Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 22nd Sep 2026) - SRB, BPM, LUCE, MAB1, YU.

It’s been another quiet day for macro news. The lead story on Bloomberg is that global AI stocks have rallied thanks to Meta’s new AI agent app, Muse, having risen to the top of Apple’s charts for free apps:

The strong debut is helping revive confidence in the AI trade after concerns over lofty valuations triggered a July rout, and recent warnings from tech leaders about the existential threats from advanced models fueled fresh volatility.

The newly-launched app is only available in the United States at the moment, but it’s supposed to be very helpful for everyday tasks. I guess we’ll find out soon!

Personally, I wouldn’t read too much into Muse becoming the most popular free app. The only way AI valuations will make sense is through profitability: the question of adoption has already been answered in the affirmative, in my view.

If we were told in 2014 that downloads of Flappy Bird had triggered a rally in global stock markets, I’m sure we would all have found that rather silly! How different is this, really?

Overnight market movements:

• The FTSE is up 0.2% at 10,755

• S&P 500 is unchanged at 7,770

• Brent crude (November) is up 1.7% at $102.05/bbl

• Gold is down 0.6% at $4,320/oz

• Bitcoin is down 1.9% at $85,350

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Mark Simpson joins me today.

I'm sorry I've run out of steam, I'll try to catch up with Fonix later in the week! Cheers. Spreadsheet accompanying this report: link.

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Companies Reporting

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Graham's Section

B.P. Marsh & Partners (LON:BPM)

Down 1.6% at 654.5p (£236m) - Trading Update - Graham - AMBER/GREEN ↓

[At the time of publication, Graham has a long position in BPM]

This is a handy little update from this investor in the insurance sector, covering H1 (February to July), mostly serving as an overview of the past six months.

BPM has a very long track record of successfully compounding its capital, and the process continues.

Overview:

• Three new investments in H1, one disposal

• One follow-on investment in Pantheon Specialty Group

• “Robust pipeline of new opportunities, supported by attractive market conditions”

I mentioned the follow-on investment into Pantheon here and then here.

It’s important to highlight that BPM’s investments do not make for a particularly well-diversified portfolio, and Pantheon plays a big role in this lack of diversification. At the last full-year results, Pantheon represented nearly 30% of total assets:

BPM now owns 41% of Pantheon, with the most recent investment happening at a £275m valuation. So that’s almost £113m of notional value now tied up in this investment (at the full-year results, BPM’s stake was valued at £107m).

If you’re interested in researching this Pantheon Specialty business in more detail, here’s its website. It launched in 2023 and is now a “full-sevice London market wholesale insurance broker”.

From today’s update:

Pantheon has established itself as a high-quality, scalable specialty broking platform, underpinned by an experienced leadership team and long-standing relationships with global brokers, MGAs and carriers…

Revenue is budgeted to approach £27.7m in the 2026 financial year, up from c.£23.8m in 2025. Margins remain strong and the business continues to generate significant cash, supporting further reinvestment and growth.

New business opportunities: there were “45 new business enquiries during the Period (31 July 2025: 32)”, I’m not sure how important this metric is for BPM shareholders - surely what matters is that there are a few great opportunities, and the number of new business enquiries is secondary?

Liquidity: cash has fallen from £49.5m to £37.4m. I’m totally comfortable with this, as excessive cash drag has been a risk here from my perspective. After some very successful investments and disposals in recent years, BPM has had more cash than it can deploy!

Cash outflows over the six months, rounding numbers for simplicity:

• £10m of portfolio investments

• £18m of loans to the portfolio

• £13m of dividends to BPM shareholders

• £1m of share buybacks

Cash inflows, again using round numbers:

• £21m of portfolio disposals/defcon received

• £10m of loans to the portfolio repaid.

This all seems pretty healthy to me. Cash is being used, rather than sitting idle, with a nice mix of cash flowing to and from the portfolio, and shareholders also getting paid:

The Board remains comfortable that the Group has sufficient resources to support the existing portfolio, pursue its current pipeline of opportunities and reward shareholders.

Insurance industry outlook: the insurance industry continues to see falling rates.

…global commercial insurance rates declined by 6% in the second quarter of 2026, following a 5% reduction in the first quarter and marking the eighth consecutive quarter of declining rates… The Group’s focus on specialist and niche areas of the insurance market provides some resilience to broader rating pressures.

If history offers any clue, I think BPM’s portfolio of MGAs/brokerages should do ok in this environment. Of course there’s no guarantee. But volumes seem to be more important than pricing.

Graham’s view

I have a modest stake here reflecting my very positive impression of BPM management, while also acknowledging that there’s a lot of trust involved.

I’m keenly aware that if they’ve made dud investments, I probably won’t be able to figure this out in advance. I’ll wake up some day to the news that some investees have gone bad and that net asset value has been written down.

The reasons I’m comfortable taking this risk with a small portion of my portfolio are:

1. The track record and integrity of management (which we’ve discussed before)

2. The discount to NAV.

NAV was £360m in January 2026.

Subtract £1m of share buybacks and £13m of dividends, and we are still left with NAV of £346m, before any valuation movements.

There are 36.2 million shares outstanding, so I get a NAV per share of 955.8p (Jan 2026: 959.8p). But we really need to see what else happens at the interims. But it seems like the discount to NAV at the current share price is in the region of 31-32% (or in pound terms, well over £100m).

Stockopedia gets a similar answer:

One word of warning: I do think that today’s update could be interpreted as a profit warning at Pantheon Speciality. When they made their follow-on investment into Pantheon in April, BPM said:

Revenue growth from c.£23.8m in the 2025 Financial Year to approaching £30m for the 2026 Financial Year

Profit before tax budgeted to be in excess of £15m in the 2026 Financial Year, representing significant growth since inception

Today they said “Revenue is budgeted to approach £27.7m in the 2026 financial year, up from c.£23.8m in 2025” and they didn’t provide any PBT estimate.

So the expected growth rate at Pantheon has been slashed from approaching 26% to only 16%.

It’s supposedly a high-margin business, so I’d still expect a decent PBT number. But perhaps it will be a little trickier to justify Pantheon’s £275m valuation on the basis of this year’s results? Just something to watch out for.

I’ve been GREEN on this and while personally I still have a lot of conviction in it as a long-term hold, I’m going to temporarily put us on AMBER/GREEN today, because it does seem to me that growth at Pantheon Specialty has slowed down a little.

The StockRanks would approve of my more measured take:

Hopefully I can go back to GREEN soon, maybe even at the interims, when there’s a stronger update.

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Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) (LON:MAB1)

Up 0.5% to 385p (£223m) - Interim Results - Graham - AMBER =

Mortgage Advice Bureau issued an unfortunate profit warning earlier this month, covered by Roland.

Their adjusted PBT guidance for FY 2026 was cut from £43.4m - the consensus figure - to only £38m.

The main problem, as outlined by Roland, was slower-than-expected growth at specialist mortgage broker Fluent Money, for which it seems that MAB might have overpaid (they paid £72.7m for 75% of it).

Today’s trading update with the interim results is “in line with recently revised expectations for 2026”.

The overall picture seems pretty good to me:

• H1 revenue up 8.6% to £161m

• Adj. PBT +9.2% to £14.8m

• Net debt £15m, leverage multiple 0.4x

They let us know that their market share of new mortgage lending is stable at 8.2%.

Comment by Founder-CEO Peter Brodnicki:

“MAB delivered a resilient performance in the first half, with total mortgage completions¹ up 16% to £16.5bn (H1 2025: £14.2bn), despite mortgage pricing volatility creating a complex environment for customers and advisers. Growth was led by refinancing, particularly Product Transfers, which supported strong activity levels but carry a lower revenue contribution than purchase lending.

Mr. Brodnicki points out that there is “increasing uncertainty around inflation and the path of borrowing costs” - a diplomatic way of putting it!

On top of the interest rate headwind, the “the activation and build-up of digital lead flows from Fluent’s partner relationships has taken longer than expected”. He still seems confident that Fluent will grow as expected, but on a longer schedule into 2027.

He also says that fixed-rate mortgage maturities in 2027 will be around 30% higher year-on-year. It’s important to bear in mind, however, that remortgages are lower-margin business than purchase mortgages/FTBs. In H1, “purchase activity was resilient but has yet to develop meaningful momentum”.

Growth in the mortgage market has been heavily biased towards remortgages rather than purchase:

Given the inflation/interest picture, they “do not expect a meaningful recovery in purchase activity in the short term”.

Graham’s view

I’ve long viewed this as a quality business, and I think that today’s numbers continue to back up that idea, even on lower guidance.

The company continues to demonstrate decent KPIs:

• “Productivity” (revenue per adviser) is almost unchanged from last year at £74,400.

• Gross margin up 1.7 percentage points to 29.4% thanks to overall growth.

• Adjusted PBT margin down 0.6 percentage points to 9.2% due to lower-margin refinancing activity and higher central costs.

However, the cash performance wasn’t great: there was only £12.7m of cash generated from operating activities (H1 last year: £17.6m), and net debt increased significantly over the six month period. This reflects £9m of dividends and various acquisition-related payments adding up to about £6m.

Graham’s view

I remain a fan of this business, despite the Fluent Money disappointment. It’s a successful franchise business with the quality metrics to back it up.

As a value play, I really like it and I’m tempted to add it to my personal portfolio:

But it’s no surprise that I’m tempted: Contrarian is my favourite investment style. And this is now a heavily contrarian pick. Given how recent the profit warning was, I am going to leave us on AMBER today.

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Mark's Section

Serabi Gold (LON:SRB)

Flat at 271p (£205m) - results for the three-and six-month periods ended 30 June 2026 - Mark (I hold) - AMBER/GREEN

[At the time of publication, Mark has a long position in Serabi]

The six-month results look pretty strong here:

• EBITDA for the six-month period of $44.4 million (corresponding six-month period of 2025: $26.3 million).

• Profit after taxation for the six-month period of $30.1 million (corresponding six-month period of 2025: $18.9 million).

• Earnings per share of 39.71 cents (corresponding six-month period of 2025: 24.99 cents).

It is worth noting that these would have been even stronger if they had sold as many ounces as they had produced. Roughly 1,700 ounces went into inventory. This is normal for a gold producer where gold is transported and sold in batches. However, this gives some variability in results as the vast majority of costs are typically incurred in the mining and processing, not transport and refining.

However, this is very much a tale of two quarters. The EBITDA for the 3 months to 30th June was $15.2m versus $29.2m for Q1. PAT is back to the levels of last year, when the gold price was around $3k/oz:

Part of this is increased tax rates, and there is some good news on this front today:

Superintendência do Desenvolvimento da Amazônia ("SUDAM") has formally approved the renewal of the Corporate Income Tax (IRPJ) reduction incentive for the Palito Gold Complex ("Palito"), located in Pará State, Brazil.

• With this approval, the Brazilian nominal corporate income tax rate applicable to Palito will be maintained at approximately 15.25% (reduced from 34%), extending the benefit for an additional 10 years, through 2035.

This actually has a significant positive impact on the long-term NPV for Serabi.

However, the real negative impact on this quarter was rising costs:

This is what they say about this in their more detailed Q2 report on their website:

Operating costs are 45% higher than the same period of 2025 reflecting the 9% increase in ounces sold as well as the strengthening of the Brazilian Real in comparison to the US Dollar. Specific cost increases reflect higher plant and site costs, including increased diesel consumption for power generation, elevated use of processing consumables, and expanded site infrastructure and maintenance activities.

One of the big impacts will be diesel prices, given they operate the plant via generators and truck Coringa ore. Plus, labour costs will be sensitive to the exchange rate. So these rises are perhaps understandable. However, given the scale of the increase, I would have liked to see more commentary on these. Guidance on whether these costs are now the new normal or due to one-off factors would be particularly useful.

One positive point is that both sites are planned to connect to grid power in 2026, which should reduce the exposure to diesel prices. However, if this had actually happened by now, I think they would have told us.

Of course, costs are not the only worry that has held back Serabi’s share price in the last year. Investors have become increasingly worried about the company’s license to operate at Coringa. The company has become increasingly reliant on Coringa ore over the last 18 months:

Indeed, the company’s guidance of 53k was reiterated today, and it specifically mentions this as a risk:

As the Company reported in the Q2-2026 operational update, production guidance is set at 53,000 plus ounces of gold. This target has been based on one of either of two assumptions. Firstly, the GUIA licence issued for Coringa from the ANM (Ministry of Mines) under which the Company is currently permitted to transport annually 100,000 tonnes of ore to Palito was to be increased to 200,000 tonnes. Alternatively, the guidance target also assumed receipt of the full mining concession by Q4-2026, thereby lifting all tonnage constraints at Coringa. In both scenarios, the Company would be able to transport much greater volumes of ore in Q4-2026 and utilise the soon-to-be-commissioned fourth ball mill at Palito.

I may have been a bit dim before, but I think this is the first time I’ve realised the link between guidance and the license. The problem appears to be that they will max out their tonnage before the end of 2026 and hence have to rely only on Palito ore.

However, in both cases - an extension of the existing temporary license and the issue of the full license - the company appears to be confident these will arrive. For example, on the full license:

With respect to the Full Mining Concession, the two fundamental approvals required are in their final stages. The approval of the Indigenous Component Study (ECI) is now very close, and it only remains for the Federal Agency for Indigenous Lands (FUNAI) Board of Directors to approve the study. The FUNAI Legal and Technical departments are recommending approval. We still anticipate this happening in Q4-2026. In addition, the approval for the change of land use from Agriculture to Mineral Exploitation by the Land Registry (INCRA) is also now in its final stages, which has been technically and legally approved. The final steps are for the Directors of INCRA to approve at the Board level of INCRA. The Board of Serabi also anticipates this happening in Q4-2026. Once these two approvals from FUNAI and INCRA are received, SEMAS can issue Serabi with an Operating Licence.

This sounds positive to me, and would be a game changer. I suspect that this will slip beyond the end of the year, given the way bureaucracy tends to work. However, even with a short delay, the ability to use unlimited amounts of Coringa ore in the future would catapult production upwards.

Forecasts:

Where does this leave us?

Given the progress, I think they will keep Coringa going, but I have to raise my cost estimates to match the Q2 numbers. However, I can be more relaxed on tax rate assumptions:

This gives around 107c for FY EPS, quite some way short of 137c in the Stock Report, so on one level, this could be considered a miss.

However, I would expect net cash to build to somewhere around the $100m mark by year-end despite increased exploration spend. The market cap is around $273m, giving an EV of around $173m and an EV/EBIT of around 1.7x.

FWIW, I still get an NPV10 of at least double the current market cap at the current gold price, with a shift in tax rates largely offsetting the near-term higher costs.

Mark’s view

This is a bad news/good news update for me. The cost increases in Q2, combined with relatively weak production from Palito, have meant profitability declined significantly in Q2. I think we have to assume that these cost levels are the new normal, at least until grid power connection is confirmed.

However, there is good news on the tax rate and progress appears to be being made on the key license issues. There is certainly a short-term risk that they don’t get one of these options in before they have to stop trucking Coringa ore, which would negatively impact short-term results. However, I think the risk that Coringa will never be able to provide ore to Palito in the future is low.

The company continues to trade at a very low valuation multiple, even assuming Q2’s costs are the new normal. On a forward EV/EBIT of less than 2, I think we should remain broadly positive. AMBER/GREEN

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Luceco (LON:LUCE)

Down 6% at 222p (£378m) - Interim Results - Mark - AMBER/GREEN ↑

When I previewed these results on the Week Ahead, I noted the revenue and operating profit figures were given in the trading statement, so the three key things to watch were second-half guidance, adjustments, and cash generation. Let’s go through each one:

Second-half guidance:

With only £15.8m of operating profit booked in H1, there was a clear H2-weighting required to reach the £40m full-year guidance. So it is especially good news that the outlook is upgraded today:

The Board now expects Adjusted Operating Profit for 2026 to be ahead of market expectations.

The only research I can see is from Longspur. They increase their adjusted operating profit estimate from £40.9 to £41.9m. This is just a 2% upgrade, so it is perhaps more a reflection of the tightness of the range of broker estimates (which were given as £40.5m to £41.0m, before this update).

Still, it shows trading momentum behind the business. They don’t break it out as a segment, and this is already known, but it's worth repeating that the growth here is largely driven by EV charging infrastructure:

Growth engine of Energy Transition delivered growth of 119.5% year-on-year, with the core business continuing to perform well with growth of 6.5%

Last year, core organic growth was negative, and the UK housing market is going through challenges, so I think even 6.5% core organic growth is reasonably positive.

Adjustments:

They didn’t make an acquisition in the period but still managed to book £0.4m of acquisition costs, so this bears watching closely in the future. The rest of the £2.0m will be amortisation:

Perhaps also worrying is the appearance of a £2.5m charge for CEO transition. This is described as:

All costs associated with transition from prior to new CEO, including remuneration, recruitment and share-based payment charges

It surely doesn’t cost £2.5m to search on LinkedIn and run a few interviews. So my fear here is that there has been some kind of golden hello or goodbye. A look at the cash flow statement shows Share-Based Payments jump from £0.7m to £2.4m, so the bulk may well be SPB. This may well be new CEO options, but if so, why not say this? It seems to me that a retiring CEO who owns 15% of the company shouldn’t need incentivising to remain involved in hand-over, via options or anything similar. Until we can see more detail in the annual report, this is a black mark for the board, in my opinion. The good news is this should hopefully be a one-off.

Cash generation:

Net debt is up slightly, but the leverage ratio is down because EBITDA is higher.

Working capital flows are largely behind this, with £8.8m going into inventory and other minor changes taking a £19.4m operating cash flow figure down to just £7.2m after working capital.

Cash taxes and investment activities meant free cash flow was negative for the period, and the dividend and share buyback were funded out of debt.

They upped the interim dividend by 17%, so they must feel confident that these working capital flows will reverse in H2. This is one aspect to keep an eye on, as the debt level has worried the market (unnecessarily IMO) in the past and saw the shares dip as low as 70p in 2022 due to these concerns. Another concern is that debt levels may constrain acquisitions, which have historically been one of their main growth engines. (SyncEV, which is now behind the revenue growth in 2026, was acquired in 2022.) They say they continue to “...pursue selective bolt‑on acquisitions, consistent with our capital allocation policy.” We are more likely to see some minor additions than a game-changing acquisition.

Valuation:

Despite a 91 Stock Rank, the Value Rank is low enough that the algorithms classify this as a High Flyer, not a Super Stock:

Despite today’s minor upgrade (Longspur go to 17.7p EPS versus 17.5p consensus in the Stock Report), the forward P/E is 13. This is around the middle of where the stock typically trades:

This may be why the market has sold off on today’s upgrade (a jump in the share price yesterday in anticipation of these results may also have been a contributor)

However, I have always been a fan of the company’s execution. The business itself sounds rather mediocre, but the quality metrics are great. They consistently generate returns on capital in excess of their cost of capital and, through organic and inorganic growth, have delivered significant shareholder value over the years. In light of this, a forward P/E of 13 perhaps looks like good value.

Perhaps more worrying is the lack of enthusiasm from Longspur Research. Their note is described as a marketing communication, which means that it is corporate-sponsored equity research. In such cases, investors may expect a certain optimism in valuation methodologies.

This research is no different, as they choose to use a 8.5% discount rate, saying:

We have valued Luceco using a DCF approach with a discount rate of 8.5% using the median beta of comparator companies. In our central case valuation, we have assumed healthy performance of the core business, combined with strong growth in the Portable Power segment coming from the Energy Transition (EV charging). This gives us a central case valuation of GBp 257 per share. Our low case assumes 3% revenue growth with flat margins from FY27-FY30, giving a valuation of GBp 206. In our upside valuation, we have modelled revenue growth and margins increasingly supported by Energy Transition contribution. This gives an upside valuation of GBp 282.

Typically, this can be thought of as the return investors would accept to hold the company's equity. The historical returns of the stock market as a whole are around 10% pa, which is why many DCFs use a 10% discount rate. Should we consider Luceco to be less risky than the wider market, and hence accept a lower return? I’m not sure about that, given the debt and cyclical end markets, regardless of what the “median beta of comparator companies” is!

Anyway, with this discount rate, they come up with a range of 202-282p. Their price target is just 16% above the current price, which doesn’t seem like a big return to aim for.

From what I can tell, other brokers such as Peel Hunt and Jefferies have Price Targets above £3/share, but without seeing the assumptions used to get there, I deploy a certain amount of scepticism.

Mark’s view

Despite a rather lacklustre upgrade, at least from the one broker we can see, this is a company trading ahead and on a reasonable rating. I have a few concerns regarding the CEO transition costs and the short-term cash generation. However, I continue to rate their execution very highly, and this strength is reflected in a return on capital consistently above their cost of capital.

We have been neutral here most recently, reflecting the retirement of the long-running CEO and the subsequent sale of some of his shares. However, with a new CEO in place and given the current positive trading momentum, could we afford to be a bit more charitable with our view? I think we could. AMBER/GREEN.

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Yu (LON:YU.)

Down 4% at 1,731p (£314m) - Results for the six months to 30 June 2026 - Mark - NO VIEW (our previous stance: GREEN)

This is a strong half for this energy supplier to SMEs. Meter points supplied was up 43%, energy supplied rose 25%, leading to a 19% increase in Revenue.

However, things are less rosy as you go down the income statement. Adjusted EBITDA only rose by 4%, and PBT declined by 4%.

They have been hit by both a reduction in gross margin from 13.6% to 12.6% and operating costs rising by around 19%.

However, they say they are trading in line for the full year, which would see EPS rise by around 5%.

The Group is on target to deliver Revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS metrics for FY26 in-line with current market expectations, despite a backdrop of market uncertainty.

Plus cash flow appears to be reasonable, delivering £38m of operating cash in flow (only slightly down from £40m last year).

My concerns:

However, the good news appears to end there. I have to say I am not an expert on energy company accounts but a few things stand out from the cash flow statement.

There are two big numbers, and both have jumped:

Firstly, they appear to be capitalising customer acquisition costs. While this may be perfectly normal accounting practice, I personally don’t like this. It can flatter profits, especially for a company pursuing growth.

Secondly, they may have booked the costs for paying the renewable obligation but not yet paid this out.

The risk is that the benefits from the customer acquisition may prove illusory and the costs of the renewable obligation very real.

In both cases, the absolute value of these is increasing on the balance sheet, making the risk greater over time:

I have no idea if any of this is realistic. However, with these sort of characteristics, I’d want the company to have a spotless reputation in every other sphere. The 5% decline in their Trustpilot score from 3.8 to 3.8 on their highlights a potential issue.

I know the temptation is to only leave a review when things go wrong, but some 25% of all reviews are 1*, and Yu have a paid Trustpilot subscription which means they actively ask customers to leave a positive review.

I won’t repeat what the accusations of the 1* reviewers are because I cannot independently verify them. However, if just some of these are accurate then it gives me some very serious concerns.

One thing that may back up these concerns is the large level of doubtful debt as a proportion of trade receivables:

This may well just be because SMEs are struggling with high energy prices at the moment. The company say that they have a “consistent performance on customer bad debt.” However, it may also be a sign that many customers don’t believe they owe Yu what they claim they do. I just have no way of making a judgement on this either way.

The counterpoint:

Despite a hard to fully untangle cash flow statement, the company pays an increasing 4% dividend and has £128m of net cash. It is hard for things to go that wrong that these don’t give investors a significant buffer against adverse outcomes.

Mark’s view

I’ve got to say, I’m in a bit of a quandary. I respect the views of my fellow commentators greatly, which is why we so rarely see big changes of views on the DSMR, despite multiple writers. Roland upgraded this to GREEN in July following the trading update that produced these results.

The truth is that if the reported profit numbers are an accurate reflection of the long-term cash flow generation of the business then the current valuation should make the investment case a strong one:

However, would I own shares here given those TrustPilot reviews and the cash flow statement? Absolutely not.

In light of this I’m going to cop out and give it NO VIEW.