Small Cap Awards 2026: Company of the Year Award

Inaugurated in 2013, the Small Cap Awards is an annual event celebrating and rewarding the finest in the sub-£350m market cap quoted company sector.

The Awards celebrates those professionals and companies that work within the AIM and Aquis communities and is attended by listed companies, institutions, fund managers, brokers and advisors.

The 2026 Awards will be held on Thursday 11th June 2026 at Merchant Taylors Hall in London.

The nominees for Company of the Year are as follows:

Gear4music

Gear4music is the largest UK based online retailer of musical instruments and music equipment, delivering to 190 countries across Europe and the Rest of the World. The Group sells own-brand musical instruments and music equipment alongside premium third-party brands including Fender, Yamaha and Roland, to customers ranging from beginners to musical enthusiasts and professionals.

Operating from a Head Office in York, the Group has Distribution Centres in York, Bacup, Sweden, Germany, Ireland & Spain, and showrooms in York, Bacup, Sweden & Germany. Having developed its own e-commerce platform, with multilingual, multicurrency websites, the Group continues to build its overseas presence.

Following strategic investments in people, processes and structures during FY24, the Group repositioned its focus towards profitable revenue growth in FY25 as market conditions improved. Over the past year, Gear4music has built strong momentum, announcing six guidance upgrades reflecting continued execution of its Growth Strategy announced in June 2024. In the FY26 pre-close statement, Gear4Music announced strong revenue growth across markets and brands of 30% alongside improving product margins, driving gross margin expansion to 28.4% (FY25: 27.0%) and at least an £8.1m increase in EBITDA to £18.1m, with EBITDA margin rising to 9.5% from 6.8% in the prior year.

Importantly, this performance has not been driven by a single quarter or market, with demand being broad based, spanning the UK, Europe and beyond, with customers continuing to choose Gear4music across both entry level and professional equipment. While peak trading periods delivered standout results, growth has proven durable beyond these periods, reinforcing management’s confidence in the underlying strength of the business and its longerterm growth prospects.

Operating margins have improved steadily, supported by disciplined pricing, operational efficiencies and a more supportive competitive backdrop, translating into higher profitability. At the same time, the Group is investing to support future growth, signing a 15-year lease for a new UK warehouse, increasing capacity from FY27 Q3 and committing £10.2m to automation and fit-out through FY27. With an expected payback period of 3–5 years, these investments will enhance operational capacity and deliver increasing efficiencies as the business scales.

ActiveOps Plc

ActiveOps is a global leader in automation and Decision Intelligence software that helps highly regulated organisations run smarter and more efficient operations. Its technology delivers high levels of ROI, through providing operations leaders with the insight to make better decisions faster, improving productivity and freeing people to focus on higher value work.

Founded in Reading, UK, the Group operates across five continents and supports over 130,000 users in more than 40 countries. Customers include many of the world’s leading banks, insurers, healthcare providers and business services organisations.

At the heart of ActiveOps’ offering is Decision Intelligence which combines human and artificial intelligence to improve how operations are planned and managed. Its products draw on two decades of experience and are powered by the proprietary AOM (Active Operations Management) methodology, which turns complex data from disparate systems into clear, actionable insight.

The year to 31 March 2026 saw strong commercial momentum, with Group revenue rising by 48% to £45m (28% on an organic basis) and Annual Recurring Revenue reaching approximately £41.5m. Growth was driven by new account wins alongside high levels of customer retention and expansion. Net Revenue Retention increased to a record 119%, and the Group remained highly cash-generative and debt-free.

Innovation continues to lead the way. The launch of the latest iteration of the Group’s ControliQ platform introduced new AI-driven capabilities, and development of further AI features is progressing strongly. The earnings enhancing acquisition of Enlighten Group in June 2025 brought new capabilities and strengthened ActiveOps’ presence in North America and the Asia Pacific region.

The market for the Group’s solutions is large and global, due to the scale of operations in its target markets of banking, insurance, financial services and healthcare administration. The need to reduce cost bases and increase output per employee, combined with the urgent desire to adopt agentic AI are powerful long-term trends driving demand for ActiveOps’ products, supporting the Group’s ambitions. 

At a Capital Markets Day in November 2025, the Group launched medium-term growth ambitions of £100m ARR and a 25% EBITDA margin. These will be achieved thorough the continued deepening with its enterprise customers, expanding through partners, the acceleration of R&D activities to deliver unique capabilities that support further customer expansion, and continued disciplined execution and increasing operational leverage.

Concurrent Technologies plc

Concurrent Technologies plc (Concurrent) is an innovative leader in designing, developing and manufacturing high-performance embedded Plug-In Cards (PICs) and systems for some of the world’s largest OEMs

Primarily, the company supplies defence and aerospace, with secondary markets in telecoms and scientific instrumentation. Concurrent is known for delivering reliable, high-quality solutions that thrive in tough conditions, without compromising on performance. With 40 years of expertise, Concurrent aims to release its products ‘concurrently’ with the launch of new semiconductor technology from developers such as Intel®, helping customers to boost their own products in environments demanding an advantage. The company’s strong reputation for flexibility and long-term support underpins trusted relationships across its markets.

In FY24 Concurrent delivered a record year, with revenue and profit up 27% and 40% respectively, alongside a 28% increase in gross profit and a 30% rise in EBITDA.

The company secured 22 design wins (where customers integrate products into their programmes) in the year including 10 ‘major wins’ which represent a lifetime value to the business of at least £100m. Notably, in the year Concurrent also secured its largest-ever contract of $6m with a major US defence and aerospace prime contractor.

To support the growth of the Products Business Unit, which designs and manufactures computer boards, the company doubled the capacity of its Colchester facility during FY24 and post year-end, it reached an agreement to take a 20-year lease on a new property to house its headquarters and manufacturing operations, positioning the business for sustained expansion.

The Systems Business Unit, which is still in its early stages of development, performed well following the acquisition of Phillips Aerospace in the prior year. Early success has been driven by a significant $3.7m design win contract with a leading defence platform provider in Asia.

With a closing FY24 backlog of around $5 million and a growing pipeline, the Systems Business Unit is expected to deliver strong year-on-year growth in FY25. To support this expansion, the unit will relocate to a modern facility in Los Angeles in the second half of the year.

Looking ahead, Concurrent will continue to launch cutting-edge products and drive design wins across both business units, deepening relationships with new and existing customers.

FY25 has begun well with a significant £3.4m order for the company’s VME-based 6U computer boards from a long-standing European customer. This strong start has been strengthened by the launch of Kratos, one of the first and most powerful rugged plug-in cards available today, built on Intel’s latest 6516P-B processor which the company had access to six months early.

The progress at Concurrent reflects a relentless commitment to talent and culture. Its defined culture, which is centred on ‘get things done’, ‘no spectators’, ‘ambition’, and ‘buzzing, embodies a mindset that differentiates the business and keeps it ahead of the competition..