Daily Stock Market Report (Wed 15th July 2026) - BKS, HTG, DOCS, AT.

The 20% Hormuz “reimbursement fee” for the United States, mooted by President Trump, has been rapidly dropped:

I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States...

Trump said that leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had all urged him to change the plan.

In other news, US CPI fell 0.4% month-on-month in June, according to data released yesterday.

It was a larger fall than the 0.1% decline that markets had expected, and it resulted in a year-on-year inflation rate of 3.5% (vs. 3.8% expected). This is still much higher than the Fed’s official 2% target (although the Fed prefers to use Core PCE, rather than CPI).

Overnight market movements:

• The FTSE is down 0.25% at 10,490

• S&P 500 is up 0.25% at 7,565

• Brent crude (September) is up 0.65% at $85.40/bbl

• Gold is down 0.5% at $4,035/oz

• Bitcoin is up 0.5% at $64,900

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Mark Simpson joins me today.

Spreadsheet accompanying this report: link.

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Companies Reporting

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Graham's Section

Dr Martens (LON:DOCS)

Up 1% at 73.5p (£711m) - AGM Trading Update - Graham - AMBER/GREEN ↑

I’ve been growing increasingly curious about this one, a 2021 float that bombed:

I upgraded us to a neutral stance in May at the full-year results.

Under a new CEO (since January 2025), there have been signs of improved financial performance, and promises of future operational leverage. Net debt has been on the decline, and there’s a yield of c. 3.5%.

Today’s update (emphasis added):

Trading since the start of this financial year has been in line with expectations and our outlook and guidance for FY27 are unchanged. We are focused on our ambition to become the world's most-desired premium footwear brand and are on track with our strategic objectives for FY27, as shared in our results on 19th May, which are:

- Consumer: Drive full price revenue mix in UK and DACH

- Product: Successfully introduce an innovative new sandals range

- Markets: Launch new retail concepts in key cities globally

- Organisation: Unlock operating model and technology benefits

The company’s largest market is the US (about 40% of revenues, I think). It “continues to grow, with wholesale particularly encouraging”.

Graham’s view

After only recently switching from negative to neutral, I’m inclined to further upgrade our stance on this one today.

It now qualifies as a Super Stock:

The last time I checked, it was merely Contrarian. But momentum has been improving.

Technically, it’s still within the 50p-100p range:

Earnings forecasts have been fluctuating:

The P/E multiple is about 13-14x:

I’m going to resist the temptation to go fully GREEN on this today, as that might be premature. But I have no issue at all going AMBER/GREEN.

Today’s “in line” update gives us some hope that EPS forecasts might have stabilised, that the company’s attempts to “unlock” its operating model are working, and that this 50p-100p range for the share price might be the bottom.

As a reminder, this is a brand owner that enjoys extremely high public recognition: here are YouGov’s fashion & clothing rankings sorted by “popularity” (right-hand side, 59% score) rather than “fame” (left-hand side, 94% score).

(Disclosure: I’m long NXT)

I always appreciate a well-known and popular brand, and Dr. Martens qualifies as top-tier in that regard.

Of course, that was true at its IPO, too. The difference now, compared to then, is that the share price is 80% lower. This has got my attention!

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Mark's Section

Beeks Financial Cloud (LON:BKS)

Down 7% at 200p (£147m) - FY26 Trading Update - Mark - BLACK (AMBER/RED ↓)

Roland had previously commented on the race for Beeks to book enough revenue to meet expectations. In March, he estimated there was a £4.5m shortfall in revenue visibility needed to meet full-year forecasts.

However, in June there was a flurry of contract announcements. With revenue recognition on these often having a significant proportion being able to be booked on signing, these may have saved the day:

• North American Exchange Operator ($3.0M): A 5-year software contract for Beeks Analytics and Market Edge Intelligence in New York, which expanded an existing deployment

• Global Tier 1 Investment Bank ($4.8M): A 5-year agreement for their Market Edge Intelligence platform, marking the first deployment of the AI solution at Tier 1 bank scale.

• Global Tech Customer & Strategic Partner (£1.7M): Three separate contracts including a 34-month software deal, a £0.6m Proximity Cloud contract, and a US$0.8m Private Cloud expansion with a strategic partner.

So the big question is, did they? The answer is not quite:

FY26 Revenue is expected to increase by 11% to approximately £40.0m (FY25: £35.9m)

Their broker, Canaccord had previously forecast £41m in revenue, so this is a miss but not a catastrophic one. This is what the company says on profitability:

…with underlying EBITDA growth of 18% to approximately £16.0m (FY25: £13.6m) and underlying profit before tax growth of 13% to approximately £6.2m (FY25: £5.5m). On a constant currency basis, Beeks has achieved revenue growth of 12% (£40.7m) and underlying profit before tax growth of 18% to £6.5m.

EBITDA is not a good measure for a business that capitalises development costs and, following their transition to a Revenue-Sharing Pricing Model, is increasingly absorbing the upfront capital costs to build and deploy the trading infrastructure. Clients "rent" the cloud environment, reducing their initial technology investment. Depreciation is now a real cost for Beeks, especially in an environment where latency matters and hence infrastructure lifespan is limited.

Underlying PBT of £6.5m is a 7% miss on Canaccord’s previous estimate. Enough for me to rate this as a sort of soft BLACK today. However, again this is a relatively minor miss and this is a company with a long history of not quite hitting expectations but still growing strongly. Canaccord also suggests that currency moves played a part in this miss. However, I am a little sceptical. The pound-dollar rate has to be the key one here, and while this has been volatile, there has been no defined trend over the last six months and today’s rate is around the average for the period. They would appear to have been quite unlucky with the timing of contracts or costs for FX to be the main reason for this miss.

Perhaps more worrying is this:

Gross cash at year end was £5.37m (FY25: gross cash £7.36m), with net cash of approximately £0.63m (30 June 2025: £6.96m).

Net cash was £3.29m at 31 December, so the cash outflow was £2.66m for the period. While Canaccord consider the rest of the figures broadly in line, the cash here is definitely a miss:

Net cash of £0.6m is shy of our £3.7m forecast, implying FCF of c.-£3.5m due to 2H capex for Proximity & Exchange Cloud deployments ramping in FY27 as well as collections for software deals signed late in the year falling into FY27+.

There is presumably a working capital aspect to this, with deals signed late in the period. However, assuming these deals were signed under the now-typical revenue-sharing pricing model, the capex associated with them will hit Beeks in FY27 as well. Both the “Major FX Broker Proximity Cloud Expansion” announced in April and the “Major FX Global Technology Customer Proximity & Private Cloud Wins” in June will have significant hardware components.

These contracts come at a time when the global tech sector is experiencing massive "chipflation," with DRAM prices up 171% year-over-year and server memory costs soaring. To help support these exact infrastructure rollouts amid rising chip prices, Beeks launched “Theia” in May 2026. This is a high-performance, GPU-accelerated dedicated server line built specifically for capital markets, and it will mitigate these effects somewhat.

Canaccord don't appear to have updated the table in their note in response to this trading update, and says they will review forecasts with the FY26 results, which are released in October, so we don’t really have an up-to-date view of near-term cash flow expectations. Their committed facilities provide them with £5.4m of gross cash to meet these capex requirements. However, another period of £3-4m cash outflow could leave them a bit too close for comfort.

Given that this cash outflow is funding capex, the banks may be happy to lend more. However, with the market having been relatively kind to the company lately, and a £147m market cap, they may see a small equity raise as the easy way to ensure they retain a robust cash position.

Mark’s view

I’ve always been a little sceptical of Beeks. I’ve never doubted their ability to grow their revenue. But they have always been a relatively capital intensive business, as contract wins often require them to fund the up front IT infrastructure. As such, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay a particularly high multiple for that growth. However, many others take the opposite view.

I view Beeks very similar to Ocado. Where shareholders willingness to fund customer capex at high multiples gives a long runway for growth. It is just really hard to tell if the biggest attraction for customers is the technology product, or the upfront capex being funded.

For both companies, this dynamic gives them scale and the ability to develop long-term high margin recurring revenue streams, with the hope that in time they can transition to a more capex light model. Beeks certainly seem further on in this journey, as unlike Ocado, they do manage to be consistently profitable. However, generating free cash flow has been more of a challenge.

The big miss on net cash together with what I consider very small misses on revenue and profits, mean I am willing to call this BLACK today.

Despite a Stock Rank that was 17, Roland was willing to increase his view here to AMBER in early June due to its mid-teens forward rating and in line trading statement.

With today’s slight miss, the chance of an equity raise perhaps increasing, and a 20+ forward multiple, I think we should probably revert back to our previously more cautious view of AMBER/RED.

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Hunting (LON:HTG)

Up 5% at 473p (£686m) - H1 2026 Trading Update - Mark - AMBER =

Recent history:

Hunting has confused me of late. A year or so ago, the company's outlook appeared to be improving. The share price had bottomed around £2.50 and was still trading at a significant discount to tangible book value, plus there were indications that they would implement a relatively large share buyback. Thankfully, Graham recognised the opportunity and gave the company a GREEN view.

However, when the company reported results at the end of August, I was more cautious, even though I held the shares at the time. The share price had risen to £3.27, but I commented that the rise was not backed by fundamentals as the EPS trend was backwards:

Fast forward to today, and the trend of downgrades has continued:

Yet the share price had doubled off the lows. What appeared to be a sensible move to start a buyback when the stock looked relatively cheap, now looks suboptimal as the valuation metrics no longer look particularly favourable:

When we last looked at the company on the DSMR, Graham reflected this with a more measured AMBER view.

Today’s update:

These are the key points:

H1 2026 EBITDA of c.$62 million, consistent with the 40:60 phasing of full-year earnings guidance issued in March 2026.

H1 2026 EBITDA margin of c.12%, reflecting the continued rebalancing of the earnings profile of the Group towards higher growth segments of the global oil and gas market.

These are said to be in line with expectations:

2026 full year EBITDA guidance of between $145-$155 million is maintained, with EBITDA margin guidance unchanged at c.13%-14%.

Some quick maths shows that an exact 60/40 split would see them hit the upper end of $155m EBITDA. However, this requires some margin improvement to get there.

Last year, they reported that EBITDA increased by 7%, to $135.7m on a 13% margin. The mid-point of the current range would be a 10.5% increase, a reasonable but not outstanding result for a company trading on around 7x EV/EBITDA.

Organic Oil Recovery:

This is an exciting growth area, which I gave a summary of in February, and today they tell us that:

Hunting now has more than 30 active clients who are either sampling or field testing the OOR technology…Hunting continues to expect the business unit to generate revenue of c.$10-$15 million in 2026…Management remains confident that it can grow into a $100 million per annum business by 2030.

However, as I also pointed out in March, this was bought relatively recently (they acquired the global rights to this technology for $17.5m in early 2025), and presumably, in a competitive environment, that means they paid what the sellers thought it was worth at the time. Progress here is good, but it's not the sole reason the business's valuation has increased as much as it has.

Mark’s view

Today’s update gives confidence that the company is trading in line with expectations. However, the valuation anomaly has now closed, and the stock looks to be priced about right for a capex-heavy cyclical business. It remains a highly ranked company:

However, with the Momentum Rank declining and recent price strength not being backed by the broker consensus trend, it remains best to keep our previously neutral view. AMBER

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Ashtead Technology Holdings (LON:AT.).

Flat at 411p (£332m) - Half Year Trading Statement - Mark - AMBER/GREEN =

Staying with oil field services, Ashtead Technology Holdings (LON:AT.). is another company I’ve found particularly interesting not due to the company itself but the behaviour of other investors.

For a while, it was one of the most shorted stocks on the UK market:

However, whatever the shorters expected to happen appears to have been avoided as the shorts have largely closed and the share price has been relatively strong since the start of the year:

This was aided by an “ahead of expectations” announcement in January for FY25, which led Roland to increase our view to AMBER/GREEN. A view he reaffirmed when he got to see the results, saying, “Current consensus suggests further modest growth in 2026. With Ashtead shares trading on eight times forecast earnings, my view remains broadly positive.”

Guidance:

In this context, and given what has happened so far this year in the Middle East, an in-line statement looks good news:

Assuming that the disruption associated with the Middle East conflict eases through the second half, and there are no major changes to project scheduling, the Board is comfortable with full year market expectations.

They give us guidance on margins:

Adjusted EBITDA margin for the period is expected to be c.37.8% (H1 2025: 38.7%) with resultant EBITA margin of c.25.0% (H1 2025: 27.3%), marginally lower than prior year due to the revenue impact from lower rental activity in the Middle East and Asia, and an overall higher proportion of lower margin, non-rental revenues, linked to project scheduling. Margins are anticipated to strengthen during the seasonally stronger second half, with full year EBITA margin percentage target remaining in the high twenties.

However, surely it would have been better to give us the actual numbers. Thankfully Zeus save me from having to get my calculator out as their table shows EBITDA rising from £82.4m last year to £84.0m in 2026.

Valuation:

Given that the company funds their equipment hire business partially with modest debt, it makes sense to use EV measures. They give an update on leverage today, saying:

After the acquisition of Seadraulics and net capex spend of £24m in the first half, the Group expects to report leverage2 as of 30 June 2026 of 1.4x, and year end leverage is expected to be <1.0x.

Zeus calculates a forward EV/EBITDA of 5.2x falling to 4.7x for FY27. This looks good value. There is an argument that this should never be particularly highly rated as equipment rental can be a capital-intensive business. However, Ashtead’s specialism and ability to secure debt at reasonable rates against its equipment means that they generate excellent Returns on Equity:

In light of this, any growth is likely to create shareholder value.

Mark’s view

I would love to know why this suddenly became one of the most shorted stocks in the UK. However, with whatever those fears were largely gone and today’s in line update confirming that they are trading at a relatively low multiple, I am happy to keep our positive view. AMBER/GREEN