What does the Aim 100 tell us about London’s junior equity market? Not a lot, many would argue. Like any numbered index, it is a blunt tool: a collection of the biggest stocks in a pool principally designed to fund companies further down the food chain. After all, the entry point for this year’s ranking – a market capitalisation of around £200m, up a tenth on 2018’s list – is normally a sign of a company with the assets and capital to stand on its own two feet.
But this year’s list is intriguing nonetheless. For a start, it’s not as fluid as you might imagine. This year’s top 100 sees just 19 new entrants, six fewer than in 2018. Of the constituents that were replaced, 15 remain listed on Aim, and 12 were already in the bottom third of last year’s top 100. Only two stocks in the top half – Moroccan gas hopeful Sound Energy (SOU) and luxury fashion retailer Mulberry (MUL) – suffered big enough dents to their respective market capitalisations to drop out of the top 100 list altogether.
Positive routes out of the rankings were scarcer still, with North Sea explorer-producer Faroe Petroleum and telecoms outfit CityFibre the only two companies snapped up in the year. And continuing the feeble track record since the market was launched in 1995, just online trading group Plus500 (PLUS) graduated to a full listing.
Another of the departed, Patisserie, proved an exceptional case, as the cake shop empire’s accounting scandal swiftly morphed into administration and an eventual Aim delisting in February. The collapse will likely be used as another damning exhibit by the doubters of the market’s governance standards, even as 2018 witnessed Aim’s highest average daily trading value since the financial crisis.
Indeed, investors aren’t shying away. The likes of Greencoat Renewables (GRP) and Diversified Gas & Oil (DGOC) – both of which catapult into this year’s top 50 on the back of well-supported, deal-oriented equity placings – highlight Aim’s ability to fund capital-hungry businesses and big investment themes.
| Aim 100: 50 to 1 | ||
| Rank | Company | 1-Year change (%) |
| 1 | Burford Capital | 11% |
| 2 | Fevertree Drinks | 11% |
| 3 | Hutchison China MediTech | -9% |
| 4 | ASOS | -35% |
| 5 | Abcam | 3% |
| 6 | boohoo | 32% |
| 7 | RWS Holdings | 65% |
| 8 | Secure Income REIT | 5% |
| 9 | Clinigen | 13% |
| 10 | Dart | 10% |
| 11 | Blue Prism | 33% |
| 12 | Breedon | -11% |
| 13 | GB | 17% |
| 14 | Gamma Communications | 44% |
| 15 | James Halstead | 30% |
| 16 | Diversified Gas & Oil | 37% |
| 17 | Hurricane Energy | 7% |
| 18 | Keywords Studios | -15% |
| 19 | First Derivatives | -17% |
| 20 | Craneware | 48% |
| 21 | GlobalData | 2% |
| 22 | EMIS | 30% |
| 23 | Advanced Medical Solutions | 5% |
| 24 | Young & Co.’s Brewery | 16% |
| 25 | Highland Gold Mining | 9% |
| 26 | Smart Metering Systems | -37% |
| 27 | Nichols | 17% |
| 28 | Draper Esprit | 2% |
| 29 | IQE | -17% |
| 30 | Watkin Jones | 12% |
| 31 | Applegreen | -18% |
| 32 | Victoria | -37% |
| 33 | Greencoat Renewables | 7% |
| 34 | Summit Properties | 3% |
| 35 | Johnson Service | 11% |
| 36 | Polar Capital Holdings | 13% |
| 37 | Learning Technologies | -16% |
| 38 | Scapa | -10% |
| 39 | Midwich | 5% |
| 40 | YouGov | 15% |
| 41 | SafeCharge International | -1% |
| 42 | Next Fifteen Comms | 21% |
| 43 | Central Asia Metals | -22% |
| 44 | Purplebricks | -61% |
| 45 | IG Design | 34% |
| 46 | Frontier Developments | -25% |
| 47 | CVS | -38% |
| 48 | Oakley Capital Investments | 18% |
| 49 | Hotel Chocolat | -4% |
| 50 | Bushveld Minerals | 33% |
| Source: S&P Capital IQ. Ranking accurate as of 5 April, price information accurate as of 2 May | ||
But, by and large, the list looks less dynamic than in years past. Forty of last year’s top 50 remain in the top half. Sixty per cent of the stocks that return in 2019 moved by 10 or fewer positions in the course of the year.
In other words, the Aim 100 is consolidating, and starting to look more like the FTSE 100. That’s a little odd for a growth-focused market, and there were other signs of stasis, too: the median company size fell by less than a per cent, while the combined market capitalisation of the top 100 was flat year on year. You can’t buy an Aim 100 tracker fund, but if you could, it would have lost you money in the past 12 months, and failed to rebound as strongly as its larger UK blue-chip comparator.
That’s the landscape view, at least. Aim is probably better approached as a stockpickers’ market, and one in which a majority of this year’s top 100 saw their share prices increase in the past year. In the second of our two-part annual round-up of the junior market’s largest stocks by market capitalisation, we take a closer look at the investment stories for each of Aim’s 50 largest players in the pages that follow.
