Member Info for Scharnhorst

Thanks for sharing the link. I follow them but missed that one. Great to see the profile raised and I recommend Dr. Shah’s presentation from the Capital Markets day which is on the Creo website if you haven’t seen it.

Construction is entering a committed high growth phase in Scotland with infrastructure spending on freeports, renewables and electricity transmission. I think it’s a good opportunity to make money and have been investing in companies that will benefit such as Hercules and Springfield Properties. Van Elle are also very well placed. In the last IMC presentation the CEO was enthusiastic about his company being ideally suited to working on the overhead line upgrades on difficult Scottish terrain. It was therefore good to hear in the recent trading update that they are progressing ground investigation and design workstreams on the major Beauly to Loch Buidhe transmission scheme. Onwards and upwards.

It’s only natural as valuation methods differ and target prices are a best guess. You can always take the average of 65p.

Clicking the link gets you to the portal home page. I then searched for Hercules in the Companies tab.

April last year according to the Cavendish Research Portal. They don’t have any research documents for Hercules in their portal. I assume we’ll get one when the results are published.

https://www.cavendish.com/research-portal/

Is that the SP Angel target price? There are joint brokers and cavendish are at 70p I believe.

Thanks for sharing. It’s good to see another contributor!

The government has announced funding of £820m for a scheme to get unemployed young people off benefits and into work. As it includes construction jobs, Hercules Academy would be ideally placed to train them and the Hercules app would be ideally suited to getting them into work as it excels in placing candidates locally. Young people on benefits would, generally speaking, struggle to move long distances for work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U80LdIq9CE

A few red flags for me after the results and presentation.

1. The smart monitoring acquisitions seem to have added admin expenses but no profit. It’s a warning sign that they’re already restructuring.

2. The continued decline in Vicon revenues is worrying. Plenty of excuses each year but show me the money.

3. Markerless was launched in March and they should have a better idea of how well it has gone down than they’re letting on.

4. They’re preparing to launch a new 3 year strategy 6 months before the end of a 5 year strategy. I assume the latter will be swept under the carpet rendering it worthless and undermining the integrity of the new one.

Personally I don’t think the CEO is up to the job and would be better suited to a technical role. I also have doubts about the quality of the FD after discontinuing a business in last year’s accounts that wasn’t discontinued. I’ll take another look after the new strategy launch.

They have a strong brand name and are growing quickly. Much more to come from Brusk and the team.

It’s great to see Hercules grasping the huge opportunity in Scotland, a beautiful part of the UK that is often overlooked. The pace and scale of job creation to deliver energy infrastructure aimed at achieving energy security is unprecedented. This infrastructure development will require thousands of additional workers that are needed to plan, construct and operate the projects. Research by Highlands & Islands Enterprise highlights the scale of the ambition with potential strategic investment totalling £100bn forecast over the next 25 years. Hercules goes from strength to strength.

I don’t think Hercules are involved in housing at the moment as they have plenty of work in nuclear, water, roads, rail and energy transmission.

There was a mention of the opportunity in KSI, where there is an infrastructure boom, in the presentation today. Look out for news during 2026. It could be very lucrative for Hercules which continues to go from strength to strength.

There are some interesting posts on linkedin referring to Hercules involvement in a considerable project in Saudi Arabia.

“Hercules Academy will provide high quality training solutions to equip and develop the whole Saudi workforce in delivering these transformational projects, included topics to encourage Saudi females to join the sector. While there may be challenges there are so many more valuable opportunities to provide Saudi nationals with high level skills to keep driving the Saudi Vision 2030 forward.

The Saudi 2030 vision is truly inspiring and exploring how we can support that through our unique training programmes is something we continue to build on with our partners.”

This indicates major ambition at a company on the road to £500m revenue.

Don’t forget Advantage NRG. We will benefit from the once in a generation revamp of the transmission grid.

Keep them coming :-)

It’s a fantastic achievement to get to a rate of 2000 trainees a year in less than two years. It doesn’t come as a surprise. After starting the Hercules business in a spare room Brusk has shown he’s a dynamic entrepreneur, a force of nature. Not only is his company contributing to building Britain’s much needed infrastructure, he’s providing the means to grow the workforce. He is a credit to himself, his family and his profession.

Word on the autobahn is that the vehicle in question is the Range Rover Electric. Launch was pulled for further testing before the cyber attack, so is unrelated, though the latter can’t have helped. MERC are making selling down their portfolio look like the labours of Hercules, in which I have an interest. A couple of the major shareholders are fellow National Hunt fans. Might be worth a punt.

A nice show of support from director and successful businessman Martin Tedham.

Ric has 17% of the shares. He’s aligned with the rest of us shareholders.