First of all, Happy New Year to all investors out there. Hope 2026 brings you lots of success.

So on to the update for Q4 and a few thoughts on 2025.  The porfolio performed reasonably well during Q4, delivering average return of 2.8% vs negative 2.2% for FTSE AIMs and 2.6% for S&P500. A few stand out performers for the quarter were Google(on the back of extremely positve reviews of Gemini 3 pro) and recovery in Billington(post the consolidation of their operations by closure of one of their factories). Mitie and Volex also had excellent returns driven by positive corporate updates. The integration of Marlow is proceeding well and I believe Mitie is a solid company which could benefit from AI streamlining of operations. Volex also had a solid update mostly driven by the data centre division which had a blow out results. On the negative side, a few of my recent purchases haven’t performed great. Ondine Biomedical sold off(on no news really) and so has Warpaint. I still belive these will come good long term, however the AIMs market in the short term could be very punishing(think liquidity and as a result stocks move on very think liquidity and get stuck in these new normals until news come out). I think Ondine has great potential once the LANTERN US results come out sometime in Spring 2026 at which point I suspect the shares will have a massive pop(2 or 3x from current 9p levels) and they will have an equity raise to fund the next stage of US expansion. Warpaint, marginally positive news from the Budget which indicated that small parcels into the UK will be supject to import duties, however this is not taking place for a few more years. During the quarter I also acquired a couple of more stocks which have done reasonably ok. Greggs(value recovery) plus Gooch and Housego(optical military division which is in demand, plus very strong order book and undervalued). Didn’t get a chance to write about these two at the time, but will put my thoughts on paper at their next results. Another disappointment was Hilton Group which I wrote about. I will reassess my holding after the January update but I suspect I might trade in the stock one way or another. I suspect the new CEO will kitchen sink the numbers so there might be some reset in expectations.

Overall 2025 was a pretty good year for the portfolio. The average stock returned 14.5% vs 6.4% for FTSE AIM and 16.6% for the S&P500. Given that the majority of my portfolio is in UK AIMs stocks(around 80% of the names) this is a pretty good outcome. Stand out performers were Google(AI Hype), MS International(Defense stocks growth), Volex(data centres) and Journeo(good stock specific growth). On the downside, Touchstar(change of CEO and restructuring eating away their profits, very slow turnaround), Hilton Foods(multiple operational issues) and Billington(construction slowdown, but a good turnaround).

I was reading that all the brokers are super positive for 2026. I can’t say this is my expectation as usually when everyone is bullish it turns out to be a bad year. I suspect there will be a lot of volatility and more clarity of the AI trade will begin to make their way into the market(i.e can the likes of OpenAI and Google create profits).  In the coming weeks I hope to create a post of my top 10 long term holds. GLA