Daily Stock Market Report (Fri 15th August 2025) - LST, RGG, TEK, OCN

Welcome to Friday's report - this one might be shorter than usual!

Have a fine weekend everyone!

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Spreadsheet accompanying this report: link (last updated to: 24th July).

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Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON:OCN) (£323m)	Interim Business Update	6.2% Q2 return, 5.1% year-to-date return (in USD). NAV per share £19.48 prior to £109m tender offer.	PINK (recommended merger with Hansa) Some quick maths suggests that an OCN share is going to be traded for HAN and HANA shares currently worth £11.57, if this deal goes ahead. When I made the same calculation last month, with higher HAN/HANA share prices at the time, the corresponding figure was £12.30. OCN shares are trading at £11.48, so there is a small discount available for those speculating on the deal going ahead. Of course the discount is much larger against OCN's own NAV, and I'm inclined to think that the share price would respond positively to news that the deal was voted down by shareholders! But today's update reflects on what might happen if shareholders do that, with the directors warning that there would be "limited scope for further buybacks". It seems that rather than HAN's discount narrowing in advance of the merger, we have instead seen OCN's discount widen. It's hard to know what to make of this - for investors who hold one or both shares, the discounts do offer some margin of safety. But the market as a whole does not seem interested in either of these investment vehicles right now. I have to think that sentiment should improve if the deal goes ahead, for the reasons we've mentioned before - scale, liquidity, and membership in the indexes.
Rentguarantor Holdings (LON:RGG) (£34m)	First Day of Dealings on AIM	SP +18% Moves from Aquis to AIM today.	AMBER/RED (Graham) I'm glad to see a company joining AIM rather than leaving it. On valuation grounds, however, I do take this one down a notch as I think the market cap has edged over £40m today, which seems rather high to me vs. trailing revenues. It's an illiquid stock with high insider ownership, so the exact share price is debatable, but it officially closed on Aquis at 27.5p yesterday, and the London Stock Exchange says it's at 32.5p today.
Tekcapital (LON:TEK) (£16m)	Portfolio Company Update Innovative Eyewear Q2	Innovative Eyewear: Q2 revenue up 88% (y/y) to $579k. Tekcapital: Q2 net loss $2.1m due to tariffs.	AMBER (Graham) [no section below] Tekcapital is not shy when it comes to issuing announcements - there have been five in the last month! It recently came to light that one of its portfolio companies (Microsalt) failed to disclose early loan repayments which were made from Microsalt back to Tekcapital. As the largest shareholder in Microsalt, surely Tekcapital should bear some responsibility for this corporate governance failure? Tekcapital itself raised new equity recently, and today's update confirms net losses for it over the past six months. As noted by Roland, the company trades at a deep discount to its officially-stated portfolio value ($61.5m as of Dec 2024). But the true value of this portfolio - a small set of small companies - is highly uncertain.
Light Science Technologies Holdings (LON:LST) (£11m)	CEM Contract Wins	Three contracts worth £0.5m (1 new contract, 2 re-tendered contracts with existing clients).	RED (Graham) Staying RED on this due to the solvency question and the lack of market estimates.

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Graham's Section

Light Science Technologies Holdings (LON:LST)

Down 11% to 2.85p (£9m) - CEM Contract Wins - Graham - RED

This is a group of three companies - Contract Electronics Manufacturing (CEM), AgTech (AGT) and Passive Fire Protection (PFP).

I’m RED on it by default due to the presence of a going concern warning in the most recent half-year report.

Digging into that a little deeper, this is what they said earlier this week:

The Directors are satisfied that the Group has sufficient financing in place to continue to meet its liabilities as they fall due for a period of at least 12 months from the date of approval of this report and hence have prepared the financial statements on a going concern basis.

The Directors acknowledge that there is uncertainty on the level and timing of revenues within the Group, and there would be a possible need to raise additional funding and / or renegotiate the terms of its borrowing facilities, or obtain a temporary covenant waiver, should the Group's expectations for revenue generation over the coming 12 months not materialise as expected. The Directors note that this material uncertainty may cast significant doubt on the group's ability to continue as a going concern.

So the situation is perhaps more finely balanced than my automatic RED suggests. Even if the company needs to raise funds or get a covenant waiver, that may not be such a terrible problem. But the point of being RED is to highlight an issue for readers - it’s up to you to decide if you are willing to live with it!

Turning to today’s update, we have news of three contracts, their total value being £0.5m.

But there’s a problem that I already raised on Wednesday - LST’s broker doesn’t yet provide forecasts, only saying that they “expect to initiate research coverage on LST in due course”. They were hired as LST’s Nomad in June.

So there are no live forecasts available, and limited guidance from the company itself.

From today’s announcement:

These contracts demonstrate an increasingly robust conversion of the Group's strong quoted pipeline, which… currently stands at over £58m across its three divisions.

I’ve learned to be very careful with pipeline figures - these are hoped-for contracts.

Graham’s view

I wish the company well, but I have to be RED due to the solvency question and the lack of forecasts. The share price falling by 10% on the same day as this contract win announcement suggests the market is unimpressed. With the company having generated £12m in revenues last year, the significance of £0.5m of contract wins is certainly unclear to me.

The founder-CEO is well-aligned as the largest shareholder. I’d be open to learning more about this one!

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Rentguarantor Holdings (LON:RGG)

Up 18% to 32.5p (£41m) - First Day of Dealings on AIM - Graham - AMBER/RED

I mentioned this in April when it let the market know of its intention to move to AIM from Aquis.

That has now been put into effect.

The company “provides a professional guarantor service to support tenants in securing a rental property”.

I think their service costs about one months’ rent, or a bit more than that for people who finance the fee.

They raised £1m (gross) in new equity in June:

The net funds raised through the Subscription will be utilised to fund the expansion of the Company's business over the forthcoming year, principally in terms of the hiring of additional staff and marketing activities, as well as the provision of general working capital and for the costs associated with the Company's intended move of the public quotation for trading in its Ordinary Shares to AIM.

Graham’s view

I’d like to be more positive on this. In theory, I agree that there should be plenty of demand for RGG’s guarantor services, as renting becomes more common. But historic accounts up to this point show the company making losses and raising fresh equity pretty much every year - so it looks like it’s still in startup mode.

On top of that, I calculate the market cap as c. £41m currently, which is over 30x last year’s revenue figure. Even with revenues growing strongly, my value investor instincts make it tricky to be positive - or even neutral - on a share trading at this valuation.

I’m therefore going to nudge my view on this down by one notch, to AMBER/RED. But it’s refreshing to occasionally see a company joining AIM rather than leaving it!