The Stock Exchange’s junior market is no longer the Wild West of old.
So says co-founder of Fundamental Asset Management (FAM) Colin Boxal: “AIM is no longer the ‘Wild West’ market of old, where speculative resource stocks and unknown international companies proliferated. It is now home to a large number of well-managed, profitable, dividend yielding, predominantly UK based, businesses.”
Boxal was highlighting a strong month for AIM at the end of 2016.
He added: “At the end of December 2016 there were 982 companies on AIM with the total market value £80.8bn. This compares with 993 companies on AIM at the end of November 2016 when the market value was £81.17bn.”
Data from FAM shows that the final month of 2016 saw five exciting new additions to AIM. And as FAM highlighted, some attracted considerable interest from investors, pushing their share prices substantially higher.
The newcomers were:
- Big Sofa Technologies Group (AIM:BST) – a business to business technology company;
- Creo Medical Group (AIM:CREO) – a medical device company;
- ESCS Group (AIM:ECSC) – provider of cyber security;
- Oxford BioDynamics (AIM:OBD) – focuses on the discovery and development of novel epigenetic biomarkers for use within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry;
- ThinkSmart (AIM:TSL) – provider of retail point-of-sale lease finance for high volume small-ticket electronic and commercial equipment.
Some 16 companies left AIM in December, mainly down to takeovers, and included Alternative Networks, Avesco, Bond International, IBEX Global Solutions, Powerflute, Red24 plc and GW Pharmaceuticals. The latter was one of AIM’s largest companies, with a market capitalisation of over £2bn, and it moved onto the Nasdaq market.
