Small Cap Awards 2025: Company of the Year Nominees

Held annually, the Small Cap Awards celebrate outstanding achievements in the UK’s sub-£350m market cap quoted company sector. This prestigious event brings together industry leaders, fostering trust, innovation, and excellence among smaller quoted companies.

The awards will recognise companies and participants listed on or before January 1, 2024, across various categories. Winners will be unveiled at a black-tie gala dinner on Thursday 19th June, at Merchant Taylors’ Hall, City of London

This exclusive event will be attended by institutions, fund managers, brokers, company directors, entrepreneurs, and advisors, providing a unique opportunity to connect with those driving exceptional growth and performance in the small-cap sector over the past year.

The nominees for Company of the Year are as follows:

Cohort Plc

Cohort plc is a leading independent technology group, operating as the parent company to seven innovative and agile businesses. The Group specialises in delivering cutting-edge services and products to domestic and export customers in the defence and related markets.

Headquartered in Reading, Berkshire, Cohort has operating company sites in the UK, Australia, Germany, and Portugal. Since its admission to London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in March 2006 (AIM: CHRT), Cohort has grown significantly, employing over 1,500 core staff across its operating companies. Its global footprint enables it to diversify its revenue streams and mitigate risks associated with reliance on a single market.

The Group is structured into two divisions: Communications and Intelligence and Sensors and Effectors. Communications and Intelligence comprises businesses EID, EM Solutions, MASS and MCL; Sensors and Effectors includes Chess Dynamics (“Chess”), ELAC SONAR and SEA.

All of Cohort’s subsidiaries are united by their commitment to innovation, agility, and responsiveness, enabling the Group to deliver tailored solutions to meet the evolving needs of its customers. The businesses also continue to invest in research and development, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technological advancements in its key markets.

Cohort’s long-standing relationships with key customers, including the Ministry of Defence (MOS), UK Strategic Command, and international defence organisations, have been pivotal to its success. These are built on trust, reliability, and a deep understanding by Cohort of its partners’ requirements. The Group’s ability to serve both domestic and export customers has also been instrumental in driving growth.

In December, Cohort reported a record first half performance for its financial year, with revenue, adjusted operating profit and net funds all ahead of guidance. The Group also announced a record closing order book of £541.1m (30 April 2024: £518.7m), with the duration of the order book extending to the mid-2030’s.

Several strategic initiatives and achievements have contributed to Cohort’s progress in the past twelve months. The acquisition of EM Solutions in January 2025 was a significant milestone, expanding Cohort’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region and enhancing its capabilities in satellite communications and enabling the Group to address a broader range of customer requirements across its Communications and Intelligence division.

Cohort also secured some notable contract wins in 2024/25. In July last year, Chess was awarded three contracts worth over £25 million for air defence systems produced by Rheinmetall. Under the contracts, Chess is providing electro-optical tracking surveillance systems and multi-sensor units, with deliveries continuing out to 2028.

This built on the significant contract awarded by the MOD in March 2024 for SEA to provide its Trainable Decoy Launcher System, known as Ancilia, to the Royal Navy. The total value of the contract to is to be at least £135m and work is expected to continue for more than ten years.

In summary, Cohort’s year speaks to its robust pipeline, global reach, and unwavering focus on innovation. By leveraging the strengths of its diverse portfolio of businesses, the Group is well-positioned to continue delivering value to its stakeholders in the years ahead.

Time Finance

Time Finance helps UK businesses thrive and survive through the provision of flexible funding facilities. It offers a multi-product range for UK SMEs primarily concentrating on Asset Finance and Invoice Finance but with the ability to also offer Secured Loans as part of an Asset Based Lending facility. While focussed on being an ‘own-book’ lender, the Group does retain the ability to broke-on deals where appropriate, enabling it to optimise business levels through market and economic cycles.

Time stands out as a lender that offers flexibility, speed of service and a personal approach, whilst being equipped with a suitable range of products – differentiating it from traditional banks, challenger banks, alternative finance platforms, and quoted and private companies.

The Company’s recent success can be traced back to establishing a four-year medium-term strategy in the middle of 2021. This targeted national recognition as an SME funder, a doubling of its gross lending book, organic growth in profits to exceed pre-covid levels, and a significant strengthening of its balance sheet by May 2025, which has all been achieved. This period has also seen the business divest its non-core consumer products, rebrand as Time Finance (previously 1pm and multiple sub-brands), moving forward with a simplified structure focussing purely on B2B lending, while expanding the product offering within invoice and asset finance. The business has also invested in proven industry leaders who have now been successfully embedded.

Time’s ability to manage risk has been central to its success. This is based on stringent credit management combined with significant diversification. With no sector comprising more than 15% of the total book, and the top ten only representing about one third, risk is therefore substantially mitigated. In addition to this, it has both an experienced risk team and takes comprehensive security provisions whenever possible. The results have seen well controlled net arrears and write-off levels, both of which sit comfortably within its target range.

Today, the Company supports thousands of UK SMEs, has grown its lending book for fifteen consecutive quarters which is driving strong increases in profitability. It has long-term, supportive and well spread funding partners, that include the British Business Bank and NatWest, and has over £90m of lending facility headroom to fuel future growth. It has a strong, robust and growing balance sheet and expects favourable trading conditions to continue in the near term.

Investors have increasingly taken notice of Time, and it has seen growing recognition of its 10+ year track record of profitability whatever the market conditions and consistent record of over delivery. Its proven, sustainable model also offers strong visibility of future earnings.

It recently implemented a new strategy through to mid-2028 aiming to deliver further lending book growth to £300m+, continue to control its arrears by maintaining resilience and quality in its book, increase operational leverage to achieve PBT margins of c.25%, and increase return on equity to the mid-teens by balancing growth, robust controls and efficiency gains.

Synectics Plc

Synectics plc is a leader in advanced security and surveillance solutions that help protect people, property and assets globally, across key sectors including critical infrastructure, energy, public space, transport and leisure and hospitality. Synectics’ proprietary technology and sector expertise have cemented its reputation as a trusted partner in high-stakes, in both complex and critical environments.

Synectics transforms customer operations by seamlessly integrating systems, technologies, and data into a unified solution-enhancing safety, improving efficiency, and enabling smarter, faster decision-making and response capabilities.

FY24 marked a solid year of growth for Synectics, with strong performance across all business sectors – particularly in leisure and hospitality, where the Company secured major contract wins and expansions in North America and Asia. This momentum has continued into FY25, supported by a strengthened order book and continued contract success across the Group’s operations.

A key catalyst driving Synectics’ progress is its ongoing focus on innovation. The launch of Synergy DETECT and Synergy SEARCH introduced additional capabilities to the platform including advanced AI tools for real-time hazard detection and forensic search, reinforcing the Company’s position at the forefront of intelligent surveillance solutions. Product development remains a core priority, with enhancements underway to meet evolving customer needs in a rapidly changing global landscape.

Strategic investment in people, operations, and technology underpins Synectics’ commitment to sustainable growth. A strengthened sales organisation is now targeting high-potential markets, including tribal and commercial gaming in North America, UK infrastructure, and international business development.

With an ongoing commitment to service excellence and product innovation, Synectics is committed to accelerating organic growth by providing customers with resilient, future-ready surveillance systems – ensuring the Company is well-positioned to meet increasing global demand for security and operational intelligence in critical environment, driving real value and long-term success.

Galliford Try Holdings Plc

1. A brief description of our business.

Galliford Try is one of the UK’s leading construction groups, working to improve the UK’s built environment and delivering lasting change for communities.

Operating predominantly as Galliford Try in England and Wales, and Morrison Construction in Scotland, our business is organised into three areas: Building, Infrastructure (comprising Highways and Water) and Investments, which cover our core markets, and we have growing capabilities in higher margin Specialist Services.

2. What do we attribute our success to in 2024/25?

Galliford Try delivered a fourth year of sequential and profitable growth with its full year results to 2024. Revenue was up 27% to £1.8bn (up 27%); profit up 40% to £32.7m, and dividend was up 48%.

Our success can be attributed to:

1. Disciplined risk management, careful contract selection and only pursuing projects we have the ability to deliver successfully and profitably. We have a high-quality order book of £3.9bn.
2. Collaborative client relationships – 84% of our work in frameworks. These are long-term procurement vehicles used by Government to procure services under agreed T&CSs. They provide deeper, collaborative working, early planning, and support the achievement of wider strategic and social goals, better understanding between parties, early mitigation of risk, better allocation of risk and repeat business.

Our emphasis on the water sector has been particularly successful. Following targeted acquisitions, we hold 54 frameworks with all 13 of the UK’s major water companies. Across our business, 93% of our work is with repeat clients.

We have excellent carbon credentials – in 2024/25, we published a detailed Net Zero plan setting out how we will achieve net zero. We received an MSCI AAA rating for the fourth time; and a B from the Carbon Disclosure Project for the second time. We are one of the first companies to achieve PAS 2080: 2023, the leading standard for carbon across both buildings and infrastructure.

An aligned supply chain for whom we are contractor of choice – we align key supply chain members with our culture and develop collaborative relationships using our Advantage through Alignment programme which offers training, access to resources and greater visibility of pipeline. We choose our partners based on their ability to deliver the work and improve wider social, environmental and economic outcomes. We exceed Prompt Payment Code requirements, paying 97% of invoices within 60 days. Our reputation as a prompt payer and collaborative client works to our advantage, particularly in times of high demand or supply chain shortages.

Passionate and skilled people – people are pivotal to a construction company’s success. One of our USPs is our people-orientated, progressive culture which enables us to retain and gain the best people. We have an industry-leading employee advocacy score of 87% and voluntary churn of 11.4% (UK: 32% and sector c20%). We are TheJobCrowd’s number one employer for apprentices in the sector and number two for graduates.

We are innovative – we are at the cutting-edge of digitalisation, using robots, AI and Modern Methods of Construction to deliver the future of the industry.