a year

Cerillion writes the billing and customer-management software that telecoms companies use to charge their customers, and it sells mostly to operators it already serves. It won its largest ever contract, worth about £42.5m from Oman's Omantel, in January 2026. But on 14 September 2026 it cut its full-year revenue guidance to £46m-£48m, below the £52.8m consensus, citing delayed customer orders, and the shares fell from about 1,700p in January to 706p in September.

  1. Two big new customers and record profits
  2. Lumpy timing and a CEO share sale
  3. Omantel: the biggest win, then a warning
Targets ✓6 ✗1 Read the briefing →

Tullow Oil

TLW · Energy · £141m · −7% in a year

Tullow is an oil producer that now depends almost entirely on two offshore fields in Ghana, Jubilee and TEN. After a run of Jubilee underperformance, it sold its Gabon and Kenya assets in 2025 and refinanced $1.3bn of 10.25% notes in April 2026. Output and oil prices recovered in 2026 and net debt is still $1.4bn. The shares touched 4.8p in November 2025, reached 20.5p in August 2026 and ended September at 10.3p, the month a Ghana tax ruling went against Tullow.

  1. Debt paid down, then Jubilee disappoints
  2. Selling Gabon and Kenya to cut debt
  3. Licences to 2040, a new debt deal and a new board
Targets ✓9 ✗5 Read the briefing →

Touchstar

TST · Technology · £5.4m · −10% in a year

Touchstar is a small AIM-listed company that supplies rugged mobile computers, software and managed services to fuel distributors, logistics firms and warehouses, and it also runs an access-control business. It was profitable and paying dividends until a delayed major order in 2024 set off a strategic review, a new CEO, a restructuring and a £1.2m write-off of development costs. It now has about £2m of net cash and roughly flat sales, but it is loss-making, and it says profit should return in 2027.

  1. 2023: a good year and the first dividend
  2. 2024: a delayed order and a strategic review
  3. 2025: new CEO, bigger spending, then a write-off
  4. 2026: simplifying products and sales
Targets ✓7 ✗7 Read the briefing →

Ashtead Technology Holdings

AT. · Energy · £428m · +48% in a year

Ashtead Technology rents and sells specialist underwater equipment, and the engineers to run it, to offshore oil, gas and wind projects. Acquisitions took revenue from £73m in 2022 to £203m in 2025, but organic growth slowed to 3% and a Middle East conflict and project delays led to a profit warning in August 2026. On 23 September 2026 the company said it had received an unsolicited indicative proposal from Ember Infrastructure at 615p a share.

  1. Buying growth: WeSubsea, Hiretech and ACE Winches
  2. The £63m Seatronics deal and a heavier balance sheet
  3. 2025: a slow ramp-up and the move to the Main Market
  4. 2026: Middle East conflict and a profit warning
Targets ✓3 ✗6 Read the briefing →

Craneware

CRW · Health Care · £356m · −54% in a year

Craneware sells cloud software that helps US hospitals recover missed revenue and control costs, and says about 40% of US hospitals are customers. After years of paying down debt and returning to 9% growth in FY25, revenue stalled at $206m in FY26 because a US drug-discount programme (known as 340B) stalled. A cyber incident in July 2026 then led the board to reset FY27 revenue expectations to about $185m.

  1. Debt down, growth back
  2. A rejected bid and a cash-return push
  3. The 340B stall and the profit warning
Targets ✓4 ✗3 Read the briefing →

Gooch & Housego

GHH · Technology · £335m · +111% in a year

Gooch & Housego (G&H) makes precision optics and laser components from Ilminster, Somerset, and by 2026 it had become mainly a defence supplier. Aerospace & Defence revenue rose about 52% in each of the last two reporting periods, while industrial and medical markets stalled. In July 2026 the company agreed a 1,230p-a-share cash takeover by US private-equity-backed Greenlight Bidco, completion due 16 October 2026.

  1. A reset after disappointing profits
  2. Destocking, a guidance cut and the sale of EM4
  3. Buying into defence
Targets ✓6 ✗3 Read the briefing →

Springfield Properties

SPR · Consumer Products and Services · £133m · +6% in a year

Springfield Properties is a Scottish housebuilder that sells private homes, builds affordable homes for housing associations and councils, and holds a land bank it says equals nine years of activity. A housing downturn pushed its net bank debt to £93m in November 2023. Land sales and cost cuts then took it to net cash of £1.2m by May 2026, a year ahead of its own target. Sales are lower than in 2023, and the company is now betting on housing for energy-grid workers in the North of Scotland.

  1. Downturn, debt and a land-sale rescue
  2. The Barratt sale and the turn north
  3. A lease deal with the grid builder
Targets ✓11 ✗1 Read the briefing →

Nexteq

NXQ · Technology · £22m · −52% in a year

Nexteq, listed on AIM, makes the computer platforms inside casino gaming machines (Quixant) and the display and control systems used in broadcast and industrial equipment (Densitron). Revenue was $114m in 2023, and in the first half of 2026 it was $26.7m, down 34% on a year earlier, with a loss as North American gaming customers cut orders. The company says it keeps all its customers except Everi, which was acquired, and it is betting on new software and display products to rebuild growth.

  1. Record cash, then customers stopped ordering
  2. New leadership and a three-year plan
  3. Everi's sale and the memory squeeze
  4. 2026: tariffs, dearer memory and a gaming slump
Targets ✓4 ✗5 Read the briefing →

Johnson Service Group

JSG · Industrial Goods and Services · £486m · −5% in a year

Johnson Service Group rents and launders linen for hotels and restaurants, and workwear for UK companies. Its profits were squeezed by energy and labour costs after the pandemic, and it is now rebuilding its margin while buying back shares. Revenue passed £500m in 2024, but the margin of 12.1% is still short of the board's target of at least 14.0% in 2026.

  1. Hotels reopen, costs jump
  2. Crawley, Empire and the 14% margin target
  3. Slower growth, more buybacks, a new listing
Targets ✓9 ✗0 Read the briefing →

NCC Group

NCC · Technology · £225m · +3% in a year

NCC Group is a UK cyber security consultancy that spent three years selling off everything except its core services business. Its software escrow arm, Escode, went to TDR Capital for £275m in May 2026, and the company is returning £185m of the proceeds to shareholders. What remains is a smaller business that is growing again but still earns thin profit margins.

  1. Fixing testing, margins and the portfolio
  2. Fox Crypto sale clears the debt, but clients hold back
  3. Escode sold, Cyber stays listed
Targets ✓8 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Team Internet Group plc

TIG · Technology · £92m · −40% in a year

Team Internet sells domain names and runs product-comparison sites and online ad-matching platforms. It reported record profit for 2023, then lost most of its Search earnings when Google changed its ad programme: adjusted EBITDA (core operating profit) fell from $92m in 2024 to $43m in 2025. It is now trying to sell its steadier domains division, DIS, for a price it says will be well above $160m, while net debt has risen to $118m and the shares trade near 38p, against 198p in July 2024.

  1. Record profits, buybacks and a rebrand
  2. Google changes the rules, and a bid goes nowhere
  3. Rebuilding Search, then a strategic review
Targets ✓3 ✗7 Read the briefing →

GB Group

GBG · Technology · £332m · −43% in a year

GBG sells identity-checking, fraud-prevention and address-data software to more than 20,000 customers, from fintechs and gaming firms to Uber. For two years it cut costs, paid down debt and bought back shares while revenue grew about 3% a year. In August 2026 it cut its FY27 growth guidance to 1-3% from mid-single digit because Americas Identity customers were leaving, and the shares ended October 2026 at 145p, from 379p in November 2024.

  1. Rate shock, write-downs and a cost reset
  2. Simpler company, GBG Go and a stalled Americas
  3. FY26: buybacks, Main Market and a bolt-on
Targets ✓14 ✗3 Read the briefing →

Titon Holdings

TON · Construction and Materials · £9.0m · −16% in a year

Titon Holdings makes ventilation systems and window and door hardware, mostly for UK housebuilding. When new-build activity slumped in 2023-24, sales fell by about a fifth, and a new chief executive began a turnaround. The 2025 financial year showed better margins and profit, but the first half of 2026 slipped back to a small loss at the EBITDA level, and the company expects only £0.3m of EBITDA for the full year.

  1. The housing slump and a new boss
  2. Leaving Korea, rebuilding margins
  3. A better year, then a stumble
  4. Buying G-Pack, then a profit guide-down
Targets ✓5 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Marshalls

MSLH · Construction and Materials · £427m · −10% in a year

Marshalls, founded in the late 1880s, makes paving, bricks, roof tiles, solar roofing and drainage products for UK construction. Its original paving business has been squeezed by weak housebuilding and home improvement, and adjusted pre-tax profit fell from £90m in 2022 to £44m in 2025. Cost cuts and a new management focus lifted first-half 2026 profit, but the company assumes no market recovery and the shares sit well below their 2024 level.

  1. Housing slump and a cost reset, 2023
  2. Transform & Grow, and a hoped-for recovery, 2024
  3. Landscaping stumbles, 2025
  4. A new chief executive, November 2025
Targets ✓8 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Shearwater Group

SWG · Technology · £16m · +12% in a year

Shearwater is an AIM-listed UK cybersecurity group. It mostly installs and supports other firms' security technology for telecoms, banks and government, and sells a small line of its own access-control software. After two years in which customers delayed spending and revenue fell to £22.6m, it won several large multi-year contracts, and revenue reached £39.5m over the 15 months to June 2025. The catch is that profit has not kept pace: the half to December 2025 had £14.0m of revenue but adjusted EBITDA of about zero.

  1. Two years of delayed budgets
  2. Big telco contracts and a longer year
  3. Growth that does not yet reach profit
Targets ✓9 ✗2 Read the briefing →

Ibstock

IBST · Construction and Materials · £316m · −44% in a year

Ibstock is the UK's largest brick maker by volume, and it also makes concrete flooring, walling and rail products. It spent about £325m over eight years on modern factories, then watched housing demand fall and a 2025 recovery fade. In the first half of 2026 revenue was £164m, it made a pre-tax loss of £27m after a £25m write-down, and net debt was £151m.

  1. Housing slump: factories shut, dividend cut
  2. 2025: capacity switched on, demand switched off
  3. Selling assets while the market stays weak
  4. 2026: a loss, a write-down and a lower dividend
Targets ✓5 ✗3 Read the briefing →

LendInvest

LINV · Financial Services · £40m · −26% in a year

LendInvest is a UK lender that makes buy-to-let, bridging and development loans to professional property investors, mostly with money from institutional partners rather than its own balance sheet. After a £27m loss in FY24, when it sold loans at a loss and cut a quarter of its payroll, it made a £3.2m profit in FY26 on record lending of £1.44bn. The profit is thin, the shares ended mid-2026 well below their 2025 peak, and management says higher swap rates since the Iran war will slow lending in the near term.

  1. The reset: selling loans, cutting staff, shrinking debt
  2. Becoming a fee-earning asset manager
  3. Record lending and a first full-year profit
Targets ✓5 ✗1 Read the briefing →

Strix Group

KETL · Industrial Goods and Services · £65m · −15% in a year

Strix is an Isle of Man company that makes the safety controls inside kettles and, increasingly, water filters. In January 2026 it sold its Australian water business Billi for £110m, repaid all its bank debt and moved to net cash of £38.7m. But its core Controls division lost nearly a quarter of its sales over the past year, and a new CEO started in July 2026.

  1. Billi bought with debt, then a rebase
  2. Tariffs hit Controls and debt crept back up
  3. Selling Billi to clear the debt
Targets ✓7 ✗6 Read the briefing →

Velocity Composites

VEL · Industrial Goods and Services · £8.9m · −31% in a year

Velocity Composites, based in Burnley, cuts and packs carbon-fibre materials into ready-to-use kits for aircraft makers such as Airbus, Boeing and GKN. Sales grew about 40% a year to £23m in FY24 on a new US contract, then fell back to £20.7m in FY25 as aircraft production rates stayed flat. Margins are much better, but first-half FY26 sales fell to £8.4m and the board cut its full-year profit guidance.

  1. A US factory built on a five-year contract
  2. Growth arrives, but below plan
  3. Flat build rates and a stuck US programme
  4. Closing Fareham, waiting for the ramp
Targets ✓3 ✗5 Read the briefing →

28 briefings so far, more every day · latest 9 Oct 2026. Written by AI from each company’s own announcements – every paragraph links to its source. Company filings, not investment advice.

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