AIM-quoted telecoms enterprise software provider Cerillion (LON:CER) had flagged a weaker first half and management remains positive about growth in full year revenues with a new contract helping to meet the target. The share price has still declined 7.6% to £16.95.
In the six months to March 2025, revenues dipped from £22.5m to £20.9m. The mix of revenues was different with lower software income due to fewer renewals and higher services revenues.
Pre-tax profit fell from £10.5m to £9.3m. R&D spending was increased. Net cash still improved from £26.6m to £31.2m over the 12-month period. The dividend has been raised by one-fifth to 4.8p/share.
The back order book was £50.2m at the end of March 2025 and that has already risen to £56.5m. That follows a £8m implementation services agreement, that will lead to a licence agreement. This follows an acquisition by an existing customer.
Panmure Liberum still forecasts growth in full year revenues from £43.8m to £49m, which would enable pre-tax profit from £19.8m to £20.4m. The shares are trading on 33 times prospective earnings. That reflects the strong track record and confidence that forecasts can be achieved.
The FTSE 100 fell with global equities on Monday after Moody’s cut the US credit rating to Aaa to Aa1, hitting investor sentiment and stopping a rip-roaring rally in global equities in its tracks.
Despite the downgrade having little real-world impact, with most other credit rating agencies already stripping the US of its ‘triple A’ ratings, the move has served as a reminder of the risks facing the global economy from Trump’s trade policies.
London’s leading index fell in early trade and was down 0.6%. US futures were pointing to a lower open, while most major European indices traded in negative territory.
News of an agreement between the UK and the EU to reduce trade frictions did little to boost interest in stocks on Monday.
“While largely a symbolic move, the US credit downgrade from Moody’s, as well as the progress of a bill in Washington promising major tax cuts, cast a pall over the markets at the start of the week,” says AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.
“Having been floored by the announcement of Liberation Day tariffs last month, stocks got back on their feet remarkably quickly, but there is still enough to suggest some lasting grogginess.
“US-related stocks and investment trusts dominated the list of losers on Monday morning in London, while precious metals miners were higher as gold and silver prices moved up and the dollar weakened.”
Pershing Square Holdings, the US equity-focused FTSE 100 closed-ended fund, was the top faller following the US downgrade. Pershing Square’s top holdings include Alphabet, Chipotle, Nike and Uber.
The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, a vehicle heavily weighted towards US tech, was not far behind Pershing Square at the bottom of the leaderboard.
Fresnillo was the FTSE 100 top riser with a 1.7% gain. Gold miner Endeavour Mining only added 0.3%.
Diageo shares slipped despite sales increasing in its fiscal third quarter as the group announced the impact of tariffs on the business.
“The current tariff regime is expected to cost around $150mn annually,” said Aarin Chiekrie, equity analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown.
“Diageo expects to be able to offset around half of this through streamlining operations and will likely lean on price hikes to help offset the rest. But this will take a bit of time to enact. Alongside a soft first-half performance, full-year organic operating profits are expected to decline slightly.”
Tanfield Group (LON: TAN) says the US courts have granted a motion for partial summary judgement in the dispute over Snorkel International, where Tanfield has a 49% stake that is the subject of a call option by the other shareholder. This summary judgement says that the 49% stake cannot be acquired for nil as the partner wanted to. The trial will begin in October. The share price jumped 19.1% to 4.24p.
Staff provider Staffline (LON: STAF) is continuing its rise following last week’s announcement that it has won a new contract with food and drink logistics provider Culina that could be worth £300m over three years. This is set to start generating revenues in the summer. There will be initial implementation costs in 2025. Panmure Liberum raised its 2025 pre-tax profit forecast from £5.3m to £6m. The 2026 estimate was increased from £5.7m to £8.3m. The share price is 12.6% higher at 36.6p, which is seven times prospective 2026 earnings.
Arecor Therapeutics (LON: AREC) is collaborating with obesity-focused Skye Bioscience on a formulation development. This involves the use of the Arestat platform will assess formulations of Skye’s CB1 inhibitor nimacimab. This will be funded by Skye, which has the option to licence the rights to the new formulation. This is the third partnership this year. The share price is 12.2% ahead at 46p.
Oriole Resources (LON: ORR) says results from drilling at the 90%-owned Mbe gold project in Cameroon have increased the total mineralised sections to 137, using a cut-off of 0.2g/tonne. There are some results with high grades from the latest hole. The fourteenth hole is being drilled, and the programme should complete in the third quarter. An independent consultant can then produce a JORC exploration target estimate. The share price rose to 0.231p, but it is currently up 1.9% to 0.214p.
FALLERS
Pantheon Resources (LON: PANR) says an initial unstimulated flow test from Megrez-1 in Alaska showed production dominated by water, which was consistent with the previous test in the area. Management will assess the data, but it currently says no recoverable oil resource should be associated with the Lower Prince Creek interval. The next test is on the Lower Sagavanirktok 3 horizon perforation, which is the best remaining candidate reservoir. Planning continues for early-stage development at Ahpun West. The share price dived 34.1% to 27.95p.
Cybersecurity software company Acuity RM (LON: ACRM) has raised £410,000 at 1p/share. This will finance sales and marketing, plus further product development. The share price declined 24.1% to 1.1p.
Digital advertising services provider Dianomi (LON: DNM) continues to be hit by the volatile advertising market going into 2025. Four-fifths of revenues come from the US. In 2024, revenues fell from £30.2m to £28m and there was a pre-tax profit of £300,000. Panmure Gordon expects revenues to continue to deteriorate in the second half. The 2025 revenues forecast has been cut from £31.1m to £27.5m and the 2026 figure has been reduced by a similar figure. This means that there are expected to be losses in 2025 and 2026. The share price slipped 11.8% to 30p.
Drug developer Immupharma (LON: IMM) reduced its loss from £2.9m to £2.5m after cutting R&D spending by two-fifths to £1.2m. The outflow from operating activities was £1.77m, which was partly covered by the sale of shares in Aquis-quoted Incanthera (LON: INC). There was £237,000 in cash at the end of 2024 and since then £2.91m was raised at 3.75p/share. The share price decreased 11.6% to 2.965p.
In thefirst article of this series, we tackled the problems many investors face – story-driven speculation, tip chasing, and the trap of seeking more and more information which often brings overconfidence rather than better results.
One answer is using a rules-based approach, based around the characteristics of shares proven to identify winners. When you know that there’s a persistent payoff to buying the highest quality, value and momentum shares there can be a real mindset shift.
But for many, that’s where the journey stalls.
Because once you realise that rules matter, the next step is to create your first set.
Price to Earnings Ratio of less than 12? Tick. Return on Capital above 15%? Tick. Debt under control? Tick. You build a rational set of logic, and it feels good.
Until you hit a wall.
(NB – If you’re curious how to go from “first rules” to full portfolio strategy,join me for a live webinar on Thursday 22nd May at 5pm (BST) – details at the end of the article).
The problem with strict rules
I still remember the buzz of creating my first stock screen. Stock screens are essentially checklists of rules that can narrow a universe of thousands of stocks down to a manageable list.
My first was based on Jim Slater’s criteria from his excellent Zulu Principle book. I had a whole list of “must have” criteria which would find me reasonably priced, quality growth shares. But how many candidates did the screen produce?
Just three. Two were rather small and illiquid and the third was some obscure foreign-listed firm. It was quite disappointing. And it certainly wasn’t an investable portfolio.
Checklists can be powerful – don’t underestimate them. They add discipline to your investing and help filter out the noise. But they be extremely restrictive.
If a stock has a P/E of 12.4 but you’ve screened for less than 12, should it really be cut out? Of course not. But a strict set of rules won’t catch it.
So what do you do?
You start raising all your cutoffs – you find a broader set – but something feels amiss. You know your cutoffs are keeping out some of the best candidates in the market.
From strict criteria to solid scoring
The breakthrough for me came when I stopped thinking so binary – in pass/fail terms – and came across the idea of scoring. It was Joel Greenblatt, in his excellent “The Little Book that Beats the Market”, that sowed the seed.
What if, instead of demanding that a company have a P/E of less than 12, you scored every stock in the market for how low the price earnings ratio was? And another for how profitable it was – using its “return on capital”.
Rather than just having a hard cutoff for “cheap” or “good” shares, you could create a gradient – with “cheap, highly profitable” stocks at one end, and “expensive, unprofitable” shares at the other.
It’s a fundamentally different approach. You’re no longer left with just a few stocks, you have a score for every stock in the market. And what’s even better, you can then compare any stock against any other.
Building your own DIY scores
You can do this even if you are a stock picker, looking at stocks on a case by case basis. You can build a set of solid rules, which can even include qualitative assessments like “how experienced and trustworthy is the management”, and grade stocks between zero and ten for each rule.
I know some of the best investors in the UK that do this. It does require judgement, but it removes a lot of bias from your investing process, and helps you avoid getting too sucked into a story.
But a more data-first approach allows you to compare all the stocks in the market.
If you like doing your own work, you can do this yourself – you will need access to a financial database to export some data. Some are free on the web, though you do have to be careful with data quality. But it’s really worth it.
Choose some key metrics across a few of the quality, value and momentum dimensions. For example as I’ve described you might choose the P/E ratio and the return on capital (a key profitability measure). Score each one as a percentage from zero to 100, where 100 is “best”.
Total the scores and rank again. You can then use this score to check your own stock ideas against. It’s not hard. And it works.
It uses institutional quality data from Stockopedia’s database (correct at the time of publishing).
Take a look and see if you can find any of your shares within it – their scores might surprise you
While this is just a simple example, the benefit of this kind of gradient-based thinking is huge. It can add so much rigour to your process, but more than this – it really gets results.
Taking it further
Scoring the market for a couple of financial ratios isn’t really that robust.
Just scoring for “value” based on the P/E ratio can leave opportunities on the table – what about companies that are cheap relative to their company sales, but are just turning profitable? When their sales grow, they can see huge profit expansion.
So at Stockopedia, we built a system that takes this further. Every stock gets a daily score – out of 100 – based on its Quality, Value, and Momentum profile – but each of these scores is built from a range of financial ratios, to give a more robust and rounded guide to their relative merit.
We call these measures the StockRanks and they have a terrific track record of finding stocks that perform.
Top ranked stocks through time have included many of the very best multibaggers in the UK market – stocks like Rolls Royce, Games Workshop, Jet2 and more – before they took off.
The top 10% of ranked shares – those in the 90+ range – have on average returned 11.9% annualised. And the lowest ranked 10%? Well more than 75% of them end up losers – with an average annualised return of -17%.
Now, this doesn’t mean every 90+ ranked stock is going to be a winner. Of course not. A good score is not a buy recommendation. Individual stocks do their own thing, profit warnings happen and markets go down as well as up. But across groups of stocks, over the longer term, the odds weigh in your favour. That’s what matters.
Learn to build a portfolio that captures the 90+ effect
Having a great scoring system helps you track down high potential stocks with a lot more ease and less emotional attachment. And because there’s no hard cutoff, you can always build a portfolio. But just taking the top 20 stocks is not a complete investment process.
“The Smarter Way to Build a Market Beating Share Portfolio”.
Registration is free, and if you can’t make the date you can catch the replay byregistering here.
I’ll be covering a complete process. Not only to pick high potential stocks, but to construct a portfolio with both the diversification required to manage risk, and the discipline to consistently capture the returns. We’ll show how this process has delivered a portfolio that beat every fund manager in the UK over the last decade – which we’ll continue to discuss in our next article.
This coming Thursday, 22nd May, will see Ashtead Technology Holdings (LON:AT.) hold its AGM to approve its Report & Accounts for its 2024 Trading Year.
The £368m-capitalised group, which is a leading subsea equipment rental and solutions provider for the global offshore energy sector, is growing at quite a pace.
Strong market fundamentals underpin its growth strategy supported by record levels of multi-year customer backlogs.
The group’s addressable markets within its focussed end-markets of Oil & Gas and Offshore Renewables are forecast to grow at a 9% compound annua...
Diageo shares rose in early trade on Monday before falling back after the drinks giant announced promising fiscal Q3 results that provided a welcome reprieve from warnings on slowing sales that dominated trading updates in recent periods.
Diageo’s organic net sales climbed 5.9% to $4.4 billion, driven by volume growth of 2.8% and positive price/mix of 3.1%, although reported net sales increased by just 2.9% due to unfavourable foreign exchange movements and recent disposals.
Management noted that favourable phasing contributed approximately 4% to the quarter’s organic net sales growth, primarily in North America. This timing advantage is expected to reverse in the fourth quarter.
All regions delivered positive price/mix except Asia Pacific, where continued consumer downtrading and adverse market mix negatively impacted performance.
Diageo has reiterated its full-year fiscal 2025 guidance for both organic net sales and operating profit. The company expects improvement in organic net sales growth in the second half compared to the first half of fiscal 2025, but it still sees operating profits falling as tariffs impact trading.
The company said the impact of tariffs is estimated at approximately $150 million on an annualised basis, assuming there are no increases from the current rates. Management expects to mitigate around half of this impact on operating profit, citing their “long track record of managing international tariffs”.
Investors will welcome Diageo’s assessment of the impact of tariffs, given that alcohol has been one of the main tariff battlegrounds in Donald Trump’s trade war.
Diageo’s launch of the first phase of its “Accelerate” programme to create a more agile operating model will also encourage investors. The group expects the programme to help deliver approximately $3 billion in free cash flow annually from fiscal 2026.
Diageo shares were 0.6% lower at the time of writing.
“Diageo managed to serve up solid growth in the first quarter, with sales benefiting from a good mix of both price and volume growth. Diageo has a world-class cocktail of brands, including Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnny Walker, and Tanqueray,” said Aarin Chiekrie, equity analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown.
“These powerhouse brands have helped all regions manage to squeeze through price hikes except Asia Pacific, which continued to see consumers downtrading to cheaper brands, which weighed on sales.”
The current tariff regime is expected to cost around $150mn annually. Diageo expects to be able to offset around half of this through streamlining operations and will likely lean on price hikes to help offset the rest. But this will take a bit of time to enact. Alongside a soft first-half performance, full-year organic operating profits are expected to decline slightly. Zooming out, the picture is starting to look a touch better than it has for some time. Sales to China are largely unaffected by tariffs, Latin America and the Caribbean are lapping some weak comparable figures, and there are early signs that the industry is recovering from its cyclical hangover.”
Motor dealers have been having a hard time in the past year and even though there are signs of improvement, sales of new cars have been better in the past couple of months, but they remain well below 2019 levels.
Regulatory and legal actions relating to car finance and the weak economy have not helped, but the government targets for electric vehicle sales have been the major disrupting factor.
The government mandate sets percentages of new car sales that should be of electric vehicles. Demand has been weak, and supply of petrol and diesel vehicles has been withheld so that manufacturers can ge...
Victorian Plumbing (LON: VIC) finance director Daniel Barton bought 12,194 shares at 82p each following the publication of interim results. The share price fell by one-quarter to 79.2p following the results.
Daniel Barton sold 104,102 shares at 98p each at the end of 2023. He currently owns 171,786 shares.
Founder and chief executive Mark Radcliffe is still the major shareholder with 47.6%, having sold 2.7 million shares at 100p each in August 2024. In April, Artemis Investment Management took a 3.1% stake.
Business
Victorian Plumbing is one of the largest retailers of bathroom products in the...
BWA Holdings (LON: BWAP) chairman Jonathan Wearing has bought 500,000 shares at 0.25p each. A share issue has paid off £21,600 of liabilities. The share price jumped 157% to 0.475p.
Smarter Web Company (LON: SWC) raised £2.23m at 27p/share from a retail offer, taking the total raised to £3.45m. The company has invested a further £650,000 in Bitcoin at £75,460 each, which takes total investment to £1.41m. Smarter Web Company has applied to be quoted on the US OTCQB to help to add to liquidity. The share price rose a further 40.9% to 31p. Tennyson Securities has raised its target price to 38.4p/share.
Coinsilium (LON: COIN) expects the launch of the $YELLOW token launch is expected in two months. The sale will be conducted under Regulation D in the US, making it attractive to institutional investors. Coinsilium invested $200,000 in Yellow Network and the latest fundraising has increased the value of the stake. Coinsilium is raising £1.25m at 3p/share and a retail offer could generate a further £250,000. The share price increased 9.76% to 4.5p.
Peel Hunt has increased its stake in WeCap (LON: WCAP) from 16.1% to 17.3%. The share price improved 1.2% to 0.86p.
FALLERS
Time to Act (LON: TTA) shares were 34.6% lower at 5.125p following the announcement of a fundraising of a minimum of £264,000 at 40p/share. VSA Capital has set a target share price of 118p. Diffusion Alloys is a coatings business, and the customer base includes hydrogen, nuclear and fuel cell businesses. Another subsidiary, GreenSpur is developing axial flux technology. This business hopes to generate revenues through design services to wind turbine designers.
KR1 (LON: KR1) increased income from digital assets rose 51% to £13m during 2024, including Income from staking activities which jumped from £6.9m to £12.8m. There was a loss on disposals of £1m, compared with a £12.1m gain in the pervious year. Pre-tax profit fell from £14.7m to £7.85m. There was £1.18m in cash at the end of 2024. The share price declined 7.32% to 38p.
Constantine Logothetis has increased his stake in SulNOx Group (LON: SNOX) to 28.8%. The share price dipped 6.06% to 77.5p.
Valereum (LON: VLRM) is launching its RWA Platform prioritising sports, lifestyle, leisure and hospitality in El Salvador. The share price slipped 2.38% to 5.125p.
St Austell Brewery chief executive Kevin Georgel is joining Daniel Thwaites (LON: THW) as a non-executive director. The share price dipped 1.36% to 72.5p.
Shares in portable oxygen device developer Belluscura (LON: BELL) rebounded 72.7% to 0.95p following the previous week’s announcement of a strategic review of the business and it is well above the level prior to the statement. There is a shortage of working capital. There was cash of $1m and $790,000 of debt at the end of April 2025.
Metals One (LON: MET1) has agreed to acquire the exploration lease over the Swales gold property, which is within the Carlin gold trend in Nevada. There are 40 unpatented mining claims with others identified. This diversifies the company’s assets and provides exposure to a prolific mining area. 80 Mile has disposed of its 15.5% stake. The share price moved up 56.1% to 48p.
Supercapacitor technology developer Cap-XX (LON: CPX) has won a design contract with an Asian conglomerate. The company’s supercapacitors will be used in headphones. The product should be launched in October. There could be potential for further product deals. The share price improved 51.1% to 0.17p.
Eden Research (LON: EDEN) has received regulatory approval for the use of Mevalone for the control of powdery mildew on grapes in California. This is the most prevalent fungal diseases for grapes in California. The addressable market is €94m. The share price increased 49.1% to 4.1p.
FALLERS
Oil and gas producer Empyrean Energy (LON: EME) admitted that the Wilson River-1 drill stem test has been completed and it confirmed the recovery of formation water. The decision was made that the well should be plugged and abandoned. The share price slumped 73.8% to 0.0275p.
In content advertising technology develop Mirriad Advertising (LON: MIRI) has raised £1.5m via a placing at 0.01p/share and a WRAP retail offer raised £100,000. There are non-binding heads of terms for a joint venture agreement with a US technology company, which will take on the exclusive right to market the technology to existing media partners. There will be a one-off payment of £200,000 and a revenues share. A potential Middle East deal could generate revenues of £400,000/year. Monthly cost savings of up to £295,000 could be achieved. Mirriad Advertising will focus on white label and licence offerings. Louis Wakefield is taking over as chief executive. There should be 12 months of cash available to the company. The share price slipped 40.7% to 0.016p.
Braveheart Investments (LON: BRH) is raising £135,000 at 2p/share to fund overheads. A broker option could raise up to £100,000 more. There is currently cash of £73,000. Annual costs are £400,000 with annual income of £100,000 to offset that. Management consider that it is not a good time to sell investments to finance costs. The share price fell by two-fifths to 2.25p.
Advanced materials developer Versarien (LON: VRS) is raising £425,000 via a placing at 0.0275p/share. This will finance a mortar mixing plant to scale production of 3D construction printing mortars. The January placing was at 0.033p/share. The share price declined by one-third to 0.028p.
88 Energy (LON: 88E) has completed its 25-for-one share consolidation. The previous closing price was the equivalent of 1.4375p. The share price has slipped 27% to 1.05p.
