The AIM Awards 2025
I now almost enjoy not hearing about / not being invited to both the AIM Awards which was apparently held last week, and the Small Cap awards, in the summer. This is partly after 25 years of being a stock market commentator, and partly due to now having a greater following on X, formerly Twitter, than the Investors Chronicle. Obviously, these two facts are just not good enough yet.
While we may have made great strides as far as being all inclusive these days in the City, it would appear that one still needs to be a certain type of person to be welcomed into the club. Hopefully, new generations after mine will see better progress. I could not have more than I have done to both integrate with people, and / or champion the London stock market. When you are up against some people who are competitive, jealous or plain evil, there is no way of winning. In fact, the more you do, the worse you can make things.
That said, the winners and losers of the AIM Awards were an interesting bunch. In some ways, given how many companies have left the arena, just being on the shortlist could be regarded as a win. Given the ridiculous cost and red tape, as well as unfettered defamation many of the smaller companies get with no action by the authorities / regulators, to be an AIM company is a badge of honour and a sign that you are backing UK growth and enterprise. So well done to those people.
As far as the highlights we concerned, the standout for me was Boku (BOKU), a company which I have written up as potential M&A target. I enjoyed MHA (MHA) as newcomer of the year, as I barely recognise the name even though I look at almost every RNS every day. Well done to the PR / IR effort there. That said, the company is perfect for the current environment. It provides all the “red tape” services that companies should not need, but have to have, audit / tax advisory et al. For instance, audits are a rip off, and no one believes them anyway. As for tax advisory, we all know tax is so complicated, Einstein would struggle to understand it.
Moving along to the other winners: Filtronic (FTC) quite rightly won an award, in this case the technology award, after what seems like a never-ending stream of chunky US contract wins with SpaceX and other high profile counterparties. It was perhaps a shame that Fiinu (BANK) was up against Greatland Gold (GGP), as far as transaction of the year, as after the reverse takeover of Everfex PSA, and the launch of its Plugin Overdraft® product in the United Kingdom via Manx Financial (MFX) / Conister Bank.
Diversity is a subject close to my heart. But I do wonder what the point of having this as a category now, if we are obviously now so diverse. But a hat tip to Central Asia Metals (CAML) for whatever they did and do to win the prize. The best category for me though, and the one that is the greatest honour, is the Brian Winterflood Award. What a legend he was, and well done to Katie Potts of Herald Investment Trust.
Stocks Rising On News
Stock market darling Avacta (AVCT) appeared to be more of a darling than usual, with its interim results on Tuesday. AVCT said “We anticipate multiple pipeline updates in the last quarter of 2025, including the data from the first expansion cohort (salivary gland cancer) in the faridoxorubicin program. We look forward to continuing to update on our progress across our programs and exploiting our unique technology.” The shares were up 26% to end the week at 70p having been charted as a potential buy at 55p on Tuesday morning here at Zakstraderscafe.com.
There has been quite a transformation at Oracle Power (ORCP) as the project developer has shown that Australia is the place to develop a project, rather more easily than in Pakistan. The news here was of a mining and co-operation agreement with Mega Resources regarding the Northern Zone Gold Project. Mega Resources will fully-fund the operations with the project owners to receive 50% of the profit.
2025 has been the year that many small caps who looked as though they would never get over the line, got over the line, or got in position to do so. Sabien (SNT), a provider of energy reduction technologies has apparently joined this club. It provided an update on its business partnership with City Oil Field of Korea and Sabien’s affiliate company, b.grn Group Limited in the wake of recent press coverage relating to COF in The Korea Times. The shares shot up 76% this week.
Pulsar Helium (PLSR) finally got the love it deserved after revealing results from its Jetstream-1 well, part of the Topaz project in Minnesota. It said it has found concentrations of helium-3, one of the most rare and valuable of isotopes. The shares were up 50% on the week, and arguably should have been up much more.
Bezant (BZT) revealed its interim results this week, with an unaudited £4.1 million profit after tax for the six months ended 30 June 2025. Even better the company also stated this week that it has sold its Blackstone shares at an average price of AUD 7.021 cents ( approximately 3.45 pence) per share for gross proceeds of AUD 3.75M (approximately £1.84M). The shares are up 45% this week, and over 2.5x since the beginning of 2025.
It may be the case that MicroSalt (SALT) could be a relatively rare beast in the sense that the manufacturer of full-flavour natural salt with approximately 50% less sodium could be well geared to recovery. It announced its results for the six-month period ended 30 June 2025. Record revenue of US$0.8m (H1 2024: US$0.2m) driven by the continued expansion of bulk sales. SALT said the “Reduced net loss of US$1.9m (H1 2024: US$2.8m) reflects the developing economies of scale in both the Company’s production and sales efforts.” SALT was up 36%.
From Catenai’s (CTAI) half year report, we learned that the company is very much enthused regarding its key investment: “We look forward to the launch of Alludium’s platform which is timely given the strong endorsement of AI by the UK Government.” The shares jumped 35%.
As a (long-suffering) shareholder of Audioboom (BOOM), there were moments of hope this week as the company responded to press speculation of potential M&A at the company. This could of course mean that the suffering for shareholders caught up in the M&A spoof a few years ago finally have their day in the sun. The issue is how much a would be buyer would pay for the podcast group? A great price versus the 638p closing price on Friday would be £10. However, it may be that most shareholders including the company would be looking for much more. The battle now will be for BOOM’s fundamental value versus its strategic value in the market. Fundamentals might suggest below £10, strategic value far more.
Stocks Rising On No News
The Great British Biotech boom of 2025 is something I have been championing a lot of lately, especially as saying Great and Britain in combination is so controversial these days. This is obviously a reason for saying it even more. But the GB pixie dust does continue to rub off on Nuformix (NFX), with the pharmaceutical development company targeting unmet medical needs in fibrosis and oncology via drug repurposing seeing its shares rise 65% this week. The last we heard from the company was that it was attending the European Respiratory Society Congress in Amsterdam this week. One presumes that no one had any time to go to the coffee shops there, even though they are quite pharmaceutical.
Another stock where I am a sad shareholder is crypto trading app Tap Global (TAP). Quite how the shares are where they are near 2.5p rather than say, 25p in the middle of the greatest crypto rally ever remains a mystery. Indeed, one could almost applaud the company for somehow managing to keep a lid on it the stock. That said, at the end of last month the company was looking forward to posting 30% revenue growth. Perhaps more important would be for it to address the issue of whoever is persistently selling the stock towards 3p. If we ever see the back of this pesky person one would probably bet on 10p sooner rather than later.
Apart from the lifting of suspension, there was no news from Wildcat Petroleum (WCAT) this week. Nevertheless, the shares were up over 100%. This is intriguing, for many reasons, including how the company managed to get returned from suspension. We are still on the edge of our seats as far as what will happen next. The last thing we knew was at the end of last month with a new board appointment of someone who has experience of blockchain and tokenization. If this is a hint of the direction the company will take one would assume that the 100% rebound we have seen this week will be just the start of the re-rate. Certainly, the way that the shares dipped / were pulled down on Thursday, only to soar again on Friday suggests that there is a rather painful squeeze in the shares. We have been looking for an optimistic charting target of 0.24p by the end of October. Above the 200 day moving average at 0.09p it does not look that optimistic now.
TomCo (TOM), the US operating oil development group announced its unaudited interim results for the six-month period ended 31 March 2025 during the week, and saw its shares rise 55%. The company said it was progressing its discussions with its principal contractor and technical partner, Valkor LLC with respect to agreeing terms for a potential new partnership arrangement to jointly drill on the Group’s approximately 320 acres of leased acreage in Uintah County, Utah, USA.
You May Have Missed
At the beginning of last month Aquis issued a framework for companies pursuing cryptocurrency strategies. It would be interesting to know what prompted this, and who they asked before releasing the edict.
Of course, what the stock market really needs is more and more regulation, and anything which could cap the upside for investors. Agreed, since the floodgates were opened with Smarter Web (SWC) in May, things have not exactly been smooth, and something had to be done to sort the situation out.
There was a 6 weeks feeding frenzy for the Bitcoin Treasury Strategy companies from May, with everyone and their mother getting on the bandwagon. The worst aspect for me, and something which was a mistake, was the way that so many companies over-raised to buy as much crypto as possible. This was understandable given the enthusiasm and appetite at the time. However, as was pointed out by those who had missed out at the time (on a sour grapes basis), the dilution on many stocks was so great that even if BTC et al went up 10x, many of the companies might only double. This means that even with BTC going to a record today of $125k, recent days have only seen a marginal share price rise in some of the main BTC Treasury Strategy stocks. I am guessing that many participants are 80%-90% down in their holdings in some of the leading lights, and it could be months or more before they get onside, unless crypto really rockets.
But the gist of the Aquis framework is that companies that are in the crypto game have to have a significant and proportionate real business under their bonnet too. If they do not they could be de-listed, something which could really spoil the party. From what I can see the best of the bunch in terms of the new names is Amazing AI (AQSE:AAI), with its US lending business on top of the strategy to get crypto exposure. Otherwise investors will not only have to kick the tyres in terms of the BTC / Crytpo play they are invested in, but also hope that Aquis decide that the company in question is up to scratch.
Active Energy (AEG)
It has been a busy few weeks for Active Energy, the alternative energy company focused on the deployment of renewable infrastructure and the integration of advanced digital technologies.
Last month after a £2.5m fundraise the company provided an update on its digital asset treasury strategy and broader strategic initiatives. It also bought some of the leading cryptos. But arguably, in the week of its interim results and the strengthening of its leadership team, we have really seen things put in place to underline the strategy of the company.
AEG said on Wednesday “Today marks the formal announcement of AEG’s 300 MW UAE pipeline, with the first 8 MW already under construction and on track to be operational by January 2026. We have also applied to expand this site to 33 MW, which will significantly enhance our near-term scale. Our roadmap is clear: 33 MW in place within months, followed by expansion to 100 MW through the addition of a 60 MW site that is already in negotiation and expected to be signed off in early 2026. Beyond this, our phased modular model allows us to scale to the full 300 MW pipeline within 36 months.”
This is clearly impressive, especially when combined with the company’s exposure to both AI hyperscalers and Bitcoin mining clients. It is a best of both worlds offering, something which explains the 22% rise in the shares this week, and how there could be far more near term. The charts / technicals point to as high as 0.3p versus 0.11p now while September support near 0.08p remains in place.
Disclaimer & Declaration of Interest:
The information, investment views, and recommendations in this Zaks Traders Cafe interview are provided for general information purposes only. Nothing in this interview should be construed as a promotion or solicitation to buy or sell any financial product relating to any companies under discussion or referred to or to engage in or refrain from doing so or engage in any other transaction. Any opinions or comments are made to the best of the knowledge and belief of the commentator but no responsibility is accepted for actions based on such opinions or comments. The commentators may or may not hold investments in the companies under discussion.
