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The yield on this entry has risen from 7.2% to 7.7% in a week, and the reason is the share price, not the dividend. The shares fell 6.9% over the week — about two percentage points of that mechanical, as the 6.24p interim went ex on 20 August, and the rest a broker de-rating. Seven City firms now carry sell-equivalent ratings, and their case is a specific one: the margin on new bulk-annuity business fell to 4.2% at the half year from 7.1% a year earlier, as three rivals under new North American ownership compete harder for the same pension schemes. That is a real argument about how fast the earnings engine grows. It is not, on the evidence, an argument about whether the dividend gets paid: the same half-year results raised core operating profit 7% to £918M, lifted earnings per share 11% and guided full-year growth above the top of the company's own 6-9% range, with the interim raised 2% and c. £450M of the £1.2bn buyback completed by the end of July. Bulk annuity business is written years ahead, so the cash funding these payments is contracted before it is earned. A cheaper share price on an unchanged payment is what a rising yield means here — but the margin trend is the thing to watch, and the November trading update is where it gets addressed.

Nine consecutive years of dividend growth — a streak maintained through three years of industry-wide outflows — built on recurring-fee wealth management revenue. The H1 margin dip is real (investment costs under the CEO's growth push), but net flows have now been positive for three straight quarters and the interim was raised again this year; a board that keeps raising through an outflow cycle is exactly the plan-around evidence this list screens for. Full-year results land on 3 September, which makes the tenth year of that streak a question with a date on it rather than an assumption.

A 35-plus year dividend streak from an Indonesian palm-oil producer with net cash and an F-Score of 9/9. The half-year crop update showed why the streak survives cycles: group harvested crop up 14% and CPO output up 11%, with the mill-gate price essentially flat year-on-year. The period's earnings are being carried by production volume rather than price — the more durable of the two. The 42p final for 2025 was paid in June, up from 37.5p, and the company has been buying back shares through August. Our own dividend-health score under-reads this business because commodity cyclicality suppresses cover scoring; the multi-decade record is the better evidence.

The contracted-revenue story keeps compounding: a third national contract award landed in July (Frontline and Seymour, worth c. £105M a year from 2030, on terms running to 2037), joining the News UK and Mail renewals. The market prices structural print decline; the announcement trail now shows the distribution duopoly locked in for the next decade, and the half-year accounts showed £7.8M of bank net cash — the first net cash position in years, against £12.4M of net debt a year earlier. Counting IFRS-16 lease liabilities the figure is £19.1M of net debt, which for a depot-and-vehicle network is the more conservative way to read it; the direction of travel is what changed. A declining industry with contracted revenue is a very different income risk than the headline suggests. Full-year results are due 4 November.

This entry remains on notice, and the date is now three weeks out. The scheme for the Picton Property Income acquisition is on its published timetable: shareholder meetings 2 September, sanction hearing 8 September, expected effective date 10 September. Nothing in the terms has changed. What is new is who runs the enlarged trust: Schroders has appointed Peter Lowe, currently head of UK real estate investment at Schroders Capital, to succeed Nick Montgomery as fund manager on completion. So a holder planning around this dividend is, from September, planning around a payment made by a substantially different company under a different manager. The scale point is unchanged and is the reason this entry carries a warning at all — Schroder Real Estate issues roughly 457M new shares against 489M existing, leaving Picton's holders with about 48% of the enlarged trust, while its partner LondonMetric dilutes about 4%. This is a merger, not a bolt-on. The current income is sound: the 0.897p quarterly dividend was declared again unchanged and went ex on 20 August, cover improved to 93%, and the payment is made from cash rather than from accounting. Against that, net loan-to-value of 37.5% remains above the trust's own 25-35% long-term target range. The entry stays through completion, and the test is the first dividend the enlarged trust declares: if it does not hold the 0.897p run-rate on the enlarged share base, the entry comes off.

The third guidance upgrade of the year landed in July: Q3 organic growth guided to 14% and margin to c. 26.5%, both raised again. It always screens premium-rated — the nuance is that the multiple keeps being backed by the actuals, upgrade after upgrade, and the CDM acquisition quietly extends it into US defence interconnect. The shares have drifted down 2.3% over the past week on no company news at all, which changes the price and not the case. Full-year results are due 17 November.

On track for a 21st consecutive year of profit growth, with two guidance upgrades inside three months, £168.6M of net cash and no borrowings. Looks like a boring IT reseller; the upgrade trail says AI infrastructure demand is structural, not a one-off cycle. The shares were flat on the week and there has been no announcement since early August — full-year results are the next real test, expected in October.

The half-year results we had flagged as the checkpoint arrived, and the numbers delivered: adjusted pre-tax profit up 21% to £116.1M on revenue up 8%, EPS up 20%, the interim dividend raised 10%, and the medium-term targets raised again — Fit Out to £100-130M of annual operating profit, Construction margin to 3.5-4.0%. The order book stands at a record £19.5bn combined, £12.2bn of it secured and £7.3bn preferred bidder. Average daily net cash of £423M is a disclosure no other UK contractor offers. The shares have now fallen a further 4.4% this week with no new announcement, extending the post-results decline rather than recovering it. Our read is unchanged and worth restating plainly: the compounding is intact, and what the market is repricing is that after three full-year upgrades in twelve months the board reaffirmed the outlook rather than raising it a fourth time. That is an expectations problem, not a trading one — but three weeks of drift is long enough that we say so rather than describing it as a two-day reaction.

The third-quarter update showed growth accelerating rather than merely holding: 39,000 net new customers in three months to 762,000, platform assets through £120bn for the first time at £121.5bn (up 26% year on year), and record gross inflows of £6.0bn. The investment arm had its best-ever quarter. Management cut the core managed-portfolio charge from 0.15% to 0.12% — trading near-term margin for scale, which is the strategy working as stated. Platform economics at scale; the only constraint our scoring flags is the valuation, which is the price of the quality.

The counter-cyclical compounder delivered a beat-and-raise in July: revenue up 16% to £177.0M and adjusted EBITDA up 12% to £46.1M, both ahead of the guidance given in May, with pre-tax profit up 13% and market share by administration appointments rising to 14%. The dividend rose 7% to 5.8p — a sixth consecutive year of growth. The secondary placing of about 2% of the company at 115p is worth reading carefully because it looks like a sell-down and is not one: the company raised no money, the sellers were partners whose 2024 lock-in expired on 31 July, the book was oversubscribed, none of the chief executive, chief operating officer or finance director sold a share, and the 2031 lock-in covering the CEO and COO stays in place. Screens miss this business because insolvency revenue does not fit growth templates; at under 10x forward earnings it remains the cheapest quality on this page.

The boardroom contest is the near-term story and its date is 7 September. Kelso Group — holding about 10% of the votes, up from 7% in February — has requisitioned a resolution to appoint Graeme Coulthard, himself the owner of about 8% of the shares, to the board. The board unanimously recommends shareholders vote against, on the grounds that the appointment would end the independent-director majority. With roughly 18% of the register behind the requisition this is a live contest rather than a gesture, and nothing has moved either way in the past week — no further stake changes, no new statements from either side. We trimmed our score from 82 to 78 for that governance risk last edition and it stays there. What has not changed is the reason the entry is here: FY26 revenue of £260.0M with like-for-likes up 3.3%, adjusted EBITDA up 47% to £14.0M, and FY27 opening like-for-likes of 8.8% over the first eleven weeks. The turnaround is delivering, and at £52.1M of market value the company has stayed the right side of the £50M line it crossed last edition.

A specialist inventory- and asset-finance bank whose recent trading statement guided full-year profit to "materially exceed" market expectations: the lending book is up 25% and return on regulatory equity has stepped from roughly 12% to over 17%. A sub-£150M bank with no analyst following, re-rating on its own numbers. Interim results are due in September and are the test of that guidance — the single thing worth watching on this entry.

Record results for the 18 months to January 2026 at low-single-digit earnings multiples and below book, with the FCA regulatory overhang now formally resolved. The July annual meeting approved the 1p final, completing a 4p distribution for the period paid at the end of that month. A specialist premium-finance lender with literally no coverage — the catalyst happened and almost nobody was watching. At £13.2M of market value it is the smallest name on this page by a wide margin, which is part of the reason the coverage gap exists and part of the reason it persists.

The preliminary results in July turned the May trading update into audited fact: revenue up 12% to £251.3M, adjusted EBITDA up 13% to £46.5M, and net cash improved to £25.4M despite two acquisitions. The standout was cash conversion jumping to 115% from 89% — for a mid-market accountancy roll-up, that is the number that separates genuine compounding from acquisitive accounting. The £500M-plus medium-term revenue ambition was reiterated. Shareholders approved all fourteen resolutions at the 21 August annual meeting, including the 2.2p final dividend, with allotment and pre-emption authorities carried on about 98.7% support. Fresh listings get no analyst attention by default; the results say the quality is already compounding.

A record first half extended the streak: iodine production of 393.3MT was up 29% and beat the company's own raised guidance, with second-half guidance of 460-485MT implying another record year. Iodine has no LSE sector peers, so no analyst has a lens for it. This entry has been on written notice since Edition 8 and the notice is unchanged, with five weeks left to run: the company has guided to commissioning its Permian Basin plant, worth 170-220MT a year once running, and to bringing the IO#11 brine pipeline into operation, both by the end of September. There has been no update on either since. Those dates are the reason the entry stays, and if the quarter closes without them the entry should not survive the edition that follows.

The shares rose 25.9% this week, the largest move on this page by a wide margin, and the entry's headline ratio has fallen from about 42% to about 33% as a direct result. That is the list's own stated logic working rather than failing: the company-stated adjusted net cash of $218.6M at 30 June is unchanged, and it is the denominator that moved. There was no company announcement in the week; gold rose about 5.7% over the same days, to roughly $4,607 an ounce, which for a producer with fixed costs is a direct earnings tailwind — though it does not on its own account for a move four times the size of the one at Serabi, and we would rather say that than invent a reason. The company remains debt-free. Two things from the August results still deserve naming: all-in sustaining costs of $1,262/oz came in above the top of the company's own $1,000-1,200 guidance band, and production is genuinely falling — half-year gold poured of 39,409oz against 45,574oz a year earlier. Record half-year profit is therefore a gold-price story rather than an operating one. Full-year guidance of 75,000-85,000oz was held. The balance sheet leg is intact; the underground development decision at the end of the year is what determines whether production can be sustained beyond the open pit.

Debt-free, with net cash of $61.7M — about 18% of market value, down from 20% last edition as the shares rose 6.7%. The operational leg of this entry has a date on it now: half-year results are expected around 27 August. That matters because the most recent quarterly was the softest since the entry went on — gold output of 11,007oz grew 5% year on year against the first quarter's 20%, and half-year production of 23,049oz sits at 43.5% of the full-year guidance floor. Management reaffirmed full-year guidance of more than 53,000oz on a second-half weighted Coringa ramp-up. The balance sheet leg of this entry is unarguable; the operational leg rests on a second half that has to do materially more than the first, and next week is the first look at whether it is.

Net cash of £45.6M with no borrowings — up from £27.8M a year earlier — about 17% of market value, at a defence engineer that resolved its two biggest questions in one results day: operating cash flow swung from negative to £26M positive, and the executive chairman — with the group for more than 50 years, and in the chair since 1987 — handed over on 16 July to a new independent chair and a new group chief executive, remaining as Life President on a consultancy basis. The raised 20p final dividend reached its record date on 21 August. A 13%-higher dividend and disclosed buyer interest in one division add two ways to win. Of the five names here, this remains the clearest evidence of the operational inflection the list is screening for.

FY26 results delivered record adjusted operating profit of £19.0M (+44%) on revenue of £104.8M (+16%), both ahead of upgraded guidance, with £21.5M of net cash after lease liabilities — the studio's only debt — or about 14% of market value after a 4.1% rise in the shares, and a completed buyback that retired 10% of the shares. Planet Zoo 2 launches 13 October 2026 as the first of three confirmed titles across FY27-28; the market is still scarred by the 2022-23 misses while the pipeline is the strongest since listing.

£29.0M of net cash covers about 65% of market value at a low EV/EBITDA — the deepest bunker on this list by a distance, and a slightly larger share than last edition because the shares fell 2.2%, which widens the discount rather than narrowing it. The inflection is closer but not finished: the adjusted EBIT loss narrowed to £0.2M and a credible three-year doubling framework was set out in June, but the metrology division that the framework depends on was down 17% in the first half on what management calls timing. So this stays the watch-item: the balance sheet pays you to wait, but you are waiting.