Marks & Spencer (MKS) says its profit slumped during a first-half that saw the retailer suffer from “substantial disruption” due to a cyber incident. In the half year to September 27, revenue improved 23% to GBP7.94 billion, M&S says, though pretax profit slumped 99% to GBP3.4 million from GBP391.9 million. M&S says it booked GBP101.6 million in costs associated with the cyber incident in April that disrupted its online offering. “The first half of this year was an extraordinary moment in time for M&S. However, the underlying strength of our business and robust financial foundations gave us the resilience to face into the challenge and deal with it. (Alliance News)
Comment: It is hard not to regard MKS’s cyber disaster as being a case of dumb and dumber. As far as the stock market reaction has been concerned, whether it was £100m or £1bn in losses from the hack, all of it would be passed onto customers anyway, so no biggie.
The JP Jenkins (www.jpjenkins.com) proprietary index covering the performance of the venue’s 15 largest stocks has been calculated after the close on 31st October. This shows the index trading at 1097.8, down 0.1% since the start of the month.
Comment: Cynics might suggest that JP Jenkins is something of a stock market graveyard. Fans would say that it offers a cheap alternative to the rip off of being listed for small companies and Kafkaesque over-regulation. The reality is perhaps a mix of the two.
OPG (OPG), the developer and operator of power generation assets in India, announces that it will shortly be posting a Circular setting out the details of a proposed share buyback offer to certain Shareholders of up to approximately £11.41 million, the proposed cancellation of admission of its Ordinary Shares to trading on AIM and the adoption of an amended memorandum and new articles of association of the Company.
Comment: After being chronically underappreciated by the market, partly for spurious reasons, we see OPG head into the sunset, or could it be the JP Jenkins retirement village for former stock market listed companies?
Cindrigo Holdings Limited (CINH), a clean baseload energy developer and producer is pleased to announce that it has been provided with the London Stock Exchange’s Green Economy Mark. The Green Economy Mark, first introduced in 2019, was created to assist investors in identifying an investible universe of green equities. The Green Economy Mark identifies companies and funds, admitted to London Stock Exchange’s markets, which generate 50% or more of total annual revenues from products and services that contribute to the global green economy (according to FTSE Russell’s Green Revenue Classification System (GRCS)).
Comment: Those who love Net Zero, love paying for it, love Ed Milliband and love hugging trees are sure to appreciate the Green Economy Mark that CINH has attained.
Blackbird plc (BIRD), developer of the browser-based collaborative video editor elevate.io, today launches AI image generation within elevate.io. At the same time, a token system will be added to the platform allowing users to redeem tokens for services. Further UI enhancements have also been released including thumbnails on the timeline and larger video tracks. This release marks a strategic inflection point for the elevate.io signalling the start of a scalable monetisation framework that will extend to further services such as AI video generation and automated captioning.
Comment: BIRD is clearly moving to advance / develop / finesse elevate.io, but it is the case that despite the tweaks, the market will be looking for take up / sales figures on the product sooner than later. That reminds me, as a daily video content creator with a not insignificant audience, I really should switch to elevate.io rather than Veed.io that I currently use.
Ceres Power Holdings plc (CWR), a leading developer of clean energy technology, has signed a manufacturing licence agreement for the production of Ceres’ proprietary solid oxide fuel cell technology with Weichai Power, a global original equipment manufacturer and power systems developer headquartered in Shandong, China.
Comment: CWR has been a happy example, at least in terms of the recent share price of a company which defies the usual rule of invest green, end up in the red. Dare we say that clean energy has come of age? CWR shares are up 82% YTD, and who knows, the company may be in danger of making a profit?
Corero (CNS), the distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) protection specialists and champion of adaptive, real-time service availability, is pleased to announce good sales traction across Q3 2025, driven by a number of new customer wins and product enhancement launches, as well as a key customer renewal and expansion order in October delivering a strong start to Q4 2025. Corero delivered a strong Q3 2025, with order intake1 of $7.4 million (Q3 2024: $6.0 million) and new contract wins secured across the US, UK, Europe, Brazil and Singapore. Two additional CORE2 customer wins were secured in Q3 2025, following the first two CORE contracts secured in Q2 2025.
Comment: Judging by today’s update from CNS on its own, one would have thought that shares of the company would be buzzing like a bee. Sadly, this is not the case. They are down over 50% this year, despite the broker consensus being “buy”. Getting back into profitability would admittedly help.
capAI (CPAI) announced that trading in the Company’s ordinary shares of nominal value £0.0001 each (“Ordinary Shares”) will commence today, at market open on the OTCQB Venture Market (“OTCQB”) in the US at 2.30 p.m. (GMT) / 9.30 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time). The Ordinary Shares will trade on OTCQB under the ticker “CPIQF”. There is no associated capital raise with this cross trade on OTCQB and the Ordinary Shares will continue to trade on the Company’s primary listing market, the main market for listed securities of London Stock Exchange plc
Comment: At any one time one gets conflicting reports as to the merits of being listed on the OTCQB, and potentially tapping the massive US pool of liquidity. What can be said is that every new addition is great news for OTC Markets itself.
Lexington Gold (LEX), the gold exploration and development company with a growing portfolio of gold assets in South Africa and the USA, is pleased to announce that it has secured a £350,000 unsecured convertible loan facility (the “Loan Facility”) provided by longstanding substantial shareholder Pure Ice Ltd (as to £201,746), and three of the Company’s directors, namely Edward Nealon (as to £50,000), Melissa Sturgess (via Hartford Corporate Limited a company controlled by Melissa Sturgess) (as to £20,000) and Mark Greenwood (as to £78,254).
Comment: I have been told of the merits of LEX as the next small cap gold play ready to hit the big time. The fact that I have remembered this and am including LEX in today’s RNS Hotlist suggests someone has done their job well. It is interesting to note that Melissa Sturgess of Ananda (AQSE:ANA) has dipped into her pocket on this funding.
First Tin PLC (1SN), a tin development company with advanced, low-capex projects in Australia and Germany, announced that it has received a non-binding Letter of Interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (“EXIM”), outlining potential financing support for the Company’s Taronga Tin Project in New South Wales, Australia.
Comment: Clearly, it does not get better than the Yanks knocking on your door. Shares of 1SN have already been on the up, presumably anticipating or just a leak that the cavalry have arrived. We are a fraction away from the technical target just over 9p, so a mini-win there. A point to note is that boring tin, is becoming less boring.
Falconedge plc (EDGE) a provider of turnkey advisory solutions for asset and fund managers, announced that trading in its Ordinary Shares will commence at 8:00 am today on the Aquis Growth Market Access Segment, under the ticker EDGE with ISIN GB00BW5STR28. The Company has raised £1.44m at IPO, following a pre-IPO round of approximately £1m. On Admission, the Company will have 1,010,602,208 Ordinary Shares in issue and the market capitalisation of the Company will be approximately £10.5 million.
Comment: A great sounding prospect in terms of being not only a proper real life business, but one that should also be something of a Bitcoin Treasury Strategy 2.0 for the market, given the group’s expertise in the field. I interviewed the company earlier this week. https://zakstraderscafe.com/interview-falconedge/13555/
Trainline PLC (TRN) – Results for the six months ended 31 August 2025. Group net ticket sales up 8% year on year (YoY) to £3.2 billion; revenue up 2% to £235 million given previously announced commission rate reduction in UK. Adjusted EBITDA up 14% to £93 million, with cost savings more than offsetting impact from commission rate reduction6; operating profit up 38% to £68 million.
Comment: Delays, strikes, permanent above inflation price rises, people committing suicide, leaves / trees on the line, machete attacks, and sporadic wifi, all apparently serve to make shares of TRN a roaring buy. Don’t get mad, get even.
Cizzle Biotechnology (CIZ), the UK based diagnostics developer of early cancer tests, is pleased to announce it has entered into a Letter of Intent with a leading medical diagnostic services provider acting in partnership with the NHS. The LOI covers the verification and validation of the Company’s CIZ1B biomarker test with a NHS Foundation Trust partner in state-of-the-art laboratories which may lead to the Provider being appointed as the Company’s exclusive UK supplier of the CIZ1B test.
Comment: Any deal associated with the money burning / sacred cow / white elephant NHS gravy train has got to be a winner. Although there are hoops to go through, this should still be a significant win for CIZ.
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