Friday Takeaway—delving a little deeper into 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
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.
Business advances, valuation playing catch up
CRTX Visibly Better
NAR Secure Supply Chain
Crism Therapeutics Corporation 10.50p £5.69m (CRTX.L)
Last Reported in Friday Takeaway, 16 January 2026 at 10.00p
Financial Calendar:
Year End December, reported 13 June 2025, Interims to June, reported 15 September 2025
Top Three Shareholders:
Andrew Webb (Interim Exec Chair & CEO) 14.1%, Professor Christopher McConville (Chief Scientific Officer, Director) 9.65%, Brian Murray 9.49%
Key Investment Points:
Equity & Grant Funding, Phase 2 Trials, Orphan FDA approval
This UK clinical stage implantable drug delivery Company is focused on the localised delivery of chemotherapy drugs. The ChemoSeed platform enables the sustained delivery of drugs exactly where they are needed, so curative cancer treatments become less toxic to the patient, while also improving performance and cost-effectiveness.
Clinical progress has been made in 2026 which will be accelerated by the £2.6m fund rise on 26 May at 10p per share with a one for one warrant at 15p. *
On 4th June, a non-dilutive grant for £0.9m from Innovate UK was awarded and is a major endorsement of the technology and strategy. The funds represent 70% of the total £1.28m project cost and will support the delivery of Part 1 of CRISM's open label Phase 2 registration-grade clinical trial for irinotecan-ChemoSeed in patients.
ChemoSeed is CRISM's lead product and is implanted directly into the tumour, so therapeutic concentrations of chemotherapy drugs reach the deep-seated tumour tissue. The funding enables the Company to progress its Phase 2 open-label clinical trial, with the first patients expected to be dosed shortly.
On 25 March, preclinical results were reported for Docetaxel-ChemoSeed which demonstrated significant anti-tumour activity, evidence of response, and a favourable tolerability profile compared to standard systemic docetaxel in a prostate cancer model. This important milestone demonstrates significant positive preclinical efficacy and safety. The funding is in place to advance the trial into patients with initial steps including GMP manufacturing of ChemoSeed, sterilisation, batch qualifications and packaging distribution. Trial results will be an important inflexion point and would be attractive to potential partners.
The Finals to 31 December 2025 are due to reported by the end of June. The Interims to June 2025, which was before the recent funding, reported an operating loss of £0.9m and net cash of £o.9m. The finals are likely to update on the significant progress and a show a clearer pathway to generating revenue from out-licencing, direct sales and monetising through services contracts.
Hybridan Comment: The shares have stood relatively still this year, while value seems to have been added.
* The GM required to pass the issue of the new share is on 15th June, after which there will be a total of 77.74m shares in issue.
Northamber 25.00p £6.78m (NAR.L)
Last Reported in Friday Takeaway, 5 December 2025 at 32.00p
Financial Calendar:
Year End June, Reported 23 December 2025, Interims to December, reported 20 March
Three Main Shareholders:
Alexander Michael Phillips (Exec Chairman, Director) 62.58%, Worsley Investors 6.08%, Herald Investment Management 4.59%
Key Investment Points:
Strong Balance Sheet, Increasing Margins, Acquisitive growth
Northamber’s strategy is to be a high-margin distributor of technology products and components and this strategy
has been significantly enhanced by acquisitions. A key theme is the evolution from a predominantly UK-focused distributor into a more geographically diversified European technical distributor of audio visual, unified communications and cyber security solutions.
On 1 December 2025, Nuvias UK Hardware (NUC), a specialist Unified Communications (UC) equipment distributor business, was acquired for up to £7.1m. NUC’s turnover for the 12 months to 31 October 2025 was £28.8m, the gross profit margin was 11%, gross profit was £3.2m and its net assets were £5m. NUC distributes hardware for video collaboration systems, enterprise voice solutions, and related UC endpoints, distributed to more than 700 UK customers, including enterprise, mid-market, public-sector, service-provider and specialist AV/UC partners. The initial payment was for £1.7m, with the balance of the outstanding amount to be paid in instalments with the final payment due on 15 January 2028. This gives plenty of time to improve margins with synergistic cost and purchasing integration, while enhancing the combined technical capability, particularly in solution design, provisioning, configuration and UC deployment support.
The Interims to 31 December 2025 were reported on 20 March showing a 22% year on year increase in revenue to £39.4m, the gross profit increased by 14% to £5.9m and the Company returned to a positive EBITDA of £210k, in a challenging market. Around one-third of sales are from outside the UK which is up from approximately 20% in the prior year, reflecting the strategic expansion into Ireland and the Benelux. There is strong sustained growth in both Epatra and Renaissance divisions demonstrating the benefits of the broader footprint and ability to support vendors and partners across multiple territories.
The strategy has materially improved the product mix and revenue balance, while reducing the reliance on any single market. During H1 on 11 September 2025, Ian Kilpatrick was appointed as a Non-Executive Director, bringing deep cyber security distribution knowledge and experience. The Interims reflected a degree of transition and integration activity. The Board believes that the Group is now operating from a materially stronger financial and strategic position.
As at 31 December 2025 total assets were £50.5m, net assets were £17.7m with cash of £2.8m. The property portfolio remains an important source of financial resilience and, where appropriate, it can release additional working capital. In line with this approach, the Company is currently marketing two of its office buildings for sale.
The Board expects a materially stronger H2: supported by the full-period contribution from NUC, the annualised benefit of FY25 cost actions, continued progress in services and recurring revenue, and improved operating leverage across the enlarged Group.
Hybridan Comment: There seems to be positive progress not reflected in the valuation.
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