Small Cap Intelligence

Photronics makes photomasks — the precision quartz stencils etched with circuit patterns that every chip factory and display line uses to print designs onto silicon and glass.

Interface makes modular carpet tiles and rubber sheet flooring for offices, hospitals, schools, and other commercial buildings. You've almost certainly walked on their floors in a corporate lobby or hospital corridor without realising it.

Build-A-Bear operates 662 stores globally where customers stuff and customize their own plush animals. It is the only publicly traded pure-play on the experiential stuffed-animal format.

Collegium makes branded prescription drugs for chronic pain (Xtampza ER, Belbuca, Nucynta franchise — abuse-deterrent opioids) and ADHD (Jornay PM, and AZSTARYS acquired May 2026).

EZCORP (EZPW) is the 2 global pawn operator — it runs 1,500+ stores across the US and Latin America where customers bring in gold jewelry, electronics, and other items to borrow cash against without a credit check.

Addus sends caregivers to elderly and disabled people's homes to help them with daily tasks — bathing, dressing, meals, mobility. This is 'personal care', not clinical nursing.

Array Technologies manufactures single-axis solar trackers — the motorized mounting systems that rotate solar panels to follow the sun — selling to utility-scale solar project developers and independent power producers, primarily in the US.

Perdoceo runs three online university brands: Colorado Technical University (CTU, cybersecurity/IT/nursing for working adults), American InterContinental University (AIU, business/IT, weaker brand), and the University of St. Augustine for Health…

Harmony Biosciences makes WAKIX (pitolisant), the only non-scheduled (non-narcotic, no REMS program) treatment approved for both excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy in narcolepsy across adults and children.

Limbach is a US specialty contractor that installs and maintains HVAC, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems — the infrastructure inside buildings that keeps the air, water, and power running.

Pacira makes EXPAREL, a long-acting non-opioid painkiller injected at surgery sites, plus ZILRETTA (a knee-pain steroid shot) and iovera (a nerve-cooling device). About 79% of its $726M in 2025 revenue comes from EXPAREL.

SunCoke Energy is the largest independent merchant cokemaker in the Americas.

PagerDuty is the category-defining platform for on-call alerting, incident response, and AIOps — the software that wakes up the right engineer when a production system breaks at 3am.

Compass Minerals mines and sells highway de-icing salt (primarily from the world's largest underground rock salt mine in Goderich, Ontario, Canada) and sulfate of potash specialty fertilizer (from a solar-evaporation facility in Ogden, Utah — the…

Omnicell makes the medication-dispensing robots and smart cabinets you see in hospital pharmacy hallways — the locked automated units that nurses access to retrieve patient medications.

Portillo's operates ~107 fast-casual restaurants serving Chicago-style hot dogs, Italian beef sandwiches, burgers, and chocolate cake.

Shoe Carnival operates 426 family footwear stores across the US South, Midwest, and Plains under two banners: the legacy Shoe Carnival brand (value/urban) and the higher-performing Shoe Station brand.

VirTra makes firearms-training and use-of-force simulators — the room-sized, multi-screen systems police departments and the military use to practice judgment and shooting decisions without live ammo. It's a tiny company (about $38.6M market value).

Standard Motor Products (SMP) makes replacement parts for cars — sensors, ignition systems, AC compressors, and similar components that fail as vehicles age.

Oxford Industries owns Tommy Bahama (resort apparel + Marlin Bar restaurants), Lilly Pulitzer (preppy women's), Johnny Was (bohemian women's), and Southern Tide (coastal men's). It sells mostly direct-to-consumer via its own stores and website.

Graham Corporation makes highly specialized cryogenic, vacuum, and heat-transfer equipment plus turbomachinery sub-systems.

Kosmos Energy is an offshore oil and gas producer with three production hubs: deepwater Ghana (Jubilee and TEN fields), the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) floating LNG project off Mauritania and Senegal, and the US Gulf of Mexico.

BlackSky operates a constellation of small imaging satellites that photograph any location on Earth within hours, processes the imagery with onboard AI, and delivers it to defense and intelligence customers through a subscription service (called…

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor (AOSL) designs power semiconductors — MOSFETs, gate drivers, and power ICs — that regulate, convert, and protect electrical power inside laptops, servers, AI hardware, smartphones, and power supplies.

Caleres runs Famous Footwear (821 value-footwear stores across the US) and a Brand Portfolio of owned labels including Sam Edelman, Vionic, Allen Edmonds, Naturalizer, and newly acquired Stuart Weitzman.

Ramaco Resources (METC) mines metallurgical (steelmaking) coal in West Virginia and Virginia. Met coal is the grade used to make steel — not the kind burned for electricity.

indie Semiconductor designs chips for the sensors that help cars see — radar, camera processors, LiDAR, and ultrasonic — the silicon layer that powers automatic braking, lane-keeping, and driver monitoring.

Columbus McKinnon makes the equipment that lifts, moves, and positions heavy objects in factories, warehouses, and industrial sites — hoists, cranes, rigging hardware, and automated precision conveyance systems.

Red Cat Holdings makes small unmanned aerial systems (drones) for the US military and allied governments through its Teal Drones unit, which produces the Black Widow reconnaissance drone. Its FANG unit makes FPV attack-style drones.

Energy Fuels mines uranium and processes it at White Mesa Mill (Utah), the only conventional uranium mill in the US. The mill also separates rare-earth oxides (NdPr, dysprosium, terbium) from monazite, making it the only US facility producing both uranium and separated heavy rare earths.

NuScale designs and licenses small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) for utilities, governments, and industrial customers. It holds the only U.S. NRC-approved SMR designs (50 MWe and 77 MWe) but has not yet built or operated a commercial plant.

BigBear.ai sells AI-powered decision-intelligence and data-analytics software, mostly to US government, defense, and intelligence customers (force management, biometrics, geopolitical-risk and supply-chain analysis), with a smaller commercial slice.

Nano Nuclear Energy (NNE) is developing KRONOS, a small portable nuclear reactor called a microreactor, intended to provide power for AI data centers, remote sites, and industrial users.

NET Power is developing a natural gas power plant in West Texas that captures virtually all its CO2 emissions. It originally designed a proprietary oxy-combustion cycle but pivoted in 2025 to standard combined-cycle turbines with bolt-on carbon capture. No commercial capacity exists yet.

GoPro makes action cameras (Hero series, Max 360-degree) and earns recurring revenue from a cloud subscription service (~$107M ARR) that bundles storage, auto-editing tools, and perks for GoPro.com purchases.

Beyond Meat (BYND) makes plant-based meat substitutes — burgers, sausages, ground beef — sold in grocery stores and fast-food chains.

American Battery Technology Company (ABAT, formerly American Battery Metals / ABML) runs a US lithium-ion battery RECYCLING plant near Reno, Nevada, and is trying to build a domestic lithium mine + refinery ("Tonopah Flats") in the same country.