Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 8th September 2026) - CCC, DNLM, SOM, JSG, XSG, G4M

Canada’s “counter-tariffs” against the US have gone into effect, matching US tariffs “dollar for dollar”. Hundreds of different types of goods are included (if you’re interested, the full list can be viewed here).

Closer to home, John Healey’s “Growth Speech” yesterday didn’t seem terribly newsworthy. One snippet that stood out was a commitment to “reducing the burden of business regulation by 25% by the end of this Parliament.” It doesn’t sound plausible to me, but it’s a nice idea!

Right, on with today’s company news…

Overnight market movements:

• The FTSE is down 0.3% at 10,780

• S&P 500 is unchanged at 7700

• Brent crude (November) is up 1.1% at $98.40/bbl

• Gold is up 0.2% at $4,415/oz

• Bitcoin is down 0.9% at $78,500

---

---

Companies Reporting

---

Graham's Section

Somero Enterprises (LON:SOM)

Up 7% at 258p (£133m) - Interim Results - Graham - GREEN ↑

Kudos to Roland for turning moderately positive on this in July, at 211p, after it upgraded expectations for FY26.

The positive momentum continues at today’s interim results:

FY26 guidance increased: revenue for the full year now expected to be approximately US$ 95m, with adjusted EBITDA of approximately US$ 19.5m and year-end net cash expected to be approximately US$ 29m, assuming the additional US$ 6m share repurchase authorization is fully executed prior to year end

Let’s check in with house broker Cavendish to get their new forecasts:

• The new $95m revenue forecast is nearly 5% higher than the previous forecast.

• The new $16.9m adj. EBIT forecast is 6% higher.

• The new 22.3 cent EPS forecast is 7.8% higher.

This confirms that the company is headed for attractive year-on-year growth: FY25 revenue was $88.9m, with EPS of 20 cent.

Under “strategic and operational highlights”, we read the following explanation of the company’s recent success:

New customer growth: contribution increased to 28% of total direct machine revenue (H1 2025: 21%)

Strong traction from recent products launched: Hammerhead Ride-on and S-15EZ Boomed screed launched in H2 2025 and S-22EZ+ Boomed screed and Viper Walk-Behind launched in H1 2026, contributing meaningful revenue

While the “continued stabilisation of our core markets” gets a mention from the CEO, it reads to me that the new products are an important part of the story here, particularly “Hammerhead”. In other words, this is not just a case of a favourable economy providing a tailwind. In the main US region, sales to new customers have increased as a percentage of the total (28% vs. 19% in H1 last year).

Net cash has improved year-on-year to $29.6m, but it was $33.2m at December 2025, so it has fallen over the six-month period. That’s understandable given that the company spent over $9m on dividends and buybacks. A new $6m buyback was announced in July and should begin shortly.

Outlook

New data centers and other AI-related infrastructure is boosting performance

U.S. private non-residential construction has continued to stabilize, with AI-driven digital infrastructure and related utility investment supporting activity, alongside a slowing pace of decline in other end markets including warehousing, manufacturing and retail. Customers continue to report healthy activity levels and strong backlogs extending into 2027.

Somero enters the second half with positive momentum and remains well positioned to benefit from improving market conditions, supported by its market-leading product portfolio, strong customer relationships and flexible cost model. The Board nevertheless remains mindful of continued macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, including tariffs, elevated interest rates and immigration policy.

Graham’s view

This company used to generate very strong ROE, and current performance demonstrates a recovery in the direction of its historic form.

Let’s do a quick calculation: average equity in H1 was £81.1m, and the company generated a clean after-tax net income of £6.7m. If I annualise that across H2, I get a strong ROE in the region of 16-17%. So it looks like these metrics are going to rise nicely this year:

It seems to me that the company has got its mojo back: I’m sure this is partly to do with the AI boom and the moderately strong US economy, but credit should also go to the new CEO, who has overseen a rejuvenation of the product set.

Let’s go fully GREEN on this Super Stock after strong consecutive upgrades to forecasts. The boom times are back?

---

Roland's Section

Computacenter (LON:CCC)

Down 3.8% at 5,385p (£6.2bn) - Half Year Results - Roland - AMBER ↓

(Disclosure: at the time of writing, Roland has a long position in CCC.)

In July, Mark commented that “the scale of the increase in H1 PBT” suggested there could be more to come. Today we get another upgrade to full-year guidance for this value-added IT reseller, which specialises in supporting larger customers and is benefiting from the data centre boom.

Following a strong start to the second half and a further increase in our committed product order backlog, we now expect adjusted PBT for full-year 2026 to be significantly ahead of current market expectations and to be no less than £380m.

The growth in these half-year figures is exceptional, especially for a FTSE 100 company:

• Revenue up 71.6% to £6,845.2m

• Gross profit up 30.5% to £657.9m

• Pre-tax profit up 94.8% to £142.6m

• Adjusted earnings up 94.1% to 101.9p per share

• Adjusted net funds up 11% to £308.7m vs H1 25 (FY25: £606m)

• Product order backlog at 30 June of £9.2bn (+323% vs June 25, +29.5% vs Dec 25)

There’s no secret about where this growth is coming from. While Computacenter’s higher-margin Services business saw revenue rise by 15.6% to £935m, the engine driving the business at the moment is Technology Sourcing, where revenue rose by 86% to £5.9bn as the company fits out new AI data centres with volumes of high-value equipment:

Technology Sourcing revenue increased by 88.8% in constant currency, principally driven by North America, where networking and data center volumes grew with hyperscale, neocloud and enterprise customers. The UK also delivered strong growth, particularly with neocloud customers. Our targeted growth with high-volume customers is driving significant gross profit momentum while reducing our gross margin percentage.

(neocloud: specialist data centre operators that rent out compute capacity to AI clients.)

Computacenter’s ability to meet this surge of demand hasn’t arisen by chance. The company has a longstanding policy of focusing on large enterprise and public sector customers and has invested in the infrastructure and skills needed to meet such demand over many years.

This is continuing, with a new integration centre under construction in Atlanta and the addition of a liquid cooling facility to its Hatfield site.

One key performance metric is “major customers” – those who have generated at least £1m of gross profit over the last 12 months. Encouragingly, this figure is still rising. The group ended the half year with 216 major customers. That’s a net increase of 18 over the last 12 months, although only one of these appears to have been added during H1:

Source: Computacenter H1 2026 presentation

North America & Acquisitions: the half-year growth in major customers includes eight major customers added through the acquisitions of AgreeYa and GAI in North America. These businesses were acquired for a total of c.$210m earlier this year. AgreeYa is a US professional services business, while GAI is a value-added reseller focused on the US federal government market – “a new growth opportunity”.

Both of these deals look well judged to me. They should support the group’s need to develop a sustainable service-led business in the US and find new opportunities for when AI-led growth eases.

Computacenter has operated in North America since 2005, but only began expanding more aggressively through acquisitions in 2018. This timing has proved very well-judged so far. North America now generates the majority of group profit:

Source: Computacenter H1 2026 presentation

UK & Europe: it wasn’t so long ago that Germany was Computacenter’s largest market by profit contribution. However, the group’s business in the EU’s largest economy is more dependent on services revenue and public sector spending, both of which have flagged somewhat.

H1 growth in Germany was not sufficient to offset higher operating expenses, resulting in a fall in profit.

Fortunately, performance in the UK was much stronger, with a 91% increase in Technology Sourcing revenue and a 7% increase in services revenue.

The laggard of the group remains the Western Europe division, where Computacenter reported another half-year loss:

• Germany: operating profit down 10.6% to £43.0m;

• UK: operating profit up 52.6% to £26.4m;

• Western Europe: operating loss reduced to £(4.9)m (H1 25: £(8.9)m).

I’ve included these figures to highlight how much the group’s valuation has come to depend on AI-led momentum in North America.

Outlook & updated profit guidance

As I commented in the Week Ahead, ultimately the AI boom will slow down when lenders and investors become unwilling to fund further spending. While I don’t know when this will happen, I am fairly confident that it will happen at some point.

Fortunately for shareholders, today’s upgraded guidance suggests this isn’t going to happen in 2026:

• 2026 adjusted pre-tax profit is now expected to be “no less than £380m”

• Previous consensus is given as £340.9m (£332m to £354m range)

Today’s upgrade represents an 11.4% increase from previous consensus.

I don’t have access to broker forecasts for an updated EPS estimate, but based on the tax rate guidance included in today’s results I estimate Computacenter’s adjusted net profit for the year could be around £268m, or perhaps c.250p per share.

That’s a 13% increase from the prior consensus shown on the StockReport of 221.3p per share.

All of this makes it interesting that Computacenter’s share price has actually fallen this morning:

One reason for this may be valuation. As we’ve flagged previously, this stock has re-rated hugely over the last year and now trades on a P/E rating that’s significantly above historic norms:

The StockReport valuation graphics are flagging up the company’s steep rating versus the wider market, too. I don’t think these metrics will change all that much after today’s upgrade:

Roland’s view

Computacenter is now one of my largest personal holdings, so I should preface this section by highlighting my obvious bias as a shareholder.

CEO Mike Norris has been in charge since 1994 and has a close relationship with founders Sir Peter Ogden and Philip Hulme. Collectively the founders still control more than half the stock through personal shareholdings and trusts.

As a shareholder, this rare situation (for a FTSE 100 company) gives me an unusually high level of confidence and trust in management.

I also take some comfort from the group’s long track record and excellent quality metrics:

Despite these positive factors, there’s no doubt in my mind that the valuation is becoming quite demanding.

I think the slowdown in the growth of the order backlog could also be significant. The company’s product order backlog was £9.3bn on 30 June 2026, 323% higher than one year earlier.

However, this backlog has only risen by 29.5% so far in 2026. Although there has been further growth in the order backlog since the end of June, it looks like demand is growing at a much lower rate than seen during the second half of 2025.

This is especially true as the impact of price inflation on many IT products means volume growth is likely to be lower than the increase in the value of the order backlog.

Is the tidal wave of AI-led spending approaching a peak? Maybe not yet, but I wonder if the endgame might be coming into view in the distance.

One potential warning flag for me is Computacenter’s increased monetisation of its receivables.

Today’s results highlight both the sale of receivables to support longer customer credit periods and the increased use of invoice financing to “manage working capital demands of specific customer projects or engagements”:

• Benefit of sale of receivables to cash position: £43.4m (June 25: £48.3m)

• Invoice financing amount outstanding: £140.5m (June 25: £50.9m, Dec 25: £38.8m)

In fairness, the increase in invoice financing may simply represent the unprecedented scale of the Technology Sourcing projects currently underway. In any case, I’m confident Computacenter will take a disciplined approach to both pricing and customer creditworthiness, so I’m not too worried by this situation.

Even so, I can’t help wondering if the company’s greater monetisation of its receivables may also reflect the increasingly convoluted investment flows that are being used to fund new AI data centres.

Verdict: I am pretty confident Computacenter will remain a well-run and market-leading business in this sector and I’m encouraged by recent US acquisitions.

However, I am also pretty confident that at some point we will see earnings growth slow, which could trigger a de-rating of the shares.

While timing the top is impossible, I’m always wary when I see a company’s shares fall following an upgrade. This tells me either that the upgrade was already priced in, or that the market is looking beyond the current year and guessing at a weaker future. There was no mention of 2027 guidance today.

As usual, the StockRanks tell the story here, with high Quality and Momentum scores but a very low ValueRank:

The current valuation is only being driven by momentum, in my view, so any sign that this is slowing could prompt a reversal. While the share price has risen by around 75% since the 2025 results were published in March, the StockRank has been falling steadily:

Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying more shares at the current price, as I think the downside risks are starting to mount up. To reflect this, I’m going to move our view down by one notch to neutral today.

---

Dunelm (LON:DNLM)

Down 12.6% at 775p (£1.59bn) - Preliminary Results & Strategy Update - Roland - AMBER ↓

(Disclosure: at the time of writing, Roland has a long position in DNLM.)

The old market adage is that profit warnings come in threes. More scientifically, our research here at Stockopedia has found that an extended period of weakness very often follows an initial warning.

Dunelm appears to be staying true to this playbook today. The homeware retailer’s full-year profits include its third profit warning since the start of 2026:

Let’s see what’s caused the damage.

FY26 results summary

Dunelm has a 52-week financial year and today’s numbers cover the period to 27 June 2026:

• Revenue up 3.1% to £1,825.6m

• Store-enabled LFL sales +0.8%

• Digital % total sales: 42% (FY25: 40%)

• Gross margin up 0.1% to 52.5%

• Pre-tax profit unchanged at £211.0m

• Earnings per share unchanged at 76.8p, in line with consensus

• Ordinary dividend up 2.2% to 45.5p

• Special dividend of 25.0p (FY25: 35.0p)

These backward-looking numbers are not terrible. The company has protected its gross margin and managed to deliver level profits in a tough consumer market. Market share is said to have risen by 0.1% to 7.9% (for combined homewares and furniture).

As usual for this business, the quality of these profits was high:

• Free cash flow: £154.8m (100% of after-tax profit)

• Operating margin: 12.3% (FY25: 12.5%)

• Return on Capital Employed (ROCE): 46.8% (FY25: 47.7%)

Prior to this morning, the stock was trading on c.11x FY26 earnings, with an 8% dividend yield. Clearly, the reason for today’s share price fall doesn’t lie with last year’s results or with the historic valuation.

This must mean that the issue lies with the outlook for the year(s) ahead.

FY27 Outlook & Strategy Update

I know many investors have mixed views about retailers who blame the weather for poor sales, especially as the reverse is rarely true. Unfortunately, that’s what has happened here:

As a result of the extended period of unusually hot weather, however, we saw significantly softer trading in first six weeks of FY27

In fairness, I can imagine that people may have been less focused on buying products such as bedding, rugs, lighting and cushions during a period when the need for these items has been much lower than usual.

The company does say that “we have seen better trading following cooler weather”.

However, newish CEO Clo Moriarty’s in-depth comments suggest to me that she has identified other issues within the business that need addressing:

Over the last year, we have taken a deep and honest look at our business and the opportunities ahead to better serve our customers and drive the Group's performance. This work has given us confidence that the opportunity in front of Dunelm is larger than we previously understood, but also that we need to evolve. The strength of our business and balance sheet means we are well placed to invest for the future and accelerate our growth trajectory

FY27 guidance has been provided in a separate strategy update RNS today. I’ll return to the strategy comments shortly, but the financial guidance for the current year suggests to me that real profits and free cash flow are likely to fall this year:

• Inflation of c.3% on FY26 operating cost base

• Cost savings of £25-30m, reinvested for growth

• Adjusted pre-tax profit “broadly in line with FY26”

• Capital expenditure of c.£60-70m (FY26: £43m), with up to 10 new store openings and c.30 refits/renewals

• Net debt to remain within target range of 0.2x - 0.6x EBITDA

I don’t have access to any broker forecasts, but my feeling from reading this is that adjusted profits will be slightly lower, while reported profits (and free cash flow) may be more materially lower. We will see.

FY27 consensus estimates prior to today were for earnings to rise by 2.5% to 78.6p in FY27, so this won’t necessarily result in a big downgrade. Even so, the negative trend seen since January is likely to be extended:

Strategy Update

Historically, this has been a market-leading business in its sector, with good profitability and generous cash-backed dividends. The group’s ownership by the founding Adderley family remains unchanged, so I would hope that the focus on dividends will also remain unchanged.

Today’s strategy update covers themes that Ms Moriarty has already flagged up previously:

• Opportunity for range simplification: in selected areas, the company believes it can remove up to 40% of the store range “with limited impact on sales”, releasing space for higher-productivity categories.

• Improval of store layout, promotional activity and digital presence

• Leverage customer loyalty and target a greater share of wallet: 85% of the UK population doesn’t shop with Dunelm frequently and “even our most loyal customers” only spend around 20% of their home spend at Dunelm.

• Improve customer satisfaction, particularly with home delivery services.

These changes seem logical enough to me and are consistent with the group’s traditional value & volume-focused business model. Moriarty has an extensive retail background at Sainsbury’s, so hopefully has the ability to deliver on these promises.

Roland’s view

Anecdotally, my nearest Dunelm always feels a little tired and cluttered inside. Some changes to presentation and stocking could definitely improve the feel of the store.

It looks like shareholders will have to endure a couple of years of increased spending before the results of Moriarty’s revised strategy become apparent. I would guess that special dividends may also be off the table during this period, at least unless consumer spending becomes stronger.

Based on today’s guidance, I estimate a forward P/E of 10-11x. On balance, I think this is potentially attractive for a business that’s historically generated very high returns on equity. In my view, the fundamental attractions of this business have not necessarily changed much.

However, it’s disappointing to see a further profit warning today. It’s probably also worth considering the risk that consumer spending will remain subdued.

Overall, I think it’s prudent to take a more cautious view of the business until some signs of positive momentum occur.

I was AMBER/GREEN on Dunelm previously, so I’m going to move down by one notch to take a neutral view today.