Insider: heavy buying of this stock after slump to 12-year low

Oscar-winning motion capture business Oxford Metrics (LSE:OMG) has been given £150,000 of boardroom support after its shares took a fresh hit due to sluggish film and TV industry demand.

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The AIM-listed purchases took place near 32p and prices last seen in December 2014. That followed Friday's warning that results for the 15 months to 31 December will be short of City hopes.

OM said its market-leading company Vicon, which provides motion measurement analysis to customers in healthcare, entertainment and engineering markets, had been impacted by studio consolidation and lower demand for new virtual-production stages.

In health and life sciences, purchasing decisions have been delayed by constrained research funding and institutional budgets in the US and elsewhere.

The company's other division (IVMS) is a specialist in machine vision software and measurement, serving blue-chip manufacturers in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, automotive and precision engineering markets.

OM said trading at IVMS has been affected by delays to the next phase of a major contact lens inspection programme and changes to its distribution portfolio.

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Board chair Gary Bullard, who is interim CEO until December's arrival of new boss Stefan Lampa, led Friday's flurry of boardroom purchases by disclosing dealings worth £112,000.

He earlier told investors that OM had made faster progress on changes needed to improve profitability, including by focusing IVMS on products with greater repeatability and stronger margins.

Bullard pointed out that the opportunity for Vicon is expanding, including through humanoid robotics and drone applications. It has also bolstered its development programmes with the acquisition of a London-based startup working on AI-powered motion capture.

Founded in 1984, Oxford Metrics started in healthcare before expanding into entertainment. Vicon was used on the 1998 blockbuster film Titanic and in 2005 received an Academy Scientific and Technical Award for its optical motion capture systems.

The shares listed in 2001 and reached their peak in late 2021 at 120p. On Friday, they fell another 2.2p to 32.5p as house broker Panmure Liberum cut its price target from 95p to 79p but said it still backed the operating margin to scale into the mid-teens.

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Alongside Friday's other announcements, Progressive Equity Research noted that OM had unveiled a further £3 million share buy back programme. The company has maintained a strong cash position and is debt free.

Progressive added: “The announcement on current trading may be frustrating, but OM is clearly being impacted by significant factors beyond its control.

“These challenges, whilst difficult to predict in terms of effect on trading, are both widely reported and visibly impacting other companies.

“The underlying growth stories for motion capture and industrial vision and metrology are unchanged, and there appears to be nothing in today’s news to indicate that OM has lost its enviable technological or market positions.”

The other buyers on Friday were finance chief Zoe Fox and non-executive director Ian Wilcock after both disclosed purchases worth £20,000.

Ex-Beach boss dumps stock

The founders of On The Beach Group (LSE:OTB) and AO World (LSE:AO.) have raised a combined £3.9 million after trimming their respective shareholdings in dealings disclosed last week.

Simon Cooper, who ran On The Beach for almost two decades before becoming non-executive director in 2023, sold shares worth £870,000 on Wednesday at a price of 174.4p.

His disposal followed September's better-than-expected trading update, when the online package holiday specialist said strong booking momentum had continued at the start of its new financial year.

The shares had been as low as 132p in March after the FTSE All-Share company pulled profit guidance due to uncertainty caused by the start of the Middle East war.

It reinstated guidance at May's interim results and said last month that a strong summer season meant it now expected adjusted profits of about £22.5 million in the year to 30 September. This compared with its previous estimate between £18 million and £25 million.

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City firm Berenberg, which has a price target of 240p, said last week: “While the company is not immune to disruption, it is more insulated than some of its peers owing to its asset-light model, which positions the business well to bounce back.”

Cooper began his career in the travel industry while attending university when he founded ski holiday company On the Piste Travel in 1996. This went on to be purchased by Thomson (now TUI) in 2008.

On the Beach was created in 2004 as a sister company, specialising in beach holidays and running on a platform operated by Teletext Holidays, with bookings taken via a call centre.

Cooper led the business through its initial public offering in 2015 and its entry into the FTSE 250 in 2018. He previously sold three million shares in December 2024 at 228p, when he realised some of his gains on re-investments made in 2022 and 2023.

Following last week's sale Cooper retains an interest in 9.1 million On The Beach shares worth about £16 million and representing a stake of 6.48%.

Sell low?

AO World founder and chief executive John Roberts now owns 14.08% of the online electrical retailer after he sold shares worth £3 million last Monday.

He dealt the FTSE 250-listed shares at a price of 83p, which is close to their low point for the year. They were 112p in January, having rallied from 40p in summer 2022 after Roberts pivoted the business to focus on margins, profitability and cash generation.

Roberts told investors last month that trading momentum continued in the new financial year, with group revenues up more than 5% and half-year profit expected to be up by at least 20% to around £21.5 million.

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He said: “Our plan is clear and we will keep delivering on it. We are firmly on our path to over 5% profit margin as our next milestone and have clear growth and efficiency initiatives to make that happen.

“We will do this while continuing to share more of our scale-economies with our members.”

Roberts, who set up the business in 2000 before it joined the London stock market in 2014, also announced the acquisition of photography retailer Jessops in a deal with Dragons' Den star Peter Jones.