Friday Takeaway from UK Small Caps
This will delve a little deeper on individual companies and focus on non-house stocks under £200m market capitalisation to raise awareness
7th November 2025
Alphabetically arranged
Share prices and market capitalisations taken from Alpha Terminal from the current price on the day of publication.
Top three shareholders are taken from the websites of the companies that we are writing about, unless there is a more up to date TR-1 notification RNS announcement.
These companies are changing gear for new business cycles
GELN Store of Value
SOLI Business diversity
Gelion 23.80p £42.09m (GELN.L)
Reported in Friday Takeway, 7 March 2025 at 13.25p
Financial Calendar:
Year End June, Reported 27 December 2o24, Interims to December, Reported 19 March 2025
Three Main Shareholders:
Thomas Maschmeyer 10.11%, Janus Henderson Investors 9.53%, Mr John Bolitho 5.16%
Key Investment Points:
Manufacturing & Commercial Traction, Prototype & multiyear contracts, Funds Raised
Towards the end of last month this energy storage innovator closed a placing, subscription, and WRAP Retail Offer raising £10.5m which was supported by Directors and mangers for a combined £0.23m. This included a subscription from Dr Graham Cooley who joined as a Non-Executive Director earlier this year and was previously Business Development Manager at National Power plc. Energy storage is a critical component in clean energy transition, and the LiS technology could be game changing
Gelion's comprehensive Li-S IP portfolio includes over 200 patents and patent applications across 44 families, covering anode, cathode, electrolyte, battery design and manufacturing, and battery management ensuring end-to-end protection across the entire Li-S battery value chain. This technology is creating the next generation of batteries that should perform better through improved energy density and increased efficiency. This breadth of applications will help in commercialising these lighter, and longer-lasting batteries.
The £10.5m is to be used to produce commercial pouch cell prototypes with TDK Corporation (TDK), the Japanese global electronics and battery manufacturer. Gelion will commence production of laboratory scale materials with pouch cell prototyping by TDK at its plant in Nagano, Japan. The main objective will be to progress to prototype lines for qualification of battery cell manufacturing within the next 12 months, leading to multi-year commercial contracts.
The Interims to December 2024 reported a decreased EBITDA loss of £2.9m compared to £3.2m on total income of £0.38m and net cash was £3.5m. For the 12 months to September 2025, to be reported in December, revenue is set to be £2.7m with an EBITDA loss of £4.1m. A further 7.6% (£0.5m) of cost savings has been achieved, driven primarily by reduced Directors' fees, salaries, and discretionary expenses, with the remainder coming from reduced R&D and administrative expenses. There will however be additional costs in 2026 as sales and support are increased as commercialising progresses.
Hybridan Comment: The 80% share price rise since March is testament to the technical validation. As the business cycle moves to real world scaling up of manufacturing and commercialisation, the pace of progress may slow before the sales increase.
Solid State 146.00p £82.99m (SOLI.L)
Financial Calendar:
Year End March, Reported 8 July, Interims to September, Due to report 1 December 2025
Three Main Shareholders:
Charles Stanley 13.6%, BGF IM Ltd 10.46%, Mr & Mrs Gordon Comben 6.4%
Key Investment Points:
Solid Order Book, Improving Margins, Defence contracts expanding
There was a positive Interim trading update to September 2025, despite a challenging background and hard to predict order flow, as all three of its divisions; Components, Systems and Power, progressed. The Group is a specialist value-added component supplier and designer of products and systems for demanding applications in critical markets. These include Defence & Security, Medical, Energy, and Transportation from facilities in the UK and US.
The Group expects to announce revenues for the six months to September of more than £85m, an attention catching 37.5% increase with an adjusted PBT greater than £4.75m compared to £2.5m. Although the improvement has been accentuated through the recognition of revenue from a delayed multi-period communications programme, it also reflects strong performance with defence and security sales more than offsetting disruption caused by US tariff uncertainty.
The Group’s strategy to even-out this ‘erratic order flow’ is to diversify across sectors, products, customers, and territories to build further resilience into the business model, and two relatively small add-on acquisitions were made. The operating focus is on its value-added engineering-led expertise to deliver state of the art products, and also security of supply and reliability. This strategy is to improve the quality of earnings with multi-year, multi-product programmes targeted for an increased number of Tier 1 international blue-chip customers.
The strategic investment made in a new integrated Systems facility has boosted the Group's technical capabilities and added capacity to deliver higher revenues at better margins. The delayed $25m contract from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for communications equipment was received and accounted for. There is also an initial $10.8m contract for Project CAIN, a key defence initiative for the MoD. Delivery of the initial systems under this programme is in the first half of 2026.
The Group has started the second half with a solid open order book, as of 31 October 2025 it stood at £96.6m which is 66% of FY revenue forecast. Despite political risks and economic variables, and perhaps helped by the global geo-political risks, Directors are confident of meeting expectations for FY March 2026: PBT of £7.2m on £145m of Turnover, producing a 54% increase in EPS to 9.6p, according to Alpha Terminal. A 4% rise in dividend to 2.6p is forecast on Alpha Terminal. Hybridan calculates a prospective P/E of 15x and dividend yield of 1. 8% from these forecasts. Net debt is expected to reduce from £7.2m to £4.4m out of cashflow generated by operations. Double-digit growth in revenue and earnings is anticipated for FY March 2027. The average sector P/E, according to Eqvista*1 (for Electronic and Electrical Equipment companies is 31x.
*1 https://eqvista.com experts in equity management and valuation services.
Hybridan Comment: Strategic actions have been taken to mitigate the uneven earnings profile. The underlying trading momentum is improving, helped by defence orders, which should justify a higher rating as earnings grow.
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