Good morning everyone! With the New Year reporting season well and truly finished now, I hope your portfolios have survived in good shape!
Today's Agenda is complete.
Spreadsheet accompanying this report: link.
Companies Reporting
| Name (Mkt Cap) | RNS | Summary | Our View (Author) |
|---|---|---|---|
GSK (LON:GSK) (£88.9bn | SR94) | European Commission has approved Nucala (mepolizumab), a monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin-5 (IL-5), in adults as an add-on maintenance treatment for uncontrolled COPD. | ||
HgCapital Trust (LON:HGT) (£1.85bn | SR N/A) | 2025 NAV total return 4%, NAV per share £5.62 (latest share price: 403.5p). HGT share price is down 20% year-to-date due to recent decline in listed software shares. “The Board is actively considering a number potential actions (sic) to address the current discount to net asset value using the full set of tools at its disposal, including share buy-backs.” | ||
Victrex (LON:VCT) (£606m | SR63) | Q1 volumes down 4%, revenues down 6%. “Performance in H1 2026 is expected to be weaker than H1 2025, reflecting the weaker end to Q1 and the currency headwind being weighted to the first half.” Full-year guidance unchanged. | ||
Phoenix Spree Deutschland (LON:PSDL) (£158m | SR54) | Overall Portfolio value rose by 1.5% on a like-for-like per sqm basis. Condominium sales outperformed target in 2025: 122 units sold for €36.0m (2024: €9.4m). Sales target for the year was €30m. Early 2026: 14 units notarised for €4.1m, with a further 26 units (€7.0m) reserved and pending notarisation. The company intends to return capital to shareholders in 2026 via compulsory pro rata redemptions of Ordinary Shares. | ||
Berkeley Energia (LON:BKY) (£119m | SR21) | Subsidiary has filed a Memorial of Claim at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, seeking compensation in the order of US$1.25 billion. Allegations that Spain violated multiple provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty. | ||
Everyman Media (LON:EMAN) (£25m | SR42) | New CFO hired from National World plc. Separately, one of EMAN’s NEDs is becoming Interim Creative Director. | From his bio on the company’s website: “The Directors do not consider Mr Dorfman to be independent in line with the Quoted Companies Alliance Corporate Governance Code for small and mid-size quoted companies due to his shareholding in the Company.” He owns 6% of EMAN. | |
Tortilla Mexican Grill (LON:MEX) (£22m | SR80) | The existing CEO steps down. The Founder is appointed as CEO. A new UK CEO is also hired. Various other changes. | ||
Tandem (LON:TND) (£9m | SR87) | 2025 revenue +6.2%. Adjusted PBT to be slightly ahead of market expectations. Trading at the start of 2026 has been in line with management expectations. Continuing to target revenue growth in FY26 broadly in line with FY25. | AMBER/GREEN = (Graham) This one doesn't excite me any more (it used to be my largest position). It has been around for decades, and profitability remains very limited. It does at least have a strong balance sheet, and the StockRanks love it, so I'm happy to retain our moderately positive view. | |
Huddled (LON:HUD) (£7m | SR9) | Commitments for a proposed subscription of up to £730k of new shares at 1.75p (last night’s close: 1.9p), alongside a debt facility of up to £600k. Retail offer £100k. |
Tandem (LON:TND)
Up 9% to 185p (£10m) - Trading Update and Notice of Results - Graham - AMBER/GREEN =
Tandem Group plc (AIM: TND) designers, developers, distributors and retailers of sports, leisure and e-mobility, provides the following trading update
This company has long been of interest to those who muck about in UK nano-caps/micro-caps.
At one point it was my largest individual position - I think it was my largest position for a few years. But I ended up losing interest in the end.
The share price did have quite an excited period around the Covid era, before dropping back:
Tandem’s shares have been listed for c. 25 years and are one of the big reasons I moved away from focusing on tiny and ostensibly cheap companies
In the end, I concluded that the company was just “not a compounder” - it would occasionally have good news, and occasionally have bad news, but it was probably not going to turn into a much larger and more profitable company.
So far, that conclusion has been correct, but let’s see if today’s trading update changes anything...
Trading Update
Key points:
2025 revenues £26.2m (+6.2%)
Adjusted PBT “slightly ahead of market expectations”
Let’s quickly survey each of the divisions:
Toys, Sports and Leisure: revenue down 17.5%, which reflects “softer demand in certain discretionary categories, changes in retailer purchasing patterns and the timing of product ranging and promotions”.
Bicycles: revenues +37.6%, with mechanical bikes sales up by a remarkable 47.6% and electric bikes up 30%.
Golf: revenues +8.6%.
Home & Garden +30%, helped by “an exceptionally hot summer”.
Outlook:
Trading at the start of 2026 has been in line with management expectations… Management continues to target revenue growth in FY26 broadly in line with FY25, alongside further improvements in margins and profitability, supported by rigorous cost discipline and operational efficiency.
Estimates
Cavendish covers this share, and thanks to them for publishing these forecasts today. The 2026 forecasts are new:
2025 revenue £26.2m (as disclosed in the RNS), and an adjusted PBT of £0.6m
2026 revenue £27.8m, adjusted PBT £0.8m.
Cavendish points out that the shares are trading at c. 0.5x tangible net asset value.
Graham’s view
My view here is unchanged from what I said in September last year.
As I said then, this share does continue to offer intriguing possibilities for value investors, including that strong tangible balance sheet position.
As a reminder, net assets at the interim results were £23.3m, of which £5.5m was intangible. So that’s £18m of tangible value, including freehold property, plus whatever progress has been made since June 2025.
There’s a catch, and it’s a powerful one: the lack of clean, real profits.
After so many years in operation, and especially considering the strong top-line growth, I would have thought that these higher revenues might have translated into meaningful profits.
That doesn’t make it a bad business, but as an investment, it just doesn’t excite me.
Even when it releases good news, I assume that this will be followed 6-12 months later by a reversal.
Take today's trading update for example: there are huge revenue movements in several of the divisions, both upwards and downwards. There's potentially an interesting story in the explanation of why these movements occurred. But the announcement doesn't try very hard to help us to understand. I'm left to conclude that the movements are unpredictable, and that weather or other short-term trends will change the trends this year.
I’m still leaving Tandem on AMBER/GREEN, because it’s performing in line with (modest) expectations and the balance sheet does provide optionality.
The StockRanks also really like it:
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