The 12-month bearish tape was generated under AIM ownership rules that came off two days ago.

• The catalyst already triggered. Main Market readmission completed 30-April-2026 per RNS; FTSE quarterly review on 4-June decides Small Cap and All-Share inclusion. Passive flow at MAB's scale typically draws £5–15M within 90 days against £2.6M/day ADV.
• Operations confirm the thesis. Q1 2026 trading update reports mortgage applications +19% YoY in the first 16 weeks, mirroring FY25 H2's +19.6% growth. Market share held at 8.4% of UK new lending — the highest in MAB's listed history.
• Capital allocation has flipped. First material buyback in MAB's 11 years as a public company — £2.8M completed late April 2026 — alongside the rebased dividend. Buying back at 8× adjusted pre-tax profit while statutory pre-tax fell is the revealed-preference shift to total-shareholder-return.

A platform that converts revenue to cash like software, not like a financial.

MAB collects procuration fees from lenders, protection commissions from insurers, and client fees centrally — then pays the partner-firm share. That float has converted operating cash flow above net income every year since FY18, peaking at 2.3× in FY25 with £33M of free cash on £15M of statutory net income. The next 12 months hinge on whether the adjusted PBT margin clears 12% in the H1 FY26 print — that single number decides whether the 2029 plan is mechanical or aspirational.

Adjusted pre-tax profit grew 13.3%; statutory fell 3.4%. The gap is the whole debate.

• The bridge widened 56% in twelve months. The reconciliation between adjusted (£36.3M) and statutory (£22.1M) pre-tax profit went from £9.1M to £14.2M in FY25 — driven by a £5.1M step-up in acquisition-related amortisation, fair-value adjustments, and put/call option accounting. The bonus and long-term share plan gate on the adjusted line.
• £124M of goodwill and intangibles, never impaired. Carrying value equals 163% of book equity and 68% of total assets. Three years of cycle stress, no write-down. The bull reads that as the audit economic test passing; the bear reads it as a deferred binary awaiting the FY26 review.
• Adjusted EPS rose 13.5%, basic statutory EPS fell 5.8%. Investors paying 21× reported earnings or 9× adjusted PBT are buying two different stocks. The September 2026 H1 print is the data point that decides which one.

Eleven years of compounding broken by one £50M bet at the worst possible moment.

Before: IPO November 2014 at 138p. Eight straight years of double-digit revenue growth, market share from 3.7% to 6.2%, adjusted pre-tax margin holding 12–14%, dividends above 75% of earnings. Quiet capital-light compounder that 11×'d in seven years to a 1,500p peak in August 2021.

Pivot: 12 July 2022 — Fluent Money Group acquired for £50M (£69M EV). Largest capital deployment in MAB history. Within ten weeks the Truss mini-budget froze the UK refinancing market, swap rates spiked 200bps, and Fluent swung to a £1.1M loss in 2023 against management's significantly accretive deal pitch. The stock lost two-thirds of its value in fourteen months.

Today: Three years later market share has gone from 6.2% to 8.4% across the worst purchase market in fifteen years — the cleanest single piece of evidence in MAB's listed history. Fluent recovered to £4.4M of adjusted PBT in FY24. Now on the Main Market with the catalyst the bull case has waited two years for. The next chapter answers a single question: does the platform deliver 12%+ adjusted PBT margin in the September 2026 H1 print, or does the metric architecture break.