A question: which stocks are among the best performing in 2025?
You might pick Palantir, the US software business run by billionaire Alex Karp that’s trading on eye-popping multiples. It’s gone up a pretty respectable 145 per cent since January.
Or maybe you’d opt for something more wacky like Smarter Web Company, the small website design business that’s gone on a massive Bitcoin buying spree. That’s up more than fourfold since it joined the stock market in May.
But the stock I have in mind has rocketed nearly 1,000 per cent since the start of the year – the biggest climb I’ve seen anywhere. Any guesses?
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Back to business.
The stock I have in mind is a little-known small cap. It began life in 2019 as The Lords Esports Plc and, as its name suggests, was looking to tap into the fast-growing world of online gaming tournaments.
The company employed its own teams who played games, or in the firm’s words, “competed at the upper echelons of esports and have maintained a consistently high level of performance.”
That included securing $1m in prize money from winning the “MrBeast’s Extreme Survival Challenge”, as well as taking part in a number of online competitions on Fortnite, such as Battle Royale, a shoot-em-up in which players accumulate weapons and fight it out to be the last player alive.
The firm floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2020, raising £20m, and for a while was worth more than £100m. David Beckham got involved, snapping up a decent stake, and the company landed sponsorship deals with Subway and Sky Broadband. It also took out a 10-year lease on a big venue in Shoreditch.
But after consecutive years of losses, the shares collapsed, and last year the business was sold to a Californian investment firm called DCB Sports for £100k, alongside paying off several million pounds in debt.
A change in strategy
Since it was founded as the Lords Esports, the listed business changed its name to Guild Esports, then to Cassell Capital. And then in May, it got another new name: Defence Holdings.
That’s because, since esports didn’t really work out for them, the company has decided to try something a little different – or in the words of its directors, it “resolved to pursue a refocused strategy”.
And my, what a refocused strategy this is. Because The Lords Esports, as was, is now a drone warfare company. It’s the natural transition: get good at online shoot-em-ups, before it’s time to go into battle for realsies.
Defence Holdings says it will “concentrate on developing and acquiring cutting-edge capabilities, including artificial-intelligence enabled sensing, secure communications, autonomous drone systems and next-generation cyber-defence, to meet rapidly evolving security requirements across the United Kingdom and continental Europe.”
It seems like a plan to tap into the billions of pounds in fresh defence spending pledged by the UK government. And the move is something investors are buying into, with the firm going from being worth next to nothing to around £10m almost overnight.
The company last week published a white paper on “Sovereign Infrastructure and Future Defence Readiness” which it said “reinforces Defence Holdings’ position as a leading contributor to sovereign defence.” That is, a leading contributor for all of about three months.
Defence Holdings is putting its money where its mouth is, and recently unveiled a partnership with AI business Whitespace, as part of its new mission to “build deployable software infrastructure at the speed and scale modern threats demand.”
David Beckham remains a major shareholder with a stake of more than 3 per cent, as far as I can tell from corporate filings produced earlier this year. But neither the company, nor Mr Beckham, confirmed the size of his shareholding.
And what became of the esports business, I hear you ask. At the time of its acquisition, DCB managing partner Gary LaDrido said he had “long followed esports and… we have found the perfect opportunity for us to enter the sector for the first time.”
But barely a year later, Gary got cold feet. As we revealed in Thursday’s paper, the company has been put up for sale on an insolvency marketplace.
Defence Holdings (formerly: Cassell (formerly: Guild (formerly: the Lords Esports))) did not respond to a request for comment.
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