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Shares in engineering company Mpac (MPAC) fell 12 per cent after management said a hoped-for improvement in trading was unlikely to happen in the second half, knocking the profit outlook. Analysts cut their forecasts from around £15mn for the year to £8.5mn.

“Since 21 April 2026, trading margins have continued to be impacted by delays in customer decision making on capital investments, heightened competitive pricing pressure, and lower operational leverage arising from reduced OE volume,” Mpac said. “The board now expects first half margins to be below the prior year, and FY2026 underlying profit before tax to be substantially below current market expectations on a like-for-like basis.”

Its shares are trading at 231p, after starting the year at 310p.

The company also announced the sale of its Lambert for £16mn. The division specialises in automated processes for medical and consumer healthcare companies, and Mpac bought it in 2019 for £15mn. The buyer is an Italian competitor, Mech.i. Tronic. The cash will be used to cut net debt, which stood at £48mn at the end of 2025.

Shares in On the Beach Group (OTB) jumped 5 per cent in early trading, after the package holiday provider launched a fresh £10mn share buyback programme.

After a rocky few months for the Manchester-based group, the new buyback comes at an opportune moment. Uncertainty from the conflict in the Middle East has weighed on the shares, which sold off heavily last month and are down by over a third since the start of the year. 

On the Beach initially pulled its FY26 pre-tax profit guidance of £39mn to £43mn in March at the start of the war, before it revealed its revised target of £18mn to £25mn in May. The group blamed a slowdown in travel demand for the c. £20mn decrease. 

The group expects to complete the buyback by December.

An activist investor has begun lobbying for warehouse giant Segro (SEGR) to spin out its data centre business.

Lauro Asset Management, a Singapore-based activist fund, is concerned that the London market is undervaluing Segro’s 2.5 gigawatt data centre development business, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

Floating 20-30 per cent of these assets “in a tech and property-friendly jurisdiction such as the Netherlands, would be an elegant mechanism to raise growth capital at an attractive price”, Lauro’s manager David Mercurio told the paper.

Lauro’s stake in Segro is undisclosed, but understood to be in the single-digit millions of pounds and held through nominee accounts. Lauro has previously taken a stake in Greggs (GRG), when it campaigned for the pasty maker to cut costs and expand overseas.

Segro’s shares fell 1 per cent in early trading.