Member Info for HalfGeorHalfScot

FDM has been talking about AI for a while with no slowdown of the decline in the business.

AI appearances in regulated comms started with Prompt Engineering in the 2024 annual report, April 2025. And then "we have been equipping consultants with AI skills and tools ..... AI opportunities will grow over time" in the 2025 interims, published in May 2025. November 2025 Investor presentation, there's a whole section is titled “AI – moving from the hype to adoption”, talking about client demand for AI. More mentions of AI in March 2026 (annual results), when "client appetite for AI-enabled skills is increasing" and AI "is becoming a baseline expectation, not a specialist skill". And then the latest in the 2025 results "client-focused AI initiatives are showing promise and generating positive client engagement".

In unregulated comms, there's 10s of articles on the web site speaking about AI. Going back in time: October 2024 "overcoming AI skills shortages". "AI skills gap" in April 2024. "Top 4 fastest growing AI skills in 2023" published in 2023.

In November 2025, in the Investor Conference Presentation, Case Study 1 on use of AI proudly speaks about the "60% reduction in manual reconciliation time" project. Looks like this project was actually done around 2020 as the original report on this appears on the web site on 11th February 2021, five years ago.

That's years of saying the same thing, against a backdrop of falling core numbers of profit, turnover, consultants billing and so on. Sounds like a desperate repositioning narrative, rather than something tangible which is actually having or going to have an effect on the business.

Not encouraged at all. The CEO and COO have listed as being worth over £200M. Instead of invest in FDM, Companies House records show that they have instead invested ~£45M in a second family business in Scotland over the past few years. The market announcement made recently says it is cash inside that business (Logiealmond estate) which has been used to buy a relatively small amount of shares in FDM. A substantial personal cash investment in FDM using personal finances from the leadership would perhaps encourage me. This token purchase does not. It seems like 'going through the motions' with the AGM around the corner.

Sadly the announcement this week on 2025's dire performance shows there is no change in strategy. Headcount number of 2,004 at the end of the year, with -72% profit (from £28 million (2024) down to £7 million (2025)) indicates that the rumours are true that 1,800 headcount is break-even. They're on that trajectory, have been for 3 years now, and probably already passed the breakeven.

Meanwhile Exec salaries remain higher than when the share price was £13+.

Time for a change of "leadership"?

The message across the market place (I was a buyer of RTD) is that the RTD market is dead. “No jobs for grads” rather than “jobs and can’t find grads”.

Where there is any opportunity companies like mine are building our own RTD capability rather than buying it.

There is no one in FDM leadership today who was involved in creating the RTD model (the model came from mountfield software and all those leaders left FDM years ago). So there’s no entrepreneurial capability in the leadership to change. So they do the same thing hoping for a different outcome. Rename the academy. Rebrand. Talk about “practices”. Speak about “services” and so on. But it’s all just RTD rebranded.

The only slight change is that the job board is mainly short term contracts. And the number of people in training is minimal. So FDM is reverting to the only other thing the original “FD International” leadership know which is contract resources.

As predicted the directors have bought no stock since October/November 2025. External signs look bad:

- the website should be the shop window for a tech company but it is in a state of serious neglect including random links (from the careers page) to Volkswagen finance pages (click the "Apprenticeships" link!) and inexplicably changing country and language.

- *Most important", the careers page is all short term contracts. It looks like FDM is a recruitment company and no longer an RTD company (although there is no official announcement to that effect).

According to companies house the two most senior directors (Flavells) have invested £50million in their other business : Logiealmond estate. If these directors aren’t buying FDM stock at this low price then neither am I.

These are buy as you earn (BAYE) trades and so the fact some of the directors are choosing not to buy the maximum allowed per month (£1,000) and are buying half of this (£500) could be a bad indicator in terms of their confidence in the company.

High confidence would surely be the directors using their substantial financial wealth to buy up as much stock as possible at this all time low price. But this is not happening at all. Instead they’re scrapping the BAYE scheme and soon the directors won’t have to buy any shares.