Updates: Judges Scientific, Jet2, XPEL (JDG, JET2, XPEL)
Latest insights on JDG, JET2, XPEL
Remember to read the new Special Report on Douglas Dynamics (PLOW), based on interviews with 13 sources and dozens of dealers. PLOW has 50% market share and a catalyst to grow earnings far ahead of consensus this year.
Here is a video summary of the report:
Other recent articles: XPEL’s Dealer Conference, Judges Scientific Recovery?, 2026 outlooks for TerraVest and Watches of Switzerland.
See the Table of Contents for a list of all published articles, grouped by stock.
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Judges Scientific (JDG)
More background: Special Report, 2026 Outlook, Podcast
Judges Scientific reported full-year results on March 31, and I continue to believe that the company is beginning its recovery, driven by a rebound in US spending and a Geotek coring expedition.
Much of 2025 results had already been annouced at the trading statement in January, but the key points were:
Organic revenue growth +6%, split US -22%, Europe +9%, China +7%, UK +10%, RoW +34% or +15% ex coring.
EPS = 275p, in line with the reduced guidance. EPS guidance for 2026 remains 200-250p, while assuming no US recovery and no coring expedition. At the mid-point that puts Judges on 19x trough earnings. For context, EPS in 2022 and 2023 were £3.64 and £3.75, which in my view reflects underlying earnings power and puts Judges on 11.5x.
2025 organic order intake -10%, split US -23%, China +8%, Europe +6%, UK -9%, RoW -2%. YTD order intake -17% y/y, but remember this is comparing against Q1 last year which was not affected by the US research funding freeze.
Direct exposure to the Middle East is 2%. No indirect exposure either beyond a general macro slowdown being unhelpful to government budgets.
The two key drivers for the stock over the next 12-18 months are likely to be the size of recovery in the US and coring, and I see positive news in both areas over the last couple of months.
In mid-March, the US Office of Management and Budget (‘OMB’) finally approved the National Institutes of Health (‘NIH’)’s apportionments, allowing the NIH to access the increased funding Congress had approved for FY2026.
This appears to have cleared the key bottleneck to the increased NIH funds being released. At a March 17 House hearing, lawmakers had criticized the OMB for delays in releasing funding.
As Nature magazine wrote in late February:
“Weeks after the US Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing. One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to authorize its release. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far not received approval to spend any of the research funding allocated in a budget bill signed into law on 3 February. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) was authorized to spend its funding just last week.”
We should now begin to see NIH grant disbursements recover, which I expect will translate into improved orders for Judges in H2. As another scientific instrument supplier Harvard Bioscience said on their earnings call in early March:
“I would love for it to turn into a better academic environment in 1 day…there was a lot of grant submissions, which were waiting to be approved. And we expect to start to see a positive impact both towards the end of Q1 as well as going into Q2…we are a build-to-order business. So we’re starting to see improvement in orders, but in order to get the revenue, it actually needs to come in, in the first half of the quarter. So most of the benefit will start seeing probably in second quarter from the NIH release.”
There will likely still be bumps along the recovery, however.
Just last week, President Trump asked Congress for a $5bn cut to the NIH’s budget for fiscal 2027. That is lower than the $20bn proposed cut last year, which was rejected entirely by both parties in favor of a slight increase in budget, and the Democrats will likely have increased control of Congress after the mid-terms in November. Nevertheless, that and other proposed cuts probably mean there will continue to be noise around scientific spending, even if it does not translate into actual funding reductions.
But given the huge uncertainty and reduced US academic spending over the last 12 months, even this environment should lead to a significant recovery in orders later this year. Judges investor presentation shows that group orders on a trailing four-month basis (green line below) bottomed around the middle of last year and have been recovering since, on course for positive y/y growth by H2 this year:
There was another important piece of good news from the earnings call which I think has gone underappreciated.