Author: Patrick Killeen

Shares in SThree have risen by over 7% so far today after the STEM recruitment specialist reported that full-year performance is expected to be in line with guidance and highlighted improving momentum towards the end of its financial year.

The AIM-listed group said profit before tax for the year to 30th November 2025 is expected to be around £25 million, in line with previous guidance, despite a prolonged period of soft market conditions.

Its share price is up at 185.2p today – the highest it has been since September – and the firm currently has a market cap of over £236m.

Revolut has entered the mobile market.

The product is being rolled out to waitlist customers, with general access available in January 2026.

Revolut Mobile offers unlimited 5G data, calls and texts with 20GB of roaming data in the EU and US for a special early-bird rate of only £12.50 per month.

Customers joining from 30th March 2026 onwards will pay £14.99.

Revolut says customers can activate a plan in seconds and choose to keep their existing mobile number or move to a new number with a range of additional features to create a truly personalised plan.

Its coverage will be powered by Gigs.

PropTech Goodlord has appointed serial entrepreneur Alex Depledge MBE to its board as a non-executive director.

The startup provides software and services to streamline the residential lettings process to over 3,500 letting agent brands across the UK. Its technology processes tens of thousands of tenancies per month and supports over a million users each year.

Depledge is currently the CEO and founder of Resi, the largest residential architect in the UK. After founding the business in 2016, Depledge and her team have gone on to deliver over 10,000 projects nationwide. Prior to launching Resi, she founded and exited the cleaning platform Hassle.com.

She also currently serves as the Entrepreneurship Advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and sits as an NED on the board of FTSE-100 member Persimmon PLC.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Virgin Media O2 has officially opened its new state-of-the-art North West HQ in central Manchester.

The new office, on John Dalton Street just off Deansgate, will be home to approximately 1,100 staff. 

With the lease of its Wythenshawe office due to expire in early 2026, the telecoms giant undertook a comprehensive review of its property options in the area and signed a 10-year agreement with Island to take around 50% of the new site. 

Island is a net zero carbon workspace being developed by joint venture partners HBD (part of Henry Boot plc) and Greater Manchester Pensions Fund.

Author: Rich House, tech lead, Counter

With studies suggesting 70% of transformation projects do not succeed, this is a subject which creates a lot of debate. 

Big Bang projects are so called for a reason, the emphasis for those involved in implementing them often being on the BANG. No matter how much preparation goes into it, at some point you have to ‘pull the lever’ and hope you have anticipated all the worst things that could happen, and that the team is capable enough to deal with the rest in a timely manner. 

Days and weeks can be lost to planning, rehearsing and documenting a single set of actions, rather than focusing on the benefits of the changes you are making.

Some Big Bangs are unavoidable; but many can be reduced to their absolute minimum with careful planning and forethought. Working with a company which evangelises incremental change can be a big step towards that aim. 

The benefits of incrementalism reach much further than simply avoiding large inflection points – you can demonstrate value much earlier, increasing stakeholder engagement and buy-in. Communication to your business can be simpler and much more dynamic.

Changes in direction and reversing of decisions has a lot less impact and makes your company (yes, I’m going to use the word) a lot more agile. And your teams feel more empowered, engaged and energetic, ultimately increasing their productivity.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Neuven Solutions managing director Kate Roberts has sadly passed away after a battle with an aggressive form of cancer. 

The company announced the news, paying tribute to a senior leader who played a central role in the growth and direction of the business over nearly eight years.

A separate LinkedIn post was shared from Roberts’ own account by her brother Phil, who wrote: “It is with profound sadness that I must share that Kate passed away peacefully on Friday last week.

“She approached her diagnosis and treatment with the same bravery, courage, and determination that defined how she lived her life; she fought until the very end.

“She was indefatigable and never lost her sense of humour or positive outlook throughout the entire journey. As a family, we will forever cherish the moments we shared together, and her legacy will live on through all those whose lives she touched.

“We have been overwhelmed by the messages of love and support from her friends and colleagues, and are incredibly grateful for them.

“Kate had such a positive impact on so many people’s lives, and we take great pride in her achievements, both professionally and personally.

“We are in the process of arranging the funeral and a celebration of her life, and I will be in touch at the appropriate time to share further details.”

Roberts had worked at Neuven Solutions, a provider of technology-enabled staffing solutions, for more than seven years. 

The government says Britain’s Armed Forces will be better equipped and smaller defence firms will benefit from faster growth after committing more than £142 million this year to innovative drone systems and anti-drone weapons through UK Defence Innovation (UKDI).

The new unit, launched earlier this year, will also invest around £30m in counter-drone technology aimed at protecting the UK and allies amid what it describes as increasing Russian-linked drone incursions across Europe.

UKDI was launched by Defence Secretary John Healey MP in July as a new focal point for innovation within the Ministry of Defence, backed by a ringfenced annual budget of at least £400m and a contracting approach designed to help companies scale prototypes rapidly.

While many of the firms involved have not been named, the department said the drone investment includes 20 British SMEs, 11 micro-SMEs and two UK academic institutions.

Maximum Information has closed a £2.3 million seed round led by Insurtech Gateway, with participation from Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Convex and Portfolio Ventures, as it builds what it describes as the first vendor-agnostic middleware for catastrophe risk analytics.

The London-based company says the raise reflects growing demand for tools that can help risk carriers compare, stress test and unify outputs across an increasingly complex landscape of catastrophe modelling providers.

The business points to the scale of the challenge, noting that natural catastrophes caused $417 billion in economic losses in 2024, with less than 40% insured and a global protection gap of $263bn.

Its flagship platform, MagniPhi, is designed to sit inside existing modelling workflows and give users clearer, faster insight into their models to support decision-making for insurers, brokers and financial institutions.

Founded in 2020, Maximum Information says its focus is on improving resilience to natural disasters by helping organisations better understand and manage catastrophe and climate-related risks.

University of Leeds spinout IVFmicro has secured a £3.5 million pre-seed investment to advance a microfluidic device designed to improve embryo quality and numbers in IVF cycles.

Co-founded in 2018 by Dr Virginia Pensabene and Professor Helen Picton, the company will use the funding, led by Northern Gritstone with support from the Innovate UK Investor Partnerships Programme, to complete its next verification and validation phase ahead of trials on human embryos in fertility clinics.

The technology aims to address stubbornly low IVF success rates of around 25-30% for women under 35, partly driven by limitations in traditional embryo culture methods.

The business says its device can deliver a 10-15% improvement in embryo quality and quantity, potentially increasing the chances of implantation and pregnancy.

FoodTech firm OSY Group is ramping up its global growth after securing a new partnership in Australia with packaging manufacturer Multisteps.

The five-year agreement, running until November 2030, will see the company’s antimicrobial coating applied to packaging for fresh fruit and vegetables sold in the Australian market.

The coating uses microscopic pins on packaging surfaces to puncture and kill microbes, helping produce stay fresh for longer by slowing the spoiling process.

Multisteps and OSY are also collaborating in China and plan to jointly explore opportunities in the US.

NCC Group and THG investor Kelso Group Holdings is looking to raise an initial £1m to expand its portfolio – although the figure could eventually rise to £2m.

Kelso believes the depressed UK stock market is the perfect time for investment and believes the extra firepower will enable it to grow its investments from five to ‘seven or eight’.

Kelso is an activist investor and was established in November 2022 to ‘unlock trapped value’ in the UK stock market.

It specifically looks for companies where it believes the current share price doesn’t reflect the real value of the business.

On Tuesday morning, Kelso announced that its original £1m fundraising had been ‘upsized’ with a further announcement on the outcome to be made ‘in due course’.

The fundraising will be by way of a placing and subscription of new ordinary shares.

Kelso has carried out three previous fundraises, raising £3m in January 2023 at a price of 2p per share; £3m in June 2023 at a price of 2.5p per share and £1.9m in February 2024 at a price of 3p per share.

The latest fundraising is expected to be undertaken at a placing price of 3p per share and will be carried out within the company’s existing shareholder authorities and with no requirement to publish a prospectus.

CEO John Goold (pictured), who was chief executive of Zeus from 2012-2021 and is a non-executive director of Debenhams Group, said: “Now that the budget is out of the way we think that UK small / mid cap can begin a proper rally which should last several years.”

 

London-based startup FreshCheck has secured £150,000 from the British Design Fund to accelerate the rollout of its patented colour-change hygiene verification system.

Founded in 2015 by Imperial College London PhD alumni Alex Bond and Dr John Simpson, the company has grown a lab side project into a hygiene innovation business targeting faster, simpler cleanliness checks.

Its globally patented swab provides instant visual confirmation of surface hygiene without the need for expensive equipment, lab testing or delayed results.

Validated by Campden BRI, the system pairs the swab with an app and web platform so users can record and analyse hygiene performance in real time and it is already used by major UK food producers with international trials underway.

The new funding will also support the exploration of healthcare applications, where monitoring remains a challenge amid rising healthcare associated infections.

Rolls-Royce has announced a new interim share buyback programme worth up to £200 million, following the completion of its £1 billion buyback for 2025 in November.

The programme will run from 2nd January 2026 and is expected to finish no later than 24th February 2026, ahead of the company’s full-year 2025 results on 26th February 2026.

The FTSE 100 giant has entered a non-discretionary agreement with UBS, which will make trading decisions independently within agreed parameters, with any shares repurchased to be cancelled to reduce the company’s share capital.

The company said the total level of buybacks for 2026 remains subject to board review and is expected to be confirmed alongside the FY25 results.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Women across Britain could see stronger support to enter, stay and progress in the UK tech sector after Technology Secretary Liz Kendall launched a new Women in Tech Taskforce.

The government says the economy loses an estimated £2-£3.5 billion a year because women leave tech roles or move jobs due to barriers in the sector.

Kendall convened the first meeting of the taskforce at the British Science Association on Monday, bringing together senior figures from industry, education and policy to advise on ways to improve diversity and career progression.

Anne-Marie Imafidon, founder of STEMETTES, has been appointed Women in Tech Envoy and will lead the taskforce alongside Kendall.

The founding members of the Women in Tech Taskforce include senior figures from across industry, education and policy, including Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group; Francesca Carlesi, CEO of Revolut UK; Anna Brailsford, CEO and co-founder of Code First Girls; and leaders from organisations such as techUK, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the TUC and the StartUp Coalition.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Frontier Developments chief executive Jonny Watts is to step down from the board for personal reasons after nearly three decades at the Cambridge-based video games company.

The AIM-listed developer and publisher said Watts, who has been with the Cambridge-based firm for 27 years and became CEO in August 2022, has informed the board of his intention to step aside in order to spend more time with his family.

The board has appointed Jo Cooke as the company’s new chief executive. Cooke is currently Frontier’s chief marketing officer and has worked closely with the senior team on the launch of Jurassic World Evolution 3.

Oxford BioDynamics Plc has posted increased revenues while losses narrowed slightly in the year ended 30th September 2025.

The precision clinical diagnostics company, behind the EpiSwitch 3D genomics platform, said linical test revenue was 2.7x highe than the prior year at £1.1m (FY24: £400,000).

Operating loss was £11.1m, down from £12.9m in FY24.

Iain Ross, who joined as chairman in January, said: “This has been an exciting period of renewal, and it is encouraging to see revenue-generating and cost-saving initiatives starting to deliver.”

Touchstar plc has said its annual revenue for FY25 is expected to be below market expectations at around £6.7m, with only a small pre-tax trading profit for the year.

The developer of data collection and mobile computing solutions for industry blamed “softness in the economy” and said results have also been impacted by non-trading costs including the restructuring of its senior management team.

When CEO of 20 years Mark Hardy was replaced by Lynden Jones earlier this year, it said it was targeting “a year of revenue growth and increased profitability”.

It stated today: “Despite lower profitability, the company’s balance sheet remains healthy and year end cash should remain at over £2m.”

Author: Chris Maguire

THG CEO Matt Moulding has used the company’s end-of-year presentation to give an upbeat assessment of the online retailer’s fortunes.

Last week it was revealed the entrepreneur had increased his stake in the Manchester-headquartered online retailer to 25 per cent after the conversion of a convertible loan.

At the start of the year, THG Ingenuity became a standalone business after demerging from the profitable THG Beauty and THG Nutrition.

Moulding used THG’s end-of-year presentation to tell staff that the company was well placed to take advantage of a restructuring process that had seen it almost half its payroll.

The presentation focused on 2025 as the Year of the Snake and 2026 as the Year of the Horse –  and what that symbolism meant for THG.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A fast-growing technology-enabled PR firm has listed in London today.

Pathos Communications plc, which has never raised institutional funding, has raised more than £5 million as it joins the London Stock Exchange’s junior AIM market in an IPO which values the firm at around £20m.

The company was founded in 2019 by Omar Hamdi, who combined a background in computing, journalism and television presenting to democratise access to established news publications utilising a ‘pay-on-results’ model.

Hamdi, who worked for the BBC for years, is also an experienced stand-up comedian.

 

Time Finance plc has reported positive half-year results.

The AIM-listed independent specialist finance provider said revenue was up 3% to £18.8m, while profit before tax grew 10% to £4.3m.

Time Finance said its lending book has now seen 18 consecutive quarters of growth.