SMALL CAP MOVERS: In The Style shares take one final tumble

Online fashion retailer In The Style’s stormy two-year tenure on the stock market is ending with a final sting in the tail for investors, who have seen the share price crumble by around 99 per cent in that time.

A period fraught with operational and financial difficulties was capped when the board this week decided to offload what was left of the business.

Worth £105million when it listed in March 2021, the retailer is being offloaded for just £1.2million.

Cue the inevitable final collapse of the stock, which has shed 80 per cent of its value over the last five trading days.

Part of buyer Baaj Capital’s proposal involved founder Adam Frisby staying on as chief executive.

He and a group of shareholders who offloaded £49 million-worth of stock at the IPO are among the few beneficiaries of this brief flirtation with the public markets.

Looking at the wider sector, market small-cap stocks swung lower. The AIM All-Shares Index slipped 3.34 per cent to 836.98 over the week, slightly worse than the FTSE 100 index, which lost 2.58 per cent to 7,742.36.

WANDisco shares are suspended at the end of a bizarre week in the spotlight for the data firm.

The group went from being rumoured to be considering a dual listing in the US to requesting that trading in its shares be halted on AIM as it investigates ‘significant, sophisticated and potentially fraudulent’ irregularities in its results.

Elsewhere, stockbroker Cenkos’ shares were down 15 per cent to 42p following the firm’s annual earning calls.

Chief executive Julien Morse noted that the AIM was experiencing its ‘lowest levels of activity for almost two decades’ as profits fell 95 per cent to £200,000, just about breaking even.

Atlantic Lithium’s bounce back on Thursday was not enough to revive the stock entirely, which was down 28 per cent in the week, to 26p.

The exploration and development company issued a response to a ‘false and misleading report’ regarding its partner Piedmont Lithium, which resulted in an aggressive short selling of Atlantic’s stock on Wednesday.

Telecoms group Calnex warned order delays will ring in a drop in results for the year end March 2024 as shares tumbled 33 per cent to 113p.

Financial services firm Jarvis Securities slashed its dividend following a 20 per cent decrease in pre-tax profits, which led to a 16 per cent fall in share price to 140p.

Sabien Technology was one of AIM’s bright sparks this week after its M2G business, Sabien Technology Ltd, secured a significant order with a UK government department for its CO2 mitigation devices. The shares shot up 9 per cent in London over the last five days, to 10.1p.

Exiting Russia is still having a strong impact on London stocks, as pharmaceutical firm Ovoca Bio rallied 20 per cent to 6.5p after disposing Russian assets for just shy of £1 million.

Getech investors were impressed with the geoenergy group’s appointment of Dr Graham Cooley as chair of its H2 Green Project, with the stock 5 per cent higher than this time last week at 15p.

Cooley had ‘successfully’ led ITM Power as chief executive from 2009 to 2022, where the share price reached a peak of 666p in 2021 from roughly 10p when he took over.

Plexus was another one of AIM’s companies moving upwards, gaining 2.4 per cent to 3.5p.

The group secured a £5 million order for its proprietary POS-GRIP wellhead equipment and sealing technology for a specialised project application, to be deployed over the next 12 months.

Fuel, food and feed distributor NWF Group continued its good momentum from the first half into the second as it announced full-year results will be ‘significantly ahead of market expectations.’ Investors lapped this up, with shares gaining 7 per cent to 274p.

With a host of companies said to be considering an exit from the UK into the US, including oil giant Shell, there are two new listings announced this week that investors can look forward to.

Fadel Partners, the brand compliance and rights and royalty management software company, is set to list on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange later this month, with Guernsey investment fund Onward Opportunities set to join it.