Consumer healthcare sits right in the sweet spot of several powerful secular trends: ageing populations, stretched public health budgets and consumers increasingly wanting to treat everyday conditions quickly, discreetly and affordably themselves. From menopause and intimate health to ear care, glucose management and wound treatment, self-care is becoming main stream - helped by better products, stronger brands, e-commerce and a desire for improved quality of life.

Step forward Venture Life Group plc  (Mrkcap £81m), which today delivered a strong and ‘in line’ trading update for the 17 months to 31 May 2026. Revenues rose 16.0% LFL to £50.0m – split impressively 14.8% volume and 1.2% price, demonstrating genuine market share gains and buoyant demand.

Indeed Venture Life’s “Power Brands” are doing the heavy lifting. Balance Activ, Lift, Glucogel, Earol, Health & Her and Health & Him represent over 90% of sales, growing 17.0% across the period and 20.7% in the final five months. That matters because these are the brands management are backing with advertising, innovation, digital marketing and bolt-on M&A.

Here the top line is being driven by not only volume gains, wider distribution and increasing consumer adoption. But also, targeted TV advertising and promotional online spend - particularly with Amazon, subscribe-and-save and SEO delivering attractive returns. Elsewhere, international partners are improving, with revenues up 55.6% in the final five months, helped by stronger relationships and better timing.

What’s more, the group ended May with £12m of net cash, even after the £17.5m acquisition of FemiClear and CUROXEN, which offers Venture Life a major bridgehead into the enormous US market.

CEO Jerry Randall adding that hashtag#VLG has delivered “robust double-digit growth” and that the strategy of investing behind existing brands is “clearly gaining traction.”

Finally wrt the numbers, Cavendish have a 150p target price and are forecasting May FY’26 revenue of £50.4m, EBITDA of £8.0m and EPS of 4.1p. At 66.5p, that puts the shares on 16.2x FY’26 PER, 8.7x EV/EBITDA and 1.4x EV/sales - falling to 9.7x PER and 6.0x EV/EBITDA in FY’27 as sales, EBITDA and EPS climb to £54.7m (8.6%), £11.6m (45.5%) and 6.9p (+67%).

Disclosure: Venture Life Group is a Vox Markets client.