Daily Stock Market Report (Thur 23rd July 2026) - SRB, TMG, MAB1, WRKS, HVO

Red Sea: the price of oil continues to climb as the Houthis in Yemen say they attacked oil tankers in the Red Sea. The Red Sea provides a crucial alternative to the Strait of Hormuz for the export of Saudi oil.

This attack comes as US bombing of Iran has continued for a 12th successive night.

The US Secretary of State says that the US is “open” to negotiations. But unfortunately there is no positive progress to report at this stage.

Alphabet: the owner of Google has made headlines for announcing increases to its planned capex this year to c. $200 billion, up from $190 billion.

This level of spending is totally unprecedented and highlights the AI arms race that is happening in Big Tech. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta are collectively planning to spend well over $700 billion this year alone on capex, as they each strive to achieve dominance in AI-related capabilities.

For context, total capex spending by these four companies in 2025 was just $380 billion.The prior year, it was $230 billion.

The obvious danger is that if this enormous spending fails to generate the expected returns, it will have to force a rapid change in the market’s assessment of what these companies are worth.

Overnight market movements:

• The FTSE is down 0.2% at 10,700

• S&P 500 is down 0.1% at 7,490

• Brent crude (October) is up 1.5% at $91.50/bbl

• Gold is unchanged at $4,125/oz

• Bitcoin is down 0.3% at $65,700

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Companies Reporting

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Graham's Section

Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) (LON:MAB1)

Unchanged at 540p (£311m) - Trading Update - Graham - AMBER/GREEN ↓

Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) plc (LSE: MAB1), a leading technology-driven UK property finance service, today issues a trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2026, ahead of publishing its interim results on 22 September 2026.

To summarise:

• Revenue +8%

• H1 adj. PBT c. £14.6m, only slightly higher than H1 last year (£14.5m).

We get an explanation for adj. PBT not growing very fast:

The reduction in margin was principally driven by a significant shift in mortgage mix, slower growth in protection policy volumes and the timing of benefits from integrating subsidiaries acquired in late 2025.

The mortgage mix this year was more heavily weighted towards refinancings (rather than purchase lending). This means lower margins and fewer protection policy sales.

On top of that, “volatility in mortgage pricing also required advisers to devote additional time to secure the best outcome for customers, impacting productivity.”

Outlook: The Board expects full-year results to be in line with expectations.

There have been some big changes in activity levels already this year: mortgage applications were up by 15% year-on-year as of mid-May, but they are down 13% since then. The overall year-to-date figure is +7%. It must be tricky to make forecasts with this sort of volatility in demand.

CEO comment:

Management is taking targeted action to improve adviser productivity and profit conversion, with a particular focus on customer retention, protection performance, the delivery of acquisition synergies and continued cost discipline. These actions, together with the opportunities ahead, mean that I remain confident in the Group's outlook for the full year.

Graham’s view

This is an important point:

The Group is not assuming an improvement in housing transactions while heightened geopolitical and domestic policy uncertainty persists.

On that basis, I’d hope that full-year expectations aren’t overly optimistic. Although they do say this year will be “more heavily weighted towards H2 than in prior years”.

That’s certainly the case. The full-year adj. PBT forecast for 2026 is about £43.5m, nearly 20% higher than last year’s result.

But adj. PBT barely grew at all in H1.

As a result, I calculate that they need H2 adj. PBT growth of about 33% (from £22m to £29m) in order to hit full-year expectations.

They will have a bunch of recent acquisitions to help them do better in H2, and they do say that H1 was held back by “the timing of benefits from integrating subsidiaries acquired in late 2025” - I read this to mean that there were integration costs in H1 which they haven’t fully benefited from yet.

I’ve been very positive on MAB1 but I will moderate my stance slightly today, to AMBER/GREEN, as I perceive that there is a heightened risk of an earnings miss this year.

That’s just a short-term call, however - I’m still a big fan of the business long-term, and I’ll happily go back to GREEN as soon as I'm more confident in the 2026 result. I don’t think it’s excessively valued at all, considering that it’s a high-quality franchised business model:

EPS forecasts have held firm so far, but there’s a lot to do in H2:

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Mark's Section

Serabi Gold (LON:SRB)

Down 5% at 262p (£211m) - Reports Q2-2026 Production & Operational Highlights - Mark (I hold) - AMBER/GREEN

[At the time of writing, I have a LONG position in this stock.]

The market appears to have been a bit apprehensive about these production figures. The gold price has risen around 3% so far this month and bounced off the psychologically important $4k/oz, yet the Serabi share price is down around 3% over the same period.

I think the market had reasons to be cautious. Although today they report gold production of 11,007 ounces, a 5% increase from Q2-2025, this is below the 12,042oz they produced in Q2.

Palito:

The issue is at their core Palito mine, where despite increasing horizontal development 4% to 1,963m in Q2 and mined ore by 3% to 25.845kt, a drop in grade from 5.88 to 4.55g/t meant that gold production from Palito was 1,123oz lower.

Coringa:

Coringa continued to perform well, increasing mined ore by 12%, although slightly lower grades meant that produced ounces only increased by 1%.

This brings us to the second market worry, that Coringa will not get its full mining license and the temporary license will expire. They provide some detail on this:

• Coringa Mine currently operates under a 3-year GUIA licence which expires on January 29, 2027.

  • Discussions are ongoing with the Agência Nacional de Mineração (“ANM”), regarding the possible extension of the current GUIA.

• For the full mining licence (“LI”) at Coringa, the Company requires a change of land use approval from the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (“INCRA”) as well as the approval of the Estudo de Componente Indígena (“ECI”) from FUNAI, which are both progressing well.

  • Successful site visit by the local Indigenous communities to Coringa occurred on July 17, 2026.

  • Change of land use is in the final stage, requiring approvals by INCRA at the state and federal levels.

As an external party, it is almost impossible to judge the likelihood of the various outcomes. Although it is worth noting that when I asked ChatGPT to compare this situation to others, it thought that not getting some kind of license was highly unlikely. It seems the company is covering all its bases by applying for the full license, while also requesting an extension to the temporary one.

Production guidance:

Q2 was described as “broadly in line with budget” but the company maintain their production guidance:

Based on the assumption that the LI will be awarded by Q4-2026, the Company remains on track to deliver FY2026 consolidated production in excess of a record 53,000 ounces gold.

However, it is worth noting that this is a subtle shift from Q1 where they said that they expected “production profile for the year will see each quarter sequentially increasing production” which has clearly turned out to be not the case for Q2. And the guidance has moved from “53,000 ounces to 57,000 ounces” to “in excess of 53,000 ounces”.

I had always assumed they would come in around the bottom of that range, so there is no impact on my modelling. However, this is also the first time they mention that the guidance is based on the full mining license at Coringa being approved in Q4. I’m not entirely sure why this matters, as it would surely be too late to make mining investments (which may be held back until full approval) that would impact that quarter’s production. It may be that the company is getting their excuses in early!

Modelling:

Without seeing the Q2 financial results, there is a good deal of guesswork in my figures. Unknowns include when inventory sales from Q1 will catch up with production, the cost of Sales progression, future gold prices and tax rates. However, here is my best guess, assuming they do actually pull it out of the bag on FY production:

Note that the EPS figures here are below the 138c forecast in the Stock Report. However, this is a case of brokers being slow to update their models for changes in the gold price:

This is one of the many reasons it is worth maintaining your own models for commodity producers.

Despite these headwinds, Q2 should have produced around $19m of PAT, which makes it a bit of a mystery why net cash is effectively flat at $65.7m vs $64.4m at the end of Q1. The only explanation we get is:

…[the] development of the Galena and Serra South zone at Coringa and approximately $4 million of one-time G&A and tax charges…

I think we can also include spending on the new $5m ball mill, and increased exploration costs. Plus there could be further inventory build, due to the timing of sales. However, it would be nice to get an explanation of this.

Broker forecasts:

The only updated note I can see today is from Tamesis Partners. They say the Q2 numbers are a 21% miss on their production estimate for the quarter, driven by a 13% lower than expected grade. The cash is $8.5m lower than where they modelled it.

However, they don’t provide an updated block model to see if they are modelling any full-year impact.

For what it's worth, in my model, EPS would fall further in FY27 based on some conservative cost assumptions and their production aims:

Valuation:

With what appears to be three minor disappointments (Q2 production, FY guidance, and cash), it is tempting to be more negative about the company's prospects. However, even if I take my 2027 estimates, they would do around 83p of EPS, and say $80m net cash, or around 80p/share.

Adjusting for cash, the forward P/E is around 2.2. This is incredibly low for a company with credible ambitions to further increase production in the coming years. These depend on obtaining the licenses for Coringa to continue operating and growing. However, I think that it is unlikely that these will not be granted.

Other risks include the gold price continuing to fall, costs rising, or grades at Palito continuing to disappoint. One quarter’s weak production is too soon to conclude that this is a permanent shift in prospects.

Mark’s view

I won’t pretend that today’s production results weren’t a disappointment to me. The company had previously guided that production would increase incrementally from Q1, but that has not been the case. They must be a disappointment to the company as well, as they have subtly increased the conservatism in the language of their production guidance.

However, on a forward P/E of around 2 (adjusting for net cash), the market is either pricing in permanently lower grades at Palito, a much lower gold price in the future, or no Coringa license being issued. Possibly, all three. While recognising that each of these risks remain, the chances of one of these looks low, let alone a combination of these.

Despite weakening momentum, the company remains a Super Stock, as its incredible profitability at current gold prices gives it high Quality and Momentum scores:

As such, I don’t see enough to change our previously broadly positive view of AMBER/GREEN, nor my personal holding.

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Mission (LON:TMG)

Up 29% at 20p (£14.3m) - Half Year Trading Update - Mark - AMBER/RED =

I took a look at this marketing group following an inline AGM statement last month, when the market seemed to take heart from the lack of further profit warnings in their outlook. The market’s reaction today has been very similar, up 29% to 20p, as that outcome has been reiterated:

As a result, while market conditions remain uncertain, the Board remains confident in delivering profitable growth across all business segments, with the Group on track to meet full year market expectations

Helpfully, these are given as:

The Group believes market expectations for the year ended 31 December 2026 to be revenues of £70.0m and headline operating profit of £8.1m (2025: £5.1m).

However, looking at today’s H1 trading update, I am a little sceptical. H1 revenue is actually down 4.7%, and while headline Op profit and PBT are showing reasonable percentage increases, following a period of cost-cutting, these are very small numbers:

…headline operating profit before adjustments expected to be up 10% at £2.4m …Headline profit before tax is expected to be 27% higher at £1.4m (30 June 2025: £1.1m).

This leaves a huge amount to do to go from a headline operating profit of £2.4m for H1 to £8.1m for the full year.

Adjustments:

Adding to the concerns is the scale of the adjustments. Last year, headline operating profit was £5.1m, but this required £21.7m of adjustments, including restructuring costs of £1.9m and Acquisition and disposal related costs of £2.4m. While we don’t get to see the H1 details until the results are released, I expect these sorts of costs to continue to be reported in FY26.

Balance sheet:

They headline this section as “Robust balance sheet”. However, with net bank debt up £2m since the end of the year to £11m, and £0.6m of acquisition obligations still to be made in Q3 this year, and virtually no tangible assets, this looks anything but robust to me.

Outlook:

While some may take comfort from the in-line statement today, Last year in the same update, they said they were on track to “at least to meet full-year headline operating profit and margin expectations”, of £8.5m. Despite a period of very high adjustments, they only delivered £5.1m of headline operating profit. They left it until January this year, 13 days after the period ended, to break the news that they weren’t going to make the numbers.

Assuming history rhymes, they will probably do around 2p of heavily adjusted EPS again this year, which puts them on a P/E of around 10. Not hugely expensive, but then this is a heavily indebted people business with a shrinking top line.

Mark’s view

Given the big improvement in headline operating profit required in H2 to hit their numbers and the recent history of telling the market they are in line until after the reporting period ends, I put almost no faith in today’s in-line statement.

Looking at the actual numbers released today, we have improved profitability despite declining revenue through cost-cutting, but only if we exclude the costs of making staff redundant. Plus, increasing net debt. In reality, there seems little to be enthusiastic about in today’s update, and I keep our mostly negative view of AMBER/RED.

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Works co uk (LON:WRKS)

Down 4% at 76p (£49.4m) - Preliminary Results - Mark - AMBER/GREEN =

I like The Works. In a world where there is increasing evidence that extensive exposure to screens is damaging children’s health, a business that provides cheap non-screen activities on the high street seems like a public good.

The market has liked the recovery story, too. With the share price rising from around 20p in April last year to almost touching 80p:

hose who backed the recovery have made exceptional returns.

However, I have been a little sceptical. When I looked at their FY25 trading statement in May 2025, I commented that the reported beat was driven by pre-IFRS 16 Adjusted EBITDA expectations being raised from £8.5m to £9.5m, excluding exceptional fulfilment costs of £1.2m and exceptional restructuring costs of £0.6m. Basically, they were ahead if you ignored everything that had gone wrong in the year.

Their trading update in May this year was again ahead of expectations:

Reflecting the revenue growth, improvements in product margin and cost reduction programme, pre-IFRS 16 Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be approximately £14.0m (FY25: £9.5m), a 47% increase year on year and ahead of current market expectations of £13.5m.

This has been responsible for the share price almost doubling since then.

Today’s results are in line with this EBITDA figure, which turns into a handy rise in Adj. PBT & Adj. EPS:

This becomes a statutory PBT of £6.8m, which doesn’t seem too bad until I realised they were excluding the impact of the closure of their online retail operations. Statutory profit after tax actually comes in at just £1.4m overall.

Name change:

I find this rather amusing:

Reflecting the Group's focus on screen free activities and its store based operating model, the Group intends to table a resolution at its forthcoming annual general meeting ("AGM") to change the Company's name from 'TheWorks.co.uk plc' to 'TheWorks plc'. Further information on this resolution will be provided in the Group's AGM circular, to be published in due course.

They presumably changed the name originally because they thought including .co.uk would lead to a higher share price rating. Having failed to make online retail work at all, they now have to bin that part of the name!

Outlook:

The reality is that having closed the online operations, they can only fail at this (and adjust out the failure) once rather than continuously as appeared to be the previous scenario.

Hence, when they say:

The Board is encouraged by the Group's strong trading performance in FY27 to date, while remaining mindful of the continuing macroeconomic uncertainty. With the key back-to-school and Christmas trading periods still ahead, the Board is maintaining its recently upgraded FY27 guidance for pre-IFRS 16Adjusted EBITDA of £15.0m

These figures may not be as clean as I’d like, but they will be much better than in the past. Current trading is much better than I would have expected, so I feel there may be room for further upgrades during the year:

The Group's positive momentum has continued into the new financial year, generating +8.8% LFL sales growth during the first 11 weeks of FY27 to 19 July 2026 (FY26 first 11 weeks: +7%). This strong performance reflects sales growth across all product categories driven by further delivery of key strategic initiatives.

Balance sheet:

There is a modest net cash balance of £3.6m and no bank debt, but it is worth bearing in mind that this is a seasonal business where working capital will be much higher at its peak. Also, there are considerable lease liabilities, which have gone up from £75m last year to £82m this year. There’s a £5.5m interest charge, of which £4.1m is notional lease interest.

Lease assets are just £68m up from £62m, which suggests there is still a tail of stores that are not performing as well as expected. I’d expected the gap here to decline over time as underperforming stores are closed/moved/on renegotiated leases, so I’m disappointed that it remains. I tried to quiz the FD on this when they were at Mello. However, they failed to grasp what I was getting at (possibly a bad sign!)

Overall, I don’t see any issues with the balance sheet, which is typical for a brick-and-mortar retailer. Things can get tricky for such a business if revenue were to decline continuously. However, with FY27 so far showing strong growth, such issues look unlikely any time soon.

Broker forecasts/Valuation:

I can’t see an update note from Singer this morning, but with guidance reiterated and only one broker covering the company, we can use the Stock Report numbers:

This is still on a pretty cheap multiple, despite the recent share price rise. However, there is little in the way of revenue growth so far, and volumes will decline with the loss of the online retail. We should probably be wary of paying a high multiple for such a business, even if profitability has been much improved through cost-cutting and the closure of online operations.

If current sales trends can be maintained during the year without sacrificing margins, this could well look very cheap again on an earnings multiple basis. However, to make it a buy at the current price, one has to believe this is the start of a multi-year trend towards higher sales with better business execution, rather than a one-off benefit from the closure of loss-making operations.

There is no dividend, but they are flagging the possibility of one for the first time since 2023.

Mark’s view

Roland upgraded this to AMBER/GREEN following the announcement that they would close their online operations. While it may seem strange that a failure of execution makes them a better business, the reality is that they should be a cleaner, more profitable company without this.

Given the positive sales momentum so far this year and modest rating, I see no reason to change that view.

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hVIVO (LON:HVO)

Down 1% at 6.7p (£46.5m) - H1 2026 Trading Update - Mark - BLACK/AMBER/RED ↑

We tend to view companies that fail to generate positive EBITDA pretty negatively on the DSMR. It would seem a fairly low hurdle for sustainable businesses to meet.

Hence, this is a slightly worrying statement:

The Group expects to report a negative mid-single digit adjusted EBITDA for H1 2026 (H1 2025: adjusted EBITDA of £3.0 million) driven by the impact of the lower H1 revenue base. However, the significantly higher revenues in the second half of the year are expected to deliver a positive adjusted EBITDA in H2 2026.

Mid-single digit is presumably £4-6m, so that is a £7-9m swing versus the previous year. FY25 was itself a weak year where revenue fell to £46.8m from £62.7m and adjusted EBITDA to £1.4m from £16.4m.

These excluded £1.4m of exceptional items including £450k of acquisition transaction cost and £960k of reorganisation costs, making EBITDA zero overall last year. Today, they appear to guide that FY26 will not have an exceptionals, so that is one positive.

They say 26H2 is expected to deliver a positive adjusted EBITDA. However, they don’t say that for the full year, making a rather obvious omission, which we should probably infer that the FY will be negative on adj.EBITDA overall.

There is a small warning overall on revenue:

The Company expects 2026 full-year revenue to be broadly in line with expectations of high single-digit revenue growth

So it is a bit of a mystery why Cavendish doesn’t choose to adjust their forecasts today and maintain a full-year EBITDA number of £1.2m. Surely they are just setting the company up for a later warning?

However, in the longer term, there are some signs of optimism:

The Group has demonstrated strong commercial momentum, with the orderbook increasing significantly to £65 million, compared with £30 million at the start of 2026, providing much improved revenue visibility for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027 and 2028.

The problem is that even if they had perfect visibility out to 2028, the Cavendish forecasts put them on a forward P/E of 25.

Another positive is that they have no debt, which gives them the financial flexibility to trade through recent problems:

hVIVO's cash position was £13 million as at 30 June 2026 (31 December 2025: £14.3 million). This reflects positive working capital inflows from recent contract wins, with the Group retaining the financial flexibility to support ongoing investment in growth initiatives across the business.

Cavendish forecasts that this will drop to £8.8m by the year end, which may be optimistic given their FY EBITDA forecast now looks challenging. However, cash is expected to start to build again from a low point at the end of this year, and their solvency does not look in immediate danger.

Mark’s view

A much strengthened order book and sufficient cash to see them through the current weak trading suggest there may be some optimism about a potential recovery. However, with their broker forecasting a positive full-year EBITDA figure and the company only willing to commit to a positive H2 number, the chances of a further near-term warning look high.

In addition, even if they hit all their future numbers, they will be on a forward P/E of 25 for FY28, which seems far too high for a company with such a patchy profitability record. They have shown in the past their ability to grow revenue and profits and generate shareholder excitement by upgrading expectations. They may end up doing likewise again. However, it would be a brave move to expect this in the near term, given the H1 numbers.

Graham rated this RED following their huge profits warning in May last year, and we haven't looked at it since (probably for good reason!) I still see much to be negative about here, not least a negative EBITDA figure for H1. However, it seems that the cash burn may be coming to an end and that revenue will start growing modestly from here, hence they will probably survive. As such, I tend to reserve RED for companies that have no revenue, or an unsustainable business model, or who are insolvent, or are in clear need of additional equity finance. None of these is immediately of concern here, hence I think an AMBER/RED view probably more accurately reflects the clear overvaluation, but without an immediate insolvency risk.