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Virtually no gains in 2025 most of which was spent consolidating price wise, lower interest rates might just change that..

MSCI UK Consumer Discretionary Index (GBP)

https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/e03ad7c3-cd68-4a97-8712-3846390de7a0

Shorts back under 60m in HK, third consecutive drop too..

..while we wait for developments, in other news:

Elon Musk’s xAI torches $8bn in cash chasing AI breakthrough

Published: 03:06 09 Jan 2026 EST

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, has burned through nearly $8 billion in cash in just nine months, according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg.

The report lays bare the scale of spending behind the billionaire’s latest attempt to muscle into the increasingly crowded AI arms race.

The company, founded last year as a counterweight to OpenAI, posted a net loss of $1.46 billion in the third quarter of 2025, up from a $1 billion loss in the previous three months.

Revenue, while growing quickly, remains relatively modest at $107 million for the quarter ending in September.

https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/1085394/elon-musk-s-xai-torches-8bn-in-cash-chasing-ai-breakthrough-1085394.html

Morningstar is slowly updating with dec fact sheets, nothing on the sell side so far, buy side just Aberforth UK Small Companies with 144,000 purchase.

Early days, maybe others due to report.

Good idea, welcome indeed.

Share buyback programme

'Softcat plc (LSE: SCT.L), a leading UK provider of IT infrastructure products and services, today announces the commencement of a share buyback programme (the 'Programme') to repurchase ordinary shares of £0.0005 each (the 'Shares') for aggregate consideration of up to £45 million. The Programme commences today, 8 January 2026 and is expected to complete in the first half of the calendar year.

The Programme is consistent with the Group's disciplined capital allocation policy and reflects the Board's continued confidence in Softcat's long-term prospects, supported by the Group's strong cash generation and robust financial position.'

Yep, agree on the NDA's mounting up, hopefully it's not going unnoticed elsewhere in the industry..

Need to check the AR but from memory HCM is due another $90m in cash from SHPL if numbers are met, its going to make the balance sheet very attractive by year end all being well.

This is the sort of approach I am hoping to see more or less industry wide, in essence Ai to complement teams (monks.flow) and not replace them, this has been my take for quite sometime, perhaps these shoots are starting to appear..

This is from THG Studios/iLabs:

AI is balanced with a commitment to human direction & ethical practices.

AI-generated content is created within our ‘Insight and Trust Frameworks’. Ensuring that AI is used to enhance our processes, empower our people whilst safeguarding our clients. Our Insight framework allows us to translate clients original brief and ensure strategy is solid, creating a detailed response from creative.

Our trust framework has been built by our internal legal team, with approval from external legal experts, protecting the reputation of our organisation and our clients

https://www.thgstudios.com/iLabs

My view is companies Like S4 will play a vital role as businesses revert back, perhaps this is how THG Studios have come to their decision, evaluated what the tech is and built client safe guards around it integral to their offering.

I don't know the inner workings of monks.flow but would guess it too has some of these safe guards..

MyProtein stats too..

With a budget of just £80k, we generated £90m of revenue during the cyber period, with the US experiencing its best month on record, up 38% YoY. Influencer activity generated 3.7 million views, while in-app sales across 18 locales reached a record high.

The campaign also saw a significant increase in app orders, up 32% YoY, and a whopping 36.88% increase in organic social engagement, resulting in over 7.23 million organic social views.

https://www.thgstudios.com/our-work/myprotein

Posted this yesterday but noticed a few more publications have picked up on the story, impressive YouTube stats - in case folks are not aware this is produced out of Manchester in a custom built studio at THG Studios.

Global buys Gary Neville’s The Overlap media venture

Media company will now develop multi-format network across different sports alongside commercial radio giant.

https://www.thgstudios.com/our-work/overlap

Big Pharma race to snap up biotech assets as $170 billion patent cliff looms

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/07/big-pharma-race-to-snap-up-biotech-assets-as-170-billion-patent-cliff-looms.html

Ingenuity seems to be rubbing shoulders with all the right people..

'Gary Neville media business is to expand with the aim of becoming a 'world-leading sports network' – after radio giants Global took a majority stake.'

'Global is the biggest commercial radio outfit in Europe and also owns a major advertising business.'

Links not permitted hence quotes only

Gary Neville sells majority stake in The Overlap to radio giants - with his media business set to expand to 'sports network'

There's a fair bit of commentary from around Ai expectations, suffice to say most of it is about re-setting investors expectations or even pushing these out to 2027 and beyond.

I do wonder if Martins latest comments are in some way reflecting this also as it was in stark contrast to earlier interviews championing the virtues of Agentic Ai.

China has now over taken the US in m most benchmarks for Ai models, the major difference other than performance between China and the US is price, on the one hand you have OpenAi touting an IPO valuation of $750m whereas the China LLM's can be downloaded for free being open source, ironically this is what OpenAi started out as..

With this in mind the next hurdle is commoditization, in essence there is little to differentiate the platforms making premium pricing difficult, again this of course has a bearing on valuations.

We don't as yet have much visibility on valuations at the moment but we do have some funds which offer some insight quarterly, Fidelity for example has written down their investment holding in X by a whopping 70% plus, not sure if X also owns Grok Ai as not too clear whats happened there.

The other issue is user adoption, according to Google 'Searches for "how to turn off copilot" were part of a trend of "how to" questions that reached an all-time high in 2025. This reflected public interest and some user frustration with the integration of AI into everyday applications.'

Last but not least that old nugget about climate change, many countries are objecting to higher electric prices due to data centre usage, Ireland for example has indicated 80% must come from renewable sources.

..food for thought..

Cheers for the updates Jatw, I must admit to being a bit of a by stander with these smaller developments.

251 (ATTC) is the one I have my focus on for major progress, the combo therapy options seems extensive for potential partners plus it may help validate other potential ATTC candidates too..

Dollar strengthening, something to keep in view with world events.

Watching a video summery of Ai accomplishments in 2025 v actual claims, quite staggering how wrong those forecasts were.

The 'promise' of Ai this that and the other had a lot to do with company spending patterns, of that there is no doubt..

10k on the FTSE, who would of thunk that beginning of 2025, that's nearly a 2,500 point gain from the lows in April..

..and to you Scobee, usually prefer sitting down with a laptop these days..

10k of the FTSE ..thar she blows.capt'n..

The OpenAI ad featuring a recipe was primarily created using traditional human filmmaking techniques, with ChatGPT serving as a "behind the scenes co-creator" for tasks like ideation and organizing schedules. The ad itself was shot on 35mm film using real actors and settings, and did not use AI-generated visuals or effects.

Creation Process

The ad, part of OpenAI's first major brand campaign, was produced by an in-house team in collaboration with the agency Isle of Any and director Miles Jay. The core creative process was anchored in human creativity and craft, with specific roles for AI:

Maybe a bit of a contrarian view but I see S4's recovery driven more by a realisation of Ai's inherent limitations, perhaps an epiphany moment as CEO's revert back to more traditional models, those last two quotes from martin's latest interview may point to such..?

If there is one video to sum up Ai in a creative setting it has to be this one featuring OpenAi's own ad (1min)

https://youtu.be/z-N0vxHOhmk

Interested to see Third Ave investment letter now commoditization has started to unfold, have they become ore bullish as their prediction plays out, also Aberforth current position.

I would like to see more stock move into the hands of the above two as they are traditional investors with sticky hands, unlike the ETF's/trackers who constantly churn stock back and forth..

Interesting how the share register is consolidating with Matt, Qatar, Sofina and Frasers now holding around 50% combined.

It wouldn't surprise me if at some stage Ingenuity holders make a move to acquire THG, then re-list the group across the pond at some later date.

Google Gemini is emerging as a clear market leader in Ai, recent Ingenuity partnership announcement could help push up any proposed IPO valuation.

All speculative of course..