What it does, what went right or wrong and where it stands now – written from the company’s own announcements. Grab a coffee and dive in. ☕
Pathos Communications sells press coverage to small businesses and charges only when an article is secured. It listed on London's AIM market in December 2025 at 30p a share. Trading has since been ahead of or in line with expectations, but the shares fell to 22p at the latest close (13 October 2026).
YouGov is a UK research and data group that runs a panel of 31 million registered members in 64 markets and sells what they say and do to companies, media and governments. In January 2024 it paid €315m for a European household-purchase panel business, just as growth in its core business slowed. Since then it has cut costs, changed leaders and moved from net cash to net debt. Revenue reached about £397m in the year to July 2026, but adjusted operating profit of £54m was below the £61m of a year earlier. The latest close was 306.4p on 13 October 2026, against 1,180p at the end of December 2023.
Sanderson Design Group designs luxury wallpapers, fabrics and paints under brands such as Morris & Co., Sanderson and Zoffany. It prints much of them in its own UK factories. After a UK downturn cut adjusted profit from £12m to £4m in two years, it has rebuilt to £3.3m in the first half of FY27 alone. Now an activist shareholder is asking to remove its chair.
LendInvest is a UK platform that lends to property investors and developers, mostly with money from banks and institutions rather than its own balance sheet. After a £20m loss in the year to March 2024 and a deep cost cut, it made a £3.2m pre-tax profit in the year to March 2026 on record lending of £1.44bn. Management now warns that higher interest-rate swap costs, a result of the war in Iran, will slow lending in the next quarter.
Tialis Essential IT runs IT support for other companies' staff, mostly through system integrators that resell its services to large end-customers. Revenue has fallen from £22.4m in 2023 to £17.7m in 2025. Over the same period the company added stakes in other businesses, including a 50% joint venture with Liberty Global. The latest close was 36.0p on 9 October 2026, against 80p at the end of 2025.
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.
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.
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.
Next 15 is an AIM-listed group of marketing, data and technology agencies, with clients such as Google, Amazon and the Department for Education. After the loss of its biggest contract and a misconduct scandal at its Mach49 unit, it cut its portfolio from 22 businesses to 10, and by August 2026 it was growing again for the first time in three years. A Mach49 arbitration over a possible earn-out liability of tens of millions of pounds is still unresolved.
On the Beach is an online seller of package holidays that owns no planes or hotels, and it has spent three years building a bigger, more automated business. It reached record bookings and £1.2bn of holiday sales (TTV) in FY24 and FY25, then lost much of its 2026 spring and summer-booking momentum when the Middle East conflict began on 1 March. It now guides to profit well below its stated long-term ambition, with a recovery projected for FY27.
SThree is a London-listed recruiter that places engineers, scientists and technologists in 11 countries, mostly on flexible contracts. Its net fees (the fees it keeps) fell from £419m in FY23 to £323m in FY25, and annual profit before tax fell from £78m to £25.5m. In September 2026 it rejected a takeover approach from Circle8 Group; the board said the all-cash offer significantly undervalued the company.
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.
Celebrus Technologies sells software that captures what visitors do on banks', insurers' and retailers' websites and apps, so the firms can market better and catch fraud. Through 2024 it grew recurring revenue and made about $9m of adjusted profit. In the year to March 2026 reported revenue fell 39% and profit almost vanished, partly through a deliberate accounting change and partly through weak new sales. By October 2026 the company reported a smaller order book, a bigger expected loss and falling cash.
Pantheon Resources is an AIM-listed company that owns 100% of the Kodiak and Ahpun oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. Independent experts certify about 1.6 billion barrels of resources there, but the company has no production. Two wells in 2025 failed to deliver commercial flow, the shares fell from 64.7p in March 2025 to 8.6p in December, and Pantheon now needs a partner to fund development while its cash lasts to about year-end.
Crest Nicholson is a UK housebuilder that in 2025 set out to move up-market, lift margins and cut debt. By autumn 2026 it was making losses, net debt had reached £142m at April, and it was running on waivers of a bank covenant (a lender-set financial test). The shares fell from about 150p in February 2026 to about 59p in October.
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.
TruFin is an AIM-listed holding company that spent years building a video-game publisher, a public-sector early-payment business and an invoice-finance software firm. In June 2026 it sold the game publisher, Playstack, for an enterprise value of £125m and returned £80m of the proceeds to shareholders. What remains is a much smaller group: two businesses with about £6m of half-year revenue, a loss before tax and at least £24.9m of cash.
XP Factory ran two businesses: Escape Hunt, which sells escape-room experiences, and Boom Battle Bar, a chain of competitive-socialising venues. Boom brought about 70% of the company's £59.6m revenue in the year to March 2026, but it also brought falling sales and weaker profits. On 28 September 2026 the company agreed to sell Boom for up to £11m and become an Escape Hunt-only business.
Vistry builds homes across the UK, mostly for housing associations, councils and rental investors rather than for individual buyers. In 2023 it set targets of 40% return on capital and £800m of operating profit. By September 2026 it was reporting a half-year loss, an exit from the South East of England and a plan to shrink to about 12,000 homes a year. The latest close was 221p on 13 October 2026, against 1,384p at the end of July 2024.
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.
MAB is a UK network of about 2,200 mortgage advisers, working in partner firms, that arranged £16.5bn of mortgages in the first half of 2026. Its revenue grew each year through the post-2022 housing downturn, and it moved to the London Stock Exchange's Main Market in May 2026. On 9 September it cut 2026 profit guidance to about £38m from a market consensus of £43.4m, and the latest close, on 9 October, was 334p against 780p at the end of January.
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.
The Beauty Tech Group sells LED masks, hair-removal lasers and other beauty devices that people use at home, mostly online and under its own brands. It listed in London in October 2025 after starting as a niche online marketplace in 2009. Since then it has raised guidance repeatedly, but about 89% of revenue comes from one brand, and the fourth quarter decides each 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.
DP Poland runs Domino's Pizza stores in Poland and Croatia, mostly delivery, and is moving from owning its stores to selling them to franchise partners. Sales are growing by double digits and the company turned a small half-year profit in 2026. But the number of orders in existing stores fell in the third quarter, the Pizzeria 105 conversion programme is behind plan, and the shares have lost roughly 40% since the end of 2024.
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.
Sylvania Platinum re-treats chrome tailings (waste rock left by South African chrome mines) to recover platinum group metals, and it is now adding a chrome-selling business. In the year to June 2026 it produced a record 95,885 ounces and earned $66m, up from $7m two years earlier. The driver was a higher metal price, while its new Thaba chrome joint venture is ramping up more slowly than planned.
Braemar is a London-listed shipbroker. It advises shipowners, charterers and energy companies on hiring ships, buying and selling them, and hedging freight and energy prices. Revenue peaked at £153m in FY23 and has slid to £136m in FY26 as tanker and dry cargo rates weakened, and the dividend has nearly halved. Founder-era CEO James Gundy handed over to Grant Foley on 2 July 2026, with a target of £200m revenue by FY30 still in place.
Frontier Developments, based in Cambridge, makes management simulation games in which players build and run theme parks, zoos and dinosaur parks. In 2023 its attempt to branch into other genres and third-party publishing failed, revenue guidance was cut, and the shares fell by about half. After refocusing on the simulation genre, it reported record adjusted operating profit of £21.4m on £104.8m of revenue for the year to May 2026. The latest close was 643p on 13 October 2026.
Georgina Energy is a pre-revenue explorer that wants to produce helium, hydrogen and natural gas from old wells in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It reached London's main market in July 2024 by taking over a shell company. It now has drilling approval, a rig contract and a US$25m funding facility for its first well at Hussar. But the Hussar drilling promised for December 2024 had still not started by October 2026, and the company has funded itself through repeated small share placings.
Acuity RM Group sells STREAM, software that helps UK government bodies, defence contractors and utilities track and manage cyber risk. Under a new chief executive it cut administrative costs by more than a third and brought the first half of 2026 close to break-even. But revenue fell 23% in that half, cash was £144,000 at 30 June 2026, and the shares have lost most of their value since late 2023.
PureTech Health is a London-listed biotech that invents drugs, then moves them into separately financed companies. Its model produced Cobenfy, a schizophrenia drug whose early backing of $18.5m returned about $1.1bn in cash. Since then the company has funded its next drug, deupirfenidone, largely alone, and cash has fallen from $367m to $220m. It is now shrinking its own cost base and seeking outside money earlier, and the shares at about 111p are half their March 2024 level of 222p.
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.
TT Electronics designs and makes sensors, power electronics and contract-built circuit boards for aircraft, defence, healthcare and industrial customers. In 2024 and 2025 it issued a profit warning, wrote down its North American business, lost its chief executive and fought off takeover bids. In September 2026 it reported a 37% rise in half-year adjusted operating profit and raised its full-year outlook.
Foresight is a FTSE 250 investment manager, founded in 1984, that runs infrastructure, private equity and retail funds for institutions and private investors. Over three years its core profit rose from £50m to £69m, but assets under management stayed near £12-14bn, well short of the 20-25% yearly growth it once targeted. In 2026 it sold its public markets arm and kept one promise at the centre: to double core profit by FY29.
Newmark Security is an AIM-listed UK group that sells time clocks and the cloud services behind them, mainly in North America, plus door and screen security in the UK. Over 2025-26 the time-clock business (human capital management, or HCM) became the growth engine, while the UK physical-security arm, Safetell, kept losing money. Newmark sold Safetell for £1 to its managing director, and the sale completed on 1 October 2026.
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.
Fletcher King is a small London-listed property adviser. It advises on property sales and purchases, manages buildings, values property for banks and handles business-rates appeals. After a profitable 2024 its fees dried up: profit for the year to April 2026 was £2,000. It has paid a 20p special dividend, is selling its operating business to its own managers, and will be run by a new board that wants to buy technology-led property services.
EnSilica designs custom chips for satellite, automotive, industrial and photonics customers. It makes no chips itself, and its sites are near Oxford, in the UK, India, Brazil and Hungary. In the year to May 2026 it moved from break-even to a £5.9m EBITDA profit on £27.8m of revenue, after a year in which revenue fell by a quarter and guidance was cut sharply. Most of its value still sits in chip programmes that have not yet reached volume production.
Molecule Group plc, until this month Vulcan Two Group, is a UK online pharmacy business built in 2026 by buying three companies with £40m of new money. It was a cash shell until 19 March 2026; by June it had £10.0m of revenue in under four months, a small adjusted EBITDA loss, and a year of integration costs still ahead.
Wellnex Life, based in Port Melbourne, develops and sells over-the-counter health brands through Australian pharmacies and supermarkets, and is listed on the ASX and London's AIM. It bought the Pain Away brand in 2023, cleared more than A$13m of debt in a 2025 London listing, then lost most of its board and shrank its costs. In September 2026 it sold Pain Away, about half its sales, for A$19.8m upfront.
GlobalData sells subscription data, forecasts and research to more than 5,000 large companies, banks and governments, and now adds AI tools on top. In 2024 it sold 40% of its Healthcare arm at a £1.115bn valuation and set out to reach £500m of annualised revenue by the end of 2026. Two years on, underlying growth is about 1%, the profit margin has fallen from 41% to 34%, and the shares trade near 59p against about 218p in June 2024.
PZ Cussons is a Manchester consumer goods company that makes washing, bathing, home and baby products such as Carex, Imperial Leather and Original Source. In 2023-24 the Nigerian currency lost about 70% of its value against sterling and cut reported revenue and profit. Since then the company has sold or kept its non-core assets, repaid debt and returned to growth. Net debt stood at £25m at 31 May 2026, against £112m a year earlier.
Chrysalis Investments is a listed fund that owns stakes in fast-growing technology companies, led by Starling Bank, Smart Pension and Klarna. After two years of share buybacks, it is now selling its whole portfolio over three years and plans to go into liquidation afterwards. Its shares closed at 64.0p on 9 October 2026, against a net asset value (NAV, the value of its holdings per share) of 131.09p at 30 June 2026.
Forterra makes bricks, concrete blocks and precast concrete floors for UK construction, mostly new-build housing. A rate-driven slump in 2023 cut UK brick demand by about 30% just as it finished a £140m factory-building programme. A 2025 recovery pulled net debt down to £56m, but 2026 has turned weaker again, with first-half revenue down 13.5%.
Future plc owns about 170 specialist media brands, from tech and gaming sites to magazines, plus the Go.Compare insurance comparison site. It earns most of its money from advertising and shopping-link commissions. After returning to growth in 2024, it slid back to falling sales in 2025 and 2026. Profit margins shrank and the shares fell from around 900p to about 310p, while the company kept paying out cash until September 2026, when it paused its buyback to cut debt.
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.
Card Factory is the UK's largest specialist card retailer, with 1,117 shops in the UK and Ireland, and it is trying to become a wider celebrations business with gifts, party goods, online and wholesale. Revenue grew from £511m to £583m in the two years to January 2026, but adjusted profit fell to £56m from £66m after a weak Christmas 2025, and the shares dropped from about 98p to 68p in December 2025.
PayPoint runs a network of over 30,000 UK convenience stores that take parcels, bill payments, cash deposits and card payments, and it owns the Love2shop gift-card business. It chased £100m of annual underlying EBITDA (operating profit before depreciation and amortisation) by March 2026 and reached £92m. Over the same period it cut its share count by about 18% through buybacks, while net debt rose from £67m to £133m.
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.
C&C owns Tennent's lager in Scotland and Bulmers cider in Ireland, and it supplies drinks to about 22,000 pubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK and Ireland. After a 2024 accounting scandal, profit recovered to €77m in the year to February 2025, then slipped to €70m as hospitality demand weakened. The shares closed at 95p on 9 October 2026, against 177p in July 2025.
Boku, a London-headquartered payments company, lets the world's biggest technology and media companies take payment through phone bills, digital wallets and bank-to-bank schemes in markets where cards are not the default. Revenue grew 30% to $128.8m in 2025, then in July 2026 management cut full-year guidance to $135-142m, and the shares fell from 148.5p in June to 98p in July.
Gulf Keystone operates the Shaikan oil field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It produced about 41,600 barrels of oil a day (bopd) in 2025 and paid shareholders $50m that year. In 2026 regional war closed the field for almost four months and cut first-half output to 14,600 bopd, yet the company has no debt and still pays a dividend. Its cash flow depends on export deals set by governments.
Luceco makes the sockets, switches, LED lights, portable power products and EV chargers that electricians fit in British homes and workplaces, largely from its own factory in Jiaxing, China. For years it grew a few percent a year and generated cash. In the first half of 2026 its Energy Transition business, mainly EV chargers, more than doubled sales while the core grew 6.5%. Two 2024 acquisitions lifted debt to £69.6m, and CEO John Hornby, after 21 years, has handed over to Dr Thorsten Müller.
Sabre Insurance Group is a UK motor insurer that sells mainly car cover, with smaller motorcycle and taxi books. In 2025 it let premiums fall 14% in a soft market and still lifted profit 4.9% to £51.0m. In the first half of 2026 premiums grew 15.7%, but reported profit dipped 6.3% because the extra business has yet to earn through.
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.
Camellia owns tea estates, avocado and macadamia orchards, and arable and forestry land across seven countries in Asia, Africa and Brazil. For years its farms lost money in the first half and barely broke even over a full year. It has used cash from selling a bank-and-insurance stake, UK property and art to pay dividends and fund new planting. Cash and liquid assets were £133m at 30 June 2026, but the farms themselves are still loss-making over the first half, and the full-year outlook is uncertain.
Arcontech is a small London-listed software company. Banks and regulators use its programs to collect live market prices from many suppliers and show them to traders. It lost a large, long-standing customer in the year to June 2026, and revenue fell 11.5% to £2.75m. It has since signed two new European customers and says growth returns in the year to June 2027.
Ecora owns royalties and metal streams on mines run by other companies, with copper at the core and cobalt, uranium, vanadium, gold and steelmaking coal alongside. For years one Queensland coal royalty paid most of its bills. It now earns about half of its income from base metals, and net debt has fallen from a $124.6m peak in mid-2025 to $74.9m at 30 June 2026.
THG is a Manchester-based group that sells beauty products online (Lookfantastic, Dermstore, Cult Beauty) and owns Myprotein, which it calls the world's largest online sports nutrition brand. After shedding its technology arm and refinancing in 2025, it has returned to growth: first-half 2026 revenue rose 7% to £829m and adjusted EBITDA (operating profit before one-off items, depreciation and amortisation) more than doubled to £43m. It still carries about £330m of net debt, and the shares, at 27.2p on the latest close of 9 October 2026, stand well below their 85p of December 2023.
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.
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.
Mobico runs buses, coaches and trains in Spain, the UK, the US, Germany, North Africa and the Middle East. Its Spanish business, Alsa, keeps setting records, while UK coach, US contracts and German rail have cost it money and the shares have fallen from about 86p in January 2024 to about 24p. After selling its North American school bus arm and agreeing to sell UK Bus, it is a smaller group still working to cut debt.
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.
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.
Alfa Financial Software writes the systems that run car, equipment and commercial finance books for lenders and carmakers' finance arms in 37 countries. Revenue grew from £102m in 2023 to £127m in 2025 as customers moved to subscriptions. In the first half of 2026, revenue rose only 4% and operating profit fell 15% to £18.4m, even as recurring revenue grew 17%. The shares, at 160.8p on the latest close (9 October 2026), are well below their 2025 high of 239.5p.
Jarvis Securities is an AIM-listed holding company whose subsidiary, Jarvis Investment Management (JIML), ran an execution-only stockbroker and a clearing service for corporate clients. A regulatory review from 2022 and falling trading volumes and interest income led it to sell the retail broker for up to £11m in 2025 and wind down the rest. It now holds about £10.5m of cash. Its shares have fallen from 96.5p in October 2023 to a latest close of 8.0p on 9 October 2026.
Nanoco, based in Runcorn, makes cadmium-free quantum dots, tiny crystals that emit or absorb light, for infrared image sensors and displays. A patent win against Samsung paid it about £118m in net proceeds and funded a £33m return to shareholders, but the commercial business never took off as hoped. It now has about £9m of cash and costs of £0.3m–£0.4m a month. The shares were 2.7p at the latest close on 12 October 2026, against 21.6p in January 2024.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Restore plc, listed on AIM, stores and scans documents, shreds paper, sends NHS appointment letters and recycles IT equipment for UK businesses and public bodies. After a profit slump in 2023, new management cut costs, bought a dozen small businesses and sold a weak one. Adjusted operating margin passed its 20% target in 2025, but reported statutory profit is far below adjusted profit because of acquisition-related charges.
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.
ME Group, formerly Photo-Me, runs more than 49,000 coin-and-card machines in 16 countries, mainly photobooths and laundry machines placed in supermarkets, malls and transport hubs. Laundry now earns 54% of Group EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), but the older photobooth business is shrinking in some markets. A weak April 2026 in France pushed full-year profit guidance to £69m-£74m, against a record £78.2m in 2025, and the shares closed at 112.8p on 9 October 2026, against a June 2025 month-end of 229.5p.
Virgin Wines is a Norwich-based online wine seller that signs most of its customers up to subscription schemes. After a rough 2023 it rebuilt profits. In 2025 it chose to spend that profit on a five-year plan to reach £100m of sales. By June 2026 it was warning of an EBITDA loss for the year, and the shares had fallen from about 62p to 25.5p.
78 briefings so far, more every day · latest 14 Oct 2026. Written by AI from each company’s own announcements – every paragraph links to its source. Company filings, not investment advice.