The Lucian Miers bear call on a clutch of AIM-listed names is the sharpest signal coming out of ShareProphets commentary this week, arriving alongside a Burnley FC sponsorship row that has left some retail investors asking uncomfortable questions about a prop trading firm called Finotive Funding.
What the Lucian Miers Bear Call Actually Covers
Commentator Tom Winnifrith flagged the Lucian Miers bear call in his latest Bearcast, describing it as targeting some big names in finance alongside AIM stocks including SkinBioTherapeutics (SBTX) and GB Group (GBG). Miers is a well-known short-seller in UK small-cap circles. The snippet does not detail the precise price targets or the mechanism of the call, so the substance of his specific thesis remains behind ShareProphets’ paywall.
What retail investors can do is look at the publicly available numbers on each name to form their own view.
GB Group: What the Numbers Actually Show
GBG, the identity-verification technology company, reported full-year results for the year ended 31 March 2024 that tell a mixed story. Revenue came in at £277.3m, fractionally below the prior year’s £278.8m, according to the GBG FY24 full-year results.
The adjusted operating profit (profits before one-off charges and amortisation) rose to £61.2m from £59.8m. Adjusted operating margin, excluding foreign-exchange gains, reached 22.1%, up from 20.4% the prior year. On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings per share were 15.1p, down from 16.4p.
Dig below the adjusted line, however, and the picture is harder. GBG reported a statutory operating loss of £41.4m and a loss before tax of £50.4m. Diluted loss per share was 19.2p. These losses reflect significant amortisation charges on acquired intangible assets, a recurring feature for a company that has grown substantially through acquisition.
On the brighter side, revenue growth accelerated to 5.0% in the final quarter of the year, driven by improved trends in Identity Americas and EMEA. The company also delivered £10m of annualised cost savings, with an £8.8m in-year benefit already flowing through. Whether those trends have continued is the question a bear call would naturally interrogate.
SkinBioTherapeutics: A Placing and a Retail Giant
SkinBioTherapeutics, the AIM-listed (ticker: SBTX) biotech headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, has been busy on two fronts. On 16 June 2025, the company announced a Superdrug distribution agreement alongside a Placing and Retail Offer, per its regulatory announcements. The Superdrug tie-up gives SBTX a route into one of the UK’s largest high-street health and beauty retailers.
The WRAP Retail Offer, which allowed smaller investors to participate in the fundraise alongside institutional placees, launched on 16 June 2025 and results were announced on 20 June 2025. A placing (the process of issuing new shares, typically to institutional buyers, to raise fresh capital) that also runs a retail offer alongside it is broadly positive for smaller shareholders, since it gives them a chance to invest at the same price as larger funds rather than being diluted (having their ownership percentage reduced) without the option to participate.
Whether the capital raised justifies Miers’ bearish view on SBTX is something each investor will need to weigh against the company’s clinical and commercial pipeline.
The Burnley FC Sponsorship Row and Finotive
Winnifrith’s Burnley FC concern centres on the club’s association with Finotive, a prop trading firm (a company that provides traders with its own capital to trade, rather than executing client investment orders). Finotive Funding is headquartered in Dubai’s DIFC financial district and says it funds traders up to $200,000, backed by Finotive Markets, which it describes as regulated by the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius.
Crucially, Finotive’s own terms and conditions state that the firm does not provide brokerage services, investment advice, portfolio management, execution services, or deposit-taking. Its services are described as evaluation, educational, simulation, and contractual reward services. That is a common structure in the prop-firm industry, and it means the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s main financial regulator, has no direct oversight of these activities as they are framed.
Retail investors considering any prop trading firm should check whether any UK regulatory protections, including the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, apply to their funds. In Finotive’s case, based on its own disclosures, standard UK investor protections do not appear to cover its core offering.
The catalyst to watch across all three names is the next set of trading updates. For GBG, whether the Q4 revenue acceleration has held into the new financial year will be the test of whether the bear case or the recovery case wins out.
