CEPS PLC is a small UK holding company that owns a trophy-and-promotional-products maker, Aford Awards, and a second business, Friedman's. In March 2026 it sold ICA Group, a building-compliance business that made up about two thirds of its sales, for £14m. That sale repaid all debt and left about £9.7m of cash, but the group that remains is far smaller and has just started buying again.
A holding company with small, hands-on subsidiaries
CEPS owns operating businesses rather than running one itself. Executive Chairman David Horner steers the group. Today the main ones are Aford Awards and Friedman's. Aford Awards, based in Maidstone, sells trophies, medals and promotional merchandise, and bought the business and assets of Impact Promotional Merchandise in an earlier deal. Its market is shrinking. The company said anecdotally that trophies and medals may have contracted by as much as 20% in 2025.
Friedman's sits with Milano International under a holding company called Signature Fabrics. Milano made gymnastic leotards in the UK and had been a Friedman's customer before CEPS bought it in October 2019. Until March 2026 the group also owned ICA Group (Inspection, Compliance and Audit, previously the Hickton Group). It did building-control and compliance work and was by far the largest part of the business, with sales of £23m in 2025. 3 May 2024 12 Sep 2025 12 May 2026 17 Sep 2026
ICA: from £872,000 to £14m
CEPS first invested in ICA in January 2016 with £872,000. By 2025 it was the group's engine. Sales rose from £19.4m in 2023 to £23.0m in 2025, helped by the April 2025 purchase of Align Building Control and Align Group (UK), a deal that filled a geographic gap and was funded by a £2.5m Santander loan.
The chairman says CEPS tried to buy another business in early 2025 and the offer failed. That showed the funding ICA needed was beyond CEPS's means. A sale process began in June 2025. In February 2026 CEPS agreed to sell for an enterprise value of £30.45m, with £14m upfront for its stake. Completion came in March 2026. The company puts the return at a 39.8% annual rate and 18.8 times the money invested. Days later it repaid £5.0m of external debt. 1 Apr 2025 11 Dec 2025 11 Feb 2026 6 Mar 2026 10 Mar 2026 12 May 2026
Milano: a UK factory that stopped paying its way
Milano's relaunch was planned for April 2020 and ran into the Covid lockdowns. It was heading back to profit in 2024, and in May 2024 the company said it expected profits to rise further. Then employer National Insurance rose, the minimum wage climbed and cheaper Chinese products took market share. In 2025 Signature Fabrics wrote off £1.42m of goodwill and posted an EBITDA loss of £1.02m. EBITDA is profit before interest, tax and depreciation.
In July 2026 Milano went into creditors' voluntary liquidation. The company expects write-offs of about £600,000 and a loan-note provision increase of about £400,000. It also records a £264,000 goodwill impairment. In 2025 Milano had sales of £1.85m and a pre-tax loss of £157,000. 3 May 2024 12 Sep 2025 12 May 2026 6 Jul 2026 17 Jul 2026 17 Sep 2026
“The Board concluded that UK manufacture was no longer viable and a liquidator was appointed in July 2026.” 17 Sep 2026
A reshuffle and a cleaner balance sheet
Earlier changes set the stage. In late 2023 Chelverton Growth Trust distributed its 26% CEPS stake to its own shareholders. The shares fell from 41p in October 2023 to 17.5p in April 2024. The company has not given a reason for the fall. In May 2024 a court-approved capital reduction cleared an old accounting deficit so that dividends or buy-backs could eventually be paid. In October 2024 a new holding company bought CEPS's 55% stake in Signature Fabrics for £4.0m. CEPS took £2.13m of vendor loan notes and a smaller shareholding. 28 Nov 2023 1 Mar 2024 1 May 2024 30 Oct 2024 6 Jul 2026
One winner carried a group with weaker parts
The record has two causes. ICA grew and was sold at a high multiple. The rest of the group did not grow: Aford Awards' EBITDA slipped to £442,000 in 2025 from £556,000, and Signature Fabrics deteriorated. Group underlying operating profit was roughly flat at £2.4m in 2024 and 2025, and ICA supplied most of it.
The second cause is cost. The directors estimated in May 2025 that National Insurance and wage changes would add about £385,000 a year to group costs. The chairman blames them, and cheap imports, for ending UK manufacture at Milano. 29 May 2025 12 May 2026 17 Sep 2026
Promises kept, promises pending
David Horner chairs and, with his concert party, held about 33.7% of the shares in March 2024 (24.2% personally). His son Harry became alternate director in May 2025. Kevin Allen joined as non-executive director and audit chairman in July 2024, and Saffery LLP replaced Cooper Parry as auditor after a tender.
Debt promises were met, but through the ICA sale rather than through subsidiary repayments as first planned. The £2m third-party loan was extended in May 2025 at 9% instead of 7%, then repaid in March 2026. Milano's promised profit growth failed. Buy-backs were expected to be technically possible by the 2024 results, but none had started by September 2026. An employee share trust was due to be running by the fourth quarter of 2025, and the company has not said whether it is. No dividend has been paid in what the chairman calls a very long time. 18 Mar 2024 2 May 2025 26 Jul 2024 2 Aug 2024 3 May 2024 29 May 2025 9 May 2025 10 Mar 2026 17 Sep 2026
A cash-rich group, half its former size
Results for the six months to June 2026 show the gain: a £10.9m profit after tax, mostly the £11.1m profit on selling ICA. Revenue was £9.0m, against £16.8m a year earlier, because ICA counted for only two months. Cash was £9.7m, or 46.4p a share on 21m shares, and there is no external debt. Equity was £12.5m, or 59.6p a share. The latest close was 39p on 15 October 2026.
The two remaining businesses are small. In the half-year Aford Awards had sales of £2.2m and EBITDA of £433,000. Friedman's had sales of £2.1m and EBITDA of £282,000. Aford has begun repaying loan notes, including those owed to its former managing director, Jon Ford.
Spending has restarted since the half-year. On 28 September Aford Awards bought A J Sharp, a UK pewter maker, for £3.45m, of which £2.74m is cash. A J Sharp had sales of £3.2m in 2025. On 7 October the Aford Awards group agreed to buy Primary Teaching Services for up to £4.59m, with £3.0m in cash at completion. It had sales of £4.4m in the year to February 2026. The announcements do not say how the cash was funded. 17 Sep 2026 28 Sep 2026 7 Oct 2026
Buy-backs, bolt-ons and a promised plan
The company says it will set out its development objectives over the next few months. It prefers buy-backs to dividends for returning cash. It also says it is not yet in a position to start buying back shares. It is hunting for bolt-on acquisitions for Aford Awards, and it has not ruled out new debt to fund them. A further disposal is, it says, very unlikely for several years. It also said in May 2026 that it wants to give long-standing small holders a simple way to sell their shares.
The open questions are plain. How much of the £9.7m goes into acquisitions rather than back to shareholders, and when? Can Friedman's improve now that Milano is gone? Can the new additions lift a group whose existing subsidiaries are small? The company has given no figures for profit or return targets. 12 May 2026 17 Sep 2026 28 Sep 2026 7 Oct 2026
“Currently the Board's favoured option of returning cash to shareholders is to buy back shares and to cancel them for the benefit of all shareholders.” 17 Sep 2026
Written by AI from CEPS's own announcements since Oct 2023 · every paragraph links to its sources