We display signals on company profiles to help you see at a glance why a company may be interesting to you. The below table outlines the signals:

You can identify companies that are high-growth or ambitious with our growth & innovation signals. Interested in the high-growth ecosystem? This is a great place to start.

Below you can see how each signal works in more detail.

We define equity investment to mean:

When we talk about equity investment, we are referring to the issuance and sale of new shares by a company to fund its growth. To us, the mere sale of existing shares does not constitute equity investment. When existing shares are bought, that money goes to whichever shareholders have sold shares – not to the company.

We have this signal for all companies that have secured equity investment on or after 1st January 2011.

Venture debt comprises mezzanine debt, convertible debt and debt provided by angel networks or venture capital firms. What makes certain debt 'venture debt' is essentially the presence of one or more of these elements:

So-called 'vanilla' loans from high-street lenders and most P2P lenders would not count as venture debt.

We have this signal for all companies that have secured venture debt on or after 1st January 2011.

We define an MBO/MBI as a transaction in which a stake in the company is sold and either:

The transaction may or may not include other parties, such as private equity firms.

To give an example: we would still class a transaction where management took 5% and a private equity firm 95% as an MBO/MBI. The key element for us is the size of the management’s stake, rather than the size of the stake of any other eventual participants.

Sometimes acquisitions are not publicly described as MBOs/MBIs but we may decide that they are, as they meet our conditions; conversely, sometimes acquisitions are publicly described as MBOs/MBIs but they fail our test (a common reason for the latter is that management have been found not to have taken a stake, something that sometimes can only be verified months later, when updated shareholder registers are filed).

We cover secondary MBOs/MBIs provided the criteria are still fulfilled.

We have this signal for all companies that have undergone an MBO/MBI on or after 1st January 2011.

By 'selected accelerator programmes', we mean programmes that validate the ambition and growth prospects of participating companies. An eligible accelerator programme must have all of the following characteristics:

Programmes that call themselves 'accelerators' or 'incubators' yet fail to meet all of the above criteria are beyond the scope of this trigger.

Every UK & German participant of accelerator programmes will have this signal on its profile.

A company meets our 10% scaleup signal when it meets one (or both) of these conditions:

A company meets our 20% scaleup signal when it meets one (or both) of these conditions:

The 10% and 20% scaleup definitions are identical in everything but the percentage growth required. Companies that meet the 20% scaleup criteria will also meet the 10% scaleup criteria.

The 'base year' is the first year of the accounts we're looking at for any given company. As a partially worked-out example, let's say a company filed accounts in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. We would first take 2013 as the base year and ask: was this company a 10% or 20% scaleup in 2016? Then we would take 2014 as the base year and ask: was this company a 10% or 20% scaleup in 2017? If a company has achieved 10% (or 20%) scaleup status at least once, we classify it as a 10% (or 20%) scaleup.

Furthermore, the 'revenue scaleups' Beauhurst profiles are 'visible revenue scaleups'. Companies don't have to file (thus publicly disclose) their turnover if they meet two (or more) of the following criteria:

While it is legally required for all companies to disclose the average number of employees in an accounting period (see section 411 of the Companies House Act 2006), it sometimes happens that companies fail to disclose this in their accounts.

Similar comments therefore apply to 'headcount scaleups' as for 'revenue scaleups'

Using both revenue and headcount as independent strategies to discover scaleups is Beauhurst's strategy for mitigating for the occasional lack of public data – if we don't discover scaleups via one method, we will hopefully discover them via the other, in many cases.

We define an academic spinout as a company that meets condition 1 and at least one condition out of 2-4:

1. The company was set up to exploit intellectual property developed or licensed by a recognised UK university (This is broadly in line with the Higher Education Statistics Agency's (HESA) definition of a spin-off)

2. The university either owns or has been assigned IP that it has licensed to the company

3. The university owns shares in the company

4. It has the right (via an options or warrants contract) to purchase shares in the company at a later date

If 1-4 are all false, the company may still be a staff or student startup. These are companies set up by students, recent graduates or staff. Neither HESA nor Beauhurst considers staff and student startups to be spinouts.

We have signals for all companies that were deemed to have spun out on or after 1st January 2011. Please note that sometimes companies are formally incorporated before the spinning out is deemed to have taken place, so some tracked spinouts may have been incorporated prior to 2011.

By 'selected high-growth lists', we mean lists that validate the ambition and growth prospects of featured companies.

An eligible high-growth list must have the following characteristics:

We have this signal for all companies that were featured in high-growth lists published on or after 1st January 2011.

We class an acquisition as a deal where a majority stake is acquired by another company or fund. This includes:

When adding M&A data, we always collect at a minimum the date of the event and the names of the buyer and seller. We may also include details of the deal amount, consideration type, stake taken, company valuation, and advisors when this information is available; however, these data points are rarely disclosed.

When a business undergoes an acquisition, if they have remained autonomous (i.e. not been absorbed into the acquirer and still has an independent brand and operations) we will continue adding events post-acquisition, including equity raises, further acquisitions and other signals.

We provide comprehensive coverage of mergers, acquisitions, and private equity buyouts announced in the press from 2011 onwards across the UK and Germany.

By ‘IPO’, we mean an Initial Public Offering, where a company lists on a public stock exchange.

We continue to keep company profiles up to date post-IPO, just like post-acquisition.

We include this signal across all companies in the UK and Germany.

A company that has met our innovation grant signal is one that has formally accepted a large grant offer for a specific innovation project. Here are some important things to note about this signal:

Beauhurst covers grants awarded by Innovate UK and H2020/FP7, among others.

We have this signal for all companies that formally accepted large innovation grants on or after 1st January 2011.

We also separately have data on all grants awarded by Innovate UK, even those below £100k and accepted before 1st January 2011.

We display granted patents that are associated with UK companies - we match patents from the European Patent Office with the relevant company profile on the platform.

We present patents using the simple patent family system, whereby a patent means a group of patent applications referring to the exact same unique invention.

The source data is updated twice a year and there is typically a four-five month lag between data being updated and being made available by the European Patent Office - this is dependent on each national patent authority’s filings.

Liquidation & insolvency

The company’s status on Companies House is one of the following:

Liquidation and insolvency indicates the company may be at risk of closure.

​CCJ

The company currently has an outstanding County Court Judgement (CCJ). This tells us that the company has been taken to court over unpaid debts, and the court has ruled in favour of the creditor. This data is sourced from the Registry Trust, which collates judgements from local courts across the UK.

​Short runway

The company’s cash runway is 8 months or fewer, based on the latest financial accounts. Runway is calculated by dividing the total cash by the net cash flow before financing. In order to receive the signal, the company’s cash must be positive and net cash flow must be negative. Companies also cannot have undergone an acquisition, secured a fundraising, or received a grant after the year-end date of its most recent accounts.

A company’s runway indicates how long it has left until it runs out of cash. A shorter runway implies the company might not have the means to continue trading for long.

​Down round

The company’s most recent pre-money valuation is ≥10% lower than the pre-money valuation of its highest-ever valuation.

Valuation data is derived from share allotment forms filed with Companies House, following our share allotment review process. To calculate the pre-money valuation, we subtract the amount of investment received in a particular round from the post-money valuation. The post-money valuation is calculated as share price multiplied by the total number of shares.

We look at a company’s activities (such as descriptions, sectors, and buzzwords) to decide whether companies operate in any of the below environmental spaces, in which case it receives the following signals:

​Clean & renewable energy

This includes clean energy, renewable energy and energy management.

​Green transport

This encapsulates electric vehicles, electric parts and infrastructure.

​Green infrastructure & building

This captures building technologies, pollution (air, noise, carbon), recycling, waste management and environmental consulting.

​Sustainable agriculture & food production

This covers urban farming, low carbon meat & dairy alternatives, precision agriculture and food waste reduction.

​Environmental accolades

Companies that earn recognition from environmentally-focused funds, accelerators, and high-growth lists get the environmental accolades signal. To qualify, the majority of companies in a portfolio must be actively pursuing environmental goals; if only a few are, it doesn't count as an environmental focus.

We are looking at the age and gender of directors, as well as gender pay gap data, in order to generate S&G signals for a given company. They are:

​Gender equality of directors

The percentage of women directors relative to the number of directors is between 45% and 55%. Note that we are excluding companies from this calculation where the gender of a director is unknown, and where there are less than 2 directors.

​Age diversity of directors

Companies that have variance in the age of directors, where the company has more than 2 directors and directors aren’t under 18 or over 100 years old.

​Gender pay equality

Companies reporting gender pay gap data that have less than a 5% difference in the mean hourly pay of men or women.

​Social impact accolades

Companies that earn recognition from socially-focused funds, accelerators, and high-growth lists receive the social impact accolades signal. To qualify, the majority of companies in a portfolio must be actively pursuing social goals; if only a few are, it doesn't count as a social focus. Social goals can vary but include areas such as funding businesses supporting underrepresented groups, addressing poverty, and tackling diversity.

Some organisations can be focused on both social and environmental goals, resulting in some companies receiving both an environmental and social impact accolades signal. So long as the majority of an organisation’s portfolio or features are focused on both social and environmental action, companies may receive both signals.