GRID’s 3 director-linked buys arrive after the 397 MW revaluation

Three buys, three days, and a stock still below its NAV

The first thing to notice is not the filing mechanics. It is the timing. Gresham House Energy Storage Fund PLC printed its half-year update on 23 September, then saw a cluster of director and closely associated purchases over the next three days. Chair John Leggate bought 12,350 shares at 97.4499 pence, David Stevenson bought 8,610 shares at 98 pence, and Mak Lo Chiu, a person closely associated with non-executive director Isabel Liu, bought 20,200 shares at 98.298 pence. The euro-normalised filing value for the Mak Lo Chiu purchase was EUR 23,057.08.

That is not a huge sum against a company with a market capitalisation near £550 million. It is, however, a neat little cluster, and clusters matter more than lone gestures when you are trying to read what the board and its orbit think about the stock at the current price. The shares were changing hands around 97 to 98 pence in the period, while the company’s own update put NAV per share at 131.30 pence. The discount is still doing a lot of the work here.

Insiders Trades data gives this a score of 31, which is enough to matter without pretending the tape has been rewritten. The reason is straightforward: multiple insiders traded the same name within a month, the buys were tiny relative to market value, and the company sits in the small and mid-cap band where insider activity has historically been less fully priced in. That is the frame. The rest is the business.

Why battery storage still has a policy tailwind

The UK battery storage trade is not the same animal it was when merchant volatility dominated every conversation. Grid flexibility has become a policy problem, not just a portfolio theme. Ofgem has pushed ahead with a long-duration energy storage cap-and-floor scheme, and the provisional awards have included lithium-ion BESS projects alongside pumped hydro. That matters because it tells you the market is still being built around the need for dispatchable storage, not just around the next quarterly power price print.

The broader European backdrop is still active too. Recent project financing and construction starts have kept showing up across the UK, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium. In the US, Q2 2026 installations hit a record 5.4 GW and 18.9 GWh, with longer-duration systems taking a larger share as grid flexibility becomes more valuable. None of that guarantees anything for a single listed fund in London. It does tell you the asset class is not being left behind by the policy cycle.

For GRID, that backdrop matters because the company is not just a financial wrapper around a story. It is the largest listed owner of utility-scale BESS in Great Britain by operational MW, according to the research provided. That position gives it exposure to the same structural demand for balancing and flexibility that is driving the sector, but it also leaves it exposed to the same operational and pricing risks that have made investors cautious about merchant storage names. The market has not forgotten that.

The interim update changed the conversation before the buys landed

The company’s 23 September trading update is the real anchor for the filing cluster. NAV per share rose 15.8% to 131.30 pence from 113.34 pence at end-2025, and the driver was the discounted-cash-flow revaluation of 397 MW of projects entering construction. That is the sort of line item that changes how a listed infrastructure vehicle trades, because it moves value from the future into the present. The market does not always believe the whole thing, but it does notice when the asset base is being marked up on the back of construction progress.

The operating numbers were decent too. Portfolio revenues reached £34.7 million, up 9.5% year on year, and EBITDA came in at £23.5 million, up 14.5%. Contracted revenues rose to 61% of the total. That last figure is the one to keep in your head. A higher contracted share does not erase merchant exposure, but it does make the cash flow profile look less brittle than it did when the fund was more dependent on spot pricing and short-term volatility.

The stock still trades at a material discount to NAV, which is why the insider buying matters at all. If the board and its close associates were buying after a weak update, you would read it one way. Buying after a NAV uplift, a stronger revenue line and a larger contracted share is a different signal. Not a verdict. A different signal.

GRID versus the rest of the UK BESS pack

Comparables are where this gets interesting. Gore Street Energy Storage Fund has a more geographically diversified portfolio, with exposure including the US, Ireland and Germany, but it reported a 27% NAV decline for the year ended 31 March 2026 amid softer GB and Texas revenues. That is the kind of gap that changes how the market prices the whole listed BESS group. Diversification helps, until it does not. If the revenue mix is weak in the wrong places, the market will still take its pound of flesh.

Harmony Energy Income Trust is the other useful reference point, because it was acquired at NAV. That matters less as a one-off headline than as a reminder that the listed BESS space can be repriced by corporate action when the assets are understood and the discount gets too wide. GRID is not there yet, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But the existence of that precedent keeps the discount debate alive.

Against that backdrop, GRID’s recent NAV growth and increasing contracted revenue share make it look better positioned than the more bruised UK pure-play names. The company is not immune to merchant volatility, and it is still trading below NAV, but the direction of travel is cleaner than in the cases where revenue pressure has been eating away at the asset base. That is why the insider cluster lands with more force than a routine director purchase would at a random point in the quarter.

The market is also still learning how to value storage assets as they move from construction into revenue generation. The revaluation of 397 MW is a reminder that this is not a static portfolio. As projects secure financing and enter construction, value can crystallise. That is good news when the market is willing to pay for it. It is less helpful when the discount remains stubborn and the shares keep trading as if the next update might disappoint.

What the cluster says about the board’s timing

The cluster itself is simple enough. Three declarations, three days, three buys. John Leggate bought first on 23 September, David Stevenson followed on 24 September, and Mak Lo Chiu bought on 25 September. The purchases were not huge in absolute terms, but they were coordinated enough to stand out from background noise. The chair buying after the interim update is the cleanest read in the set. A closely associated purchase tied to a non-executive director adds another layer, because it shows the buying was not confined to one person with a particular view.

Insiders Trades data classifies this as a cluster and puts it in a sweet-spot bucket for board buys at names in the EUR 300 million to EUR 1 billion range. The historical T+90 cohort return for that bucket is 1.57%, with a 51.7% win rate across 2,303 observations. That is useful context, but only as context. It tells you that similar filings have not been useless on average. It does not tell you that GRID will do anything in the next 90 days.

The score of 31 is doing the same kind of work. It is not a trumpet blast. It is a nudge that says the filing is worth reading because the size is modest, the cluster is real, and the company sits in a range where insider activity has historically been less fully reflected in price. If you are looking for a grand signal, this is not one. If you are looking for a board that chose to buy after a better-than-expected update while the stock still sat below NAV, this is exactly the sort of thing you want to see.

The part the market still has to prove

The obvious risk is that a better NAV and a few insider buys do not solve the underlying valuation problem. GRID still trades at a discount to NAV, and the market has every reason to ask how much of that NAV is durable if power prices, construction timing or project economics move the wrong way. The company’s own update helps, but it does not erase the fact that listed storage funds have spent long stretches being treated as complicated yield vehicles rather than clean growth stories.

There is also a difference between contracted revenue and fully de-risked cash flow. A 61% contracted revenue share is better than a merchant-heavy profile, but it still leaves room for volatility. If the sector turns, the market will not care that the board bought a few thousand shares at just under 98 pence. It will care about realised cash generation, project delivery and whether the revalued assets keep earning what the model says they should.

That is why the sector backdrop matters more than the filing alone. The UK cap-and-floor framework, the European build-out and the US installation record all support the long-term case for storage. They do not guarantee that every listed vehicle will close its discount. They do not guarantee that every revaluation will stick. They do, however, make it easier to understand why a board might buy after a strong update rather than wait for the market to catch up on its own.

Back to GRID, where the discount is still the story

Return to the stock and the picture is fairly plain. GRID has a stronger interim update than the market price implies, a larger contracted revenue share than it had before, and a NAV uplift driven by 397 MW entering construction. It also has a share price still sitting around 97 to 98 pence against a NAV per share of 131.30 pence. That gap is the tension. The insider cluster sits right on top of it.

Mak Lo Chiu buying 20,200 shares for EUR 23,057.08 is the most specific piece of the puzzle because it is the only one with a clearly euro-normalised filing value in the data set. But the better read is the whole sequence, not the single trade. Chair John Leggate bought on 23 September. David Stevenson bought on 24 September. Mak Lo Chiu bought on 25 September. Three days, three buys, one company that had just told the market its NAV and earnings profile were moving in the right direction.

That does not make the stock cheap by itself. It does make the discount harder to ignore, especially when the board is buying into it after the update rather than before it. If you want the next thing to watch, it is not another neat filing summary. It is whether the market starts to treat the 131.30 pence NAV as something more than a line in a results note, and whether the next project milestones keep feeding the same revaluation logic that drove the June half-year numbers.

This is not investment advice.