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Shares in Fermi (FRMI) jumped as much as 23 per cent on Thursday after the data centre developer reported a $190mn (ÂŁ143mn) net loss in the first quarter but said that engagement with prospective tenants was improving.

The company, which is developing a huge data centre site in Texas, recently deposed chief executive Toby Neugebauer, who remains its largest shareholder with a 15 per cent holding.

It is also yet to secure any tenants.

New chairman Marius Haas said that the company was at a “meaningful inflection point”, and tenant engagement has been improving in recent weeks, according to analysts at Panmure Liberum.

The shares have now lost three quarters of their value since the company went public in October 2025.

After a flurry of disappointing market updates, Unite Group’s (UTG) trading statement today offered some reassurance.

The student landlord has filled 79 per cent of its student beds for the 2026/27 academic year, with occupancy fractionally below where it was at the same stage for the 2025/26 cycle.

The company said it had been using “targeted pricing initiatives” to fill the beds it lets directly to students. As a result, occupancy for these properties has improved year on year, while occupancy for beds let through university partnership agreements has declined.

Filling occupancy in its recently acquired Empiric student portfolio has proven trickier, with a 47 per cent reservation rate well below last year’s 55 per cent.

The company reiterated its 2026 guidance for 2026 adjusted earnings per share of 41.5p to 43.0p. Analysts’ estimates are fractionally below the lower end of this. Shares fell 1 per cent in early trading.

Builders’ merchant Grafton (GFTU) said it had experienced “no material disruption to date” and that it was on track to achieve market expectations for 2026 profit before tax of between £190mn and £200mn.

It has, however, been experiencing increases in materials costs and is maintaining high levels of inventory for sale to customers.

The company’s like-for-like revenues in the four months to April were flat versus the prior year, excluding currency impacts. Strong growth in Iberia, where revenues rose 5 per cent, helped offset weakness in Great Britain, where they fell by the same amount. There was more modest growth in each of Ireland and northern Europe.

The company has been expanding its presence outside of the UK, with the recent acquisitions of Spanish air conditioning distributor Mercaluz, and Irish timber supplier Cygnum. The additional earnings from these acquisitions will offset weaker UK performance, the company noted.

Chief executive Eric Born said that Grafton had demonstrated its “resilience and strategic focus”. Shares fell 3 per cent in early trading.

British Gas owner Centrica (CNA) will pay ÂŁ20mn into a voluntary redress scheme and write off ÂŁ70mn of debts to settle a probe by regulator Ofgem into historic cases where the company forcefully installed prepayment meters into homes of vulnerable customers.

The installations were carried out by contractors British Gas had used to collect debts. British Gas had previously agreed an earlier support package of ÂŁ22.4mn to vulnerable customers and had stopped forcefully installing meters when the issue was first brought to light following an investigation by The Times.

“What happened should never have happened,” said Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea. Centrica has changed “how we engage with customers in debt, particularly those in vulnerable situations”, he added.

The company’s shares fell by 4 per cent, although it said it does not expect any change to its full-year guidance following the settlement.

TT Electronics (TTG) said revenue for the first four months of the year was 4.8 per cent lower year-on-year, which it blamed on softer demand and ongoing efforts to restructure the business.

The components maker said the weakness in demand in Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) highlighted in its annual results had continued, and that it had suffered from an unwinding of stock building that a customer had undertaken in the prior year ahead of the relocation of its operations in China to Malaysia.

Excluding this, and the effect of the closure of its lossmaking plant in Texas, group sales were 2.9 per cent higher, management said.

The weak EMS market is offset by “buoyant” demand in aerospace and defence, though, so full-year guidance was left unchanged.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Fielding said the long-term potential at TT Electronics was evident in the recent rejected bids for the company by both Swiss competitor Cicor and Volex, but there remained “continued uncertainty” about trading this year and the shape of improvement at the company.