Shares in labour supplier Hercules can be traded again after a near two-month suspension due to concerns over the auditing of its accounts.
The AIM-listed company delayed publication of its final results for the year to 30 September 2025 in March, leading to its suspension on 1 April.
In a market statement released this morning (22 May), Hercules non-executive chair Henry Pitman said the scale and range of its activities had “grown and evolved substantially, both organically and by way of acquisition” since its listing in April 2022.
“By way of example, two acquisitions were made during FY2025, alongside a significant disposal, and another acquisition was completed early in October 2025. The accounting work arising from these transactions was greater than originally expected,” he said.
“During the course of the FY2025 audit, concerns were raised that some of the company’s systems, procedures and controls relating to the risk-profiling and onboarding of a small subset of training and consultancy providers had not developed, or had not been followed appropriately, in line with the requirements of the group.”
Pitman added: “Historically, some new supplier requirements were controlled on site or were automatically classified as ‘negligible-risk’, and the on-boarding procedures for these suppliers did not consider the increased scale and sophistication of our business or the requirement for more robust risk-assessment and processing at a central level.”
This meant that audit evidence was “at times, inconsistent or incomplete, and in some cases a complete audit trail was not available for a limited amount of expenditure relating to these suppliers, particularly in respect of a small number of external training and consultancy providers”.
The company found that source data from some suppliers was incomplete and some of it lacked the level of “sophistication or integration required to align effectively with the company’s accounting records”.
Hercules directors then engaged specialist accountants and lawyers to advise on how to remediate the issues, and the time spent doing that meant the year-end audit was delayed, he said.
“Following extensive internal review and external investigation, the board recognises that some gaps in audit evidence remain and that, in some cases, the audit trail is incomplete,” Pitman added.
Most of the remediation work has been done, and the board expects it to be complete by the end of September, he added, but the current results have been issued with a qualified report from its auditors regarding “the validity and legitimacy of certain training and consultancy expenditure”.
The published results show the company increased its revenue by 19 per cent to £121.2m, from £101.9m the year before.
Pre-tax profit was down to £852,000 from £2.2m in 2024.
The company’s half-year trading update indicated revenue growth to £59.2m for the six months to 31 March, with strategic acquisitions, such as Advantage NRG, bolstering its capabilities in the power and energy sector.
During the period it supplied labour resources to 65 clients, up from 40 in 2024, and operated on 540 projects, up from 300.
Shares in the company opened at 33.5p today and were up to 37p by mid-morning. They traded at 54.5p at the beginning of March.
