09 September 2026
Good morning. Irish companies are growing, raising and repositioning this morning, with Uniphar’s strong half-year numbers, Waterland backing another infrastructure combination and ZeroRisk raising €8.6m. Government is also taking another run at insurance, fuel and housing costs, while higher borrowing costs remain firmly in view ahead of Thursday’s ECB decision. Let’s get into it.
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The Top 5
1. Uniphar’s Numbers Keep Analysts Bullish. The pharmacy owner, brand owner, and distribution group, Uniphar’s H1 revenue rose 7.2% to €1.59bn, EBITDA gained 6.2% to €61.1m and adjusted EPS climbed 11.2%. Shares are already up 18.6% this year after gaining more than 80% in 2025, yet Davy, RBC and Goodbody still see upside. The next tests are its delayed Irish distribution centre, now due in February 2027, and delivering the growth needed to reach €200m EBITDA by 2028.
2. Waterland Backs An Irish Infrastructure Combination. Cork-based Industrial Insulation Specialists and Secon Construction Services plan to combine following a significant investment from Waterland Ireland, subject to regulatory approval. The businesses serve life sciences, data centres, energy, semiconductors and other infrastructure-heavy sectors, with plans to add staff, expand across Europe and pursue acquisitions. Waterland has already earmarked €250m for Irish businesses over 18 months, and this shows the type of specialist operators it wants to scale.
3. ZeroRisk Raises €8.6m To Scale Payment Risk Platform. Irish fintech ZeroRisk has raised €8.6m in Series A funding led by MiddleGame Ventures, with Elkstone also participating, to support international expansion, product development and capacity. The Bank of America and Checkout.com partner expects revenue to triple in 2026 as contracted programmes roll out. That lands against we reported yesterday on the Central Bank figures showing Irish payment fraud reached €179.04m in 2025, up 27.2%, giving the market ZeroRisk serves plenty of room to grow.
4. Government Opens Several Fronts On Costs. Government is courting international insurers to increase competition, while Micheál Martin says further fuel measures may be needed as energy prices stay elevated. Housing Minister James Browne is also examining whether open bidding on homes needs reform, as industry figures separately push for faster infrastructure, planning and financing decisions to hit the 300,000-home target. None of these moves offers an immediate fix, but insurance, fuel and housing costs are all now attracting direct policy intervention.
5. Cantor Quits Government Bond Dealing. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland will resign as a primary dealer of Irish Government bonds and wind down its five-person debt desk, with some staff expected to be redeployed. The firm, which had a low-single-digit share of primary-dealer activity, is instead concentrating on wealth and investment management, where it advises or manages almost €11bn. Davy and Goodbody have been building their bond desks, making Cantor’s decision a distinctly different bet on where Irish financial-services growth lies.
World in 60 Seconds
Saudi Arabia halted production at several southern energy facilities after strikes, adding a fresh supply risk to an oil market already under pressure. Europe’s biggest mobile operators, including Vodafone, Orange and Telefónica, are in early talks on a satellite consortium that could challenge Starlink for EU spectrum, especially given one-third is reserved for EU majority owned firms. French AI firm Mistral has raised €3bn at a valuation above €21bn, led by Samsung, to fund models and computing infrastructure, as it seeks to provide a local and safe alternative to EU firms over the dominant US outfits. Qualcomm shares rose after it struck an AI-chip deal with Amazon Web Services, while GE Aerospace agreed to buy casting supplier CPP for nearly $12bn, bringing more critical manufacturing capacity in-house.
Today’s Sector Spotlight
Finance & Markets
Irish borrowing costs found solid ground this week even as global yields stayed elevated, with the NTMA's latest auction the clearest evidence yet that demand for Irish debt remains strong.
The agency sold €1.25bn in bonds maturing in 2032 and 2035, comfortably oversubscribed with combined bids above €2.6bn, pricing at 3.231pc and 3.416pc respectively. That follows Irish ten-year yields touching a 13 year high of 3.55pc earlier in the week, so investors are still absorbing debt readily even as the price of doing so climbs.
Rate expectations are doing much of the work behind that move. The European Central Bank makes its next rate decision on Thursday, with markets pricing a real chance of a quarter point hike after upgraded eurozone growth figures, driven largely by Ireland's revised 10.2pc quarterly expansion, gave policymakers more room to tighten. The Federal Reserve's own September 16 decision remains just as finely balanced, and a hike on either side of the Atlantic would flow straight through to Irish sovereign and corporate borrowing costs.
Corporate financing told a similar story of resilience despite that backdrop. Kingspan's €850m green bond drew more than €4.6bn in orders, with proceeds arriving alongside confirmation that its recent €900m BMC Manufacturing acquisition was funded entirely from existing credit facilities. Amundi Ireland posted stronger numbers too, revenue up 12pc to €209.7m and pre-tax profit up 22pc to €59.9m, helped by ETF inflows and its role managing the State's auto-enrolment and Future Ireland Funds mandates.
On the growth-capital side, London-based Claret Capital named its first Irish-relevant detail since closing its €575m Fund IV, confirming Cinclus Pharma and Inventiva among the clinical-stage drug developers it has already lent to, part of a book spread across 27 companies. And the scale of global AI financing keeps climbing, with ByteDance securing a $29.6bn unsecured loan from nearly 30 banks to fund overseas data-centre capacity, a facility so large lenders are said to be backing it on name alone.
Watch Thursday's ECB decision for the clearest signal yet of how much further Irish and European borrowing costs have to climb.
In Thursday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Health & Pharma.
The Rotation
Wednesday - By The Numbers
€86.3bn: Cash sitting in Irish corporate bank accounts at the end of July, up €4.9bn over the past year, with the average return on overnight deposits stuck at just 0.12%.
€3,400: The average value of an Irish retail investor's Revolut portfolio, up more than 10% over six months, with SpaceX, Nvidia and Ryanair among the most bought stocks.
12.3m: Passengers who passed through Ireland's five main airports in the second quarter, up 2% year on year, with Dublin handling 82% of the more than 82,000 flights recorded.
€108,000: The salary a single first-time buyer now needs to earn to afford a typical home in Dublin, with Wicklow and Kildare joining it above the six-figure mark for the first time.
38%: The share of the average Irish Revolut investor's portfolio held in US stocks, a reminder of how exposed retail savings remain to swings on Wall Street.
The Craic & the Scéal
The IRFU is back doing what it does second best, or possibly best depending on your viewpoint: property. Having snapped up much of the property around the Aviva Stadium in recent years, it is now seeking a partner for a €150m hotel-and-apartments scheme beside the Aviva, while keeping the land and taking the lease income for Irish rugby. A few streets away, Dublin is debating the future of the pub, where closures have fallen just 1% in two decades versus roughly 25% nationally. Apparently, Lansdowne Road and Dublin pubs both know the value of location.
Worth Your Time
The Report – Business Post (Requires Paid Account) – M&A boom: Ireland and the world's biggest deals of the year, and what's to come
Davy's H1 data shows Irish M&A deals up 16 per cent year on year to 252, with professional and technical services the most active sector by volume for the first time since tracking began in 2006. Intel's €12.3bn buyout of the remaining stake in its Irish plant and CRH's €7.9bn Arcosa acquisition anchored a €13.7bn six-month total, though only 13.4 per cent of deals disclosed values. Davy expects the second half to stay robust, with financing markets supportive and private equity appetite for fragmented sectors undimmed. Link: M&A boom: Ireland and the world's biggest deals of the year, and what's to come
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