RS Group PLC (LON: RS1) Share Price, Analyst Forecasts and Latest News

RS Group PLC shares pushed higher on Thursday as fresh insider option grants and a series of positive broker moves kept the FTSE 250 industrial distributor firmly on investors’ watchlists.

At around 10:55 GMT on 4 December 2025, RS Group (ticker: RS1) was trading close to 618.7p, up about 2.95% on the day, with more than 1.0 million shares changing hands. Over the past 12 months the stock is still down roughly 14%, underperforming the wider UK market after a tough period for industrial and electronics demand. ^[1]

Key RS Group (RS1) metrics at a glance – 4 December 2025

Share price: ~618.7p (LSE close to 10:55 GMT, +2.95% on the day) ^[2]
Market capitalisation: ~£2.8–3.0 billion, depending on provider ^[3]
12‑month trading range: c. 477p – 741p ^[4]
Trailing P/E: roughly 17–18x earnings ^[5]
Balance sheet: net debt around £333m, roughly 1x EBITDA, after the latest half‑year ^[6]
Dividend yield: typically quoted at about 3.7–4.0% by dividend and research services ^[7]

Today’s headline: fresh insider option grants for CEO and CFO

The main company‑specific news on 4 December 2025 is a regulatory filing detailing new share option grants for RS Group’s top executives. ^[8]

RS Group disclosed Save As You Earn (SAYE) option grants for:
- Simon Pryce, Chief Executive Officer
- Kate Ringrose, Chief Financial Officer
Each was granted an option over 4,037 ordinary shares with an exercise price of £4.52, under the company’s three‑year SAYE scheme.
The options are exercisable between 1 February 2029 and 31 July 2029, and were granted on 3 December 2025. ^[9]

At today’s share price near £6.19, those options are already well in the money, which underlines how far the stock has recovered from its lows earlier in the year. More importantly, increased executive exposure to equity is typically interpreted as a sign of alignment with shareholders’ long‑term interests.

TipRanks picked up the same filing and framed it as a supportive signal for governance, noting that the latest analyst rating in its system is a Buy with a £6.45 (645p) price target, while its AI “Spark” model currently classifies the shares as “Outperform” on fundamentals – even though short‑term technical indicators still flash “Sell”. ^[10]

Institutional interest: FIL Limited crosses the 5% threshold

Alongside insider activity, institutional ownership of RS Group has ticked higher in recent weeks.

A TR‑1 “Holding(s) in Company” notification on 20 November 2025 showed that FIL Limited (Fidelity) now controls about 5.23% of RS Group’s voting rights, equivalent to roughly 24.8 million shares. The threshold was crossed on 14 November and disclosed a few days later. ^[11]

That filing followed a string of earlier holdings updates through 2025, suggesting an active institutional register rather than a sleepy buy‑and‑hold shareholder base.

On the director‑dealing side, data collated by Shares Magazine show CFO Kate Ringrose making a series of small on‑market purchases around £5.60–£5.70 in June, followed by a modest sale in July, while non‑executive director David Sleath bought shares in late May. ^[12] The pattern points more to ongoing portfolio management than an all‑in conviction bet, but it does mean senior management has meaningful personal exposure to the share price.

Half‑year 2025/26 results: softer revenue, strong cash generation

The latest detailed financial picture for RS Group comes from its half‑year 2025/26 results for the six months to 30 September 2025, released on 6 November 2025. ^[13]

According to the company’s presentation and the earnings call summary:

Revenue fell about 3% year‑on‑year on a reported basis, or roughly 1% down like‑for‑like once currency and trading days are stripped out.
Q2 marked a turning point, with sales returning to slight growth after earlier declines, helped by better trends in the Americas and Asia‑Pacific that offset weakness in EMEA, particularly Germany and Mexico. ^[14]
Adjusted profit and EPS declined by mid‑single digits, reflecting margin pressure and a still‑soft industrial demand backdrop. ^[15]
The interim dividend was raised by about 2% to 8.7p per share. ^[16]

The stand‑out positive, repeatedly emphasised by management, is cash generation:

Free cash flow conversion ran at about 107%, allowing net debt to fall to around £333m, roughly 1x EBITDA, leaving plenty of balance‑sheet capacity for selective acquisitions. ^[17]
RS reports more than £47m of cumulative restructuring and integration savings to date and is targeting at least 150 basis points of margin uplift over time from its efficiency programme. ^[18]

On the results call, CEO Simon Pryce again linked RS Group’s topline to global manufacturing PMI data, arguing that revenue growth typically lags PMI moves by three to six months. PMIs remain below the 50 level that separates expansion from contraction, but they have been improving since late 2024 – which management says is now visible in stabilising revenue and a return to modest growth in Q2. ^[19]

RS Group share price today: recovery off the lows

Market‑data providers show a broadly consistent intraday picture for RS Group on 4 December:

Shares Magazine quotes 618.74p, up 17.74p (+2.95%), with an intraday range of 606p–619.07p and volume above 1.05 million shares. ^[20]
The Financial Times markets page reports a similar price, a one‑year change of about –14.3% and a beta a little above 1.2, reflecting slightly higher volatility than the overall market. ^[21]
MarketBeat’s H1‑earnings hub, updated around the results, showed shares at about 617p, describing the 12‑month range as roughly 476.8p to 740.5p and quoting a P/E near 18x with a beta under 1.0 on its methodology. ^[22]

Different vendors use slightly different calculation windows and currencies, which explains small discrepancies, but the broad picture is clear: RS Group is well off its 2024–25 lows, still a fair distance below its peak, and trading at what looks like a mid‑teens to high‑teens earnings multiple.

Broker ratings and RS Group stock forecasts

Consensus view: “Moderate Buy” / “Outperform”

RS Group has attracted a lot of broker attention since its November half‑year update. Across several data sources, the tone is cautiously positive:

MarketBeat reports that six analysts currently cover RS Group, with four rating it “Buy” and two “Hold”, giving an overall “Moderate Buy” recommendation and an average 12‑month price target of 732p. Individual targets range from 670p (Berenberg) to 810p (Royal Bank of Canada). ^[23]
The Financial Times collates ratings from 16 analysts, with the most recent breakdown (27 November 2025) showing: 4× Buy, 6× Outperform, 5× Hold, 1× Sell. The median target price is 757.5p, with a high of 900p and a low of 495p. Based on a reference price of 601p, that median implies around 26% potential upside. ^[24]
MarketScreener summarises the broker stance as “Outperform”, based on 15 contributing analysts, with an average target of about £7.03 versus a last close of £6.01 – roughly 17% implied upside. ^[25]

None of these numbers are guarantees, of course, but they do cluster around the same story: the analyst community broadly expects high‑single‑digit to low‑double‑digit total returns over the next year, assuming the macro environment doesn’t deteriorate sharply.

Notable recent upgrades

There have been some important moves behind those averages:

Rothschild & Co Redburn recently raised RS Group from “Neutral” to “Buy” and lifted its price target from 560p to 760p, explicitly positioning the stock as a recovery play within the FTSE 250. ^[26]
A separate upgrade from Deutsche Bank also pushed the shares onto its “Buy” list with a 760p target, arguing that after three years of earnings downgrades the risk–reward is finally turning more favourable as industrial indicators stabilise and cost‑saving benefits start to flow. ^[27]

TipRanks’ AI “Spark” model, which combines fundamentals, technicals and sentiment, currently labels RS Group an “Outperform” but flags a “Sell” technical signal, highlighting the tension between improving medium‑term fundamentals and a still‑fragile price chart. ^[28]

Dividend profile: mid‑single‑digit income with room to grow

Dividend‑focused screens have started to rediscover RS Group as the share price drifted lower in 2024–25 and the yield moved up.

A Simply Wall St feature on “Top UK Dividend Stocks to Consider in December 2025” singles out RS Group with: ^[29]

An estimated dividend yield around 3.7% at current prices
Payout ratios of roughly two‑thirds of earnings and under half of operating cash flow, suggesting reasonable cover
A decade‑long record of dividend growth, including the recently increased interim payout

The same analysis describes RS Group as a “flawless balance sheet, established dividend payer” with what its internal models see as an undervalued share price relative to fundamentals (that is their language, not a universal verdict).

The Financial Times data set puts the 2025 full‑year dividend at about 22p per share, up just under 2% on the prior year, and notes that analysts expect further modest growth in the coming fiscal year. ^[30] Meanwhile, UK dividend round‑ups from Yahoo Finance in November and December 2025 quote RS Group’s yield in the 3.9–4.0% range, depending on the cut‑off date used. ^[31]

In short, RS Group doesn’t compete with the very highest‑yielding UK names, but it offers a middle‑of‑the‑road, growing dividend backed by solid cash generation and a relatively conservative balance sheet.

Business profile: global industrial MRO specialist

RS Group operates in what often looks like the “plumbing” of the industrial world – maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products and services. It distributes more than 800,000 stocked items and lists about 5 million more, sourced from over 2,500 suppliers, across 36 markets worldwide. ^[32]

Key characteristics of the business model highlighted in recent reports and calls:

High SKU count and broad supplier relationships create switching costs for customers and a defensive moat against smaller competitors. ^[33]
RS has been pushing hard on digital transformation – a new customer data platform and CRM generated over 340,000 interactions and identified more than 50,000 sales opportunities, while improvements to on‑site search and checkout flow have significantly lifted add‑to‑cart and conversion metrics. ^[34]
New product introductions have ramped to over 30,000 per month, expanding the catalogue and giving RS more breadth to capture customer spend. ^[35]

These initiatives are designed to support growth once industrial demand normalises, and to push margins higher through scale and better mix rather than pure price rises.

How the market seems to be thinking about RS Group

Putting the recent data points together, the current market narrative around RS Group looks something like this:

Cyclical bottoming rather than boom.
Revenue is still slightly down year‑on‑year, but Q2 returned to growth and global PMI data – RS’s preferred leading indicator – has improved from last year’s lows. ^[36]
Margin and cash‑flow story.
Cost savings, integration benefits and digital investments are helping RS defend margins in a weak volume environment, with free cash flow holding up well and net debt trending down. ^[37]
Valuation reset.
After a three‑year period of earnings downgrades and de‑rating, the stock now trades on a mid‑teens earnings multiple, cheaper than some global peers but not a distressed valuation, which matches the “Moderate Buy/Outperform” consensus rather than an all‑out contrarian call. ^[38]
Shareholder‑friendly signals.
- A progressive dividend that has inched higher even through a soft patch. ^[39]
- Insider and institutional engagement, with management participating in option schemes and major investors like FIL Limited disclosing sizeable stakes. ^[40]

The risk, of course, is that global industrial activity stalls again, or that European manufacturing – particularly in Germany – stays weaker for longer than RS and its analysts currently expect. RS is also executing multiple initiatives at once (systems upgrades, restructuring, M&A integration), which always carries operational and cultural risk. ^[41]

Key risks and what to watch next

For anyone tracking RS Group into 2026, the main data points to watch are:

Macro indicators: purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs) in RS’s core markets, especially the eurozone and North America, where management says revenue is strongly correlated with manufacturing activity. ^[42]
Regional mix: whether the Americas and APAC can continue to grow fast enough to offset structurally weaker demand in parts of EMEA. ^[43]
Execution on cost and digital programmes: delivering the targeted margin uplift without eroding service levels is crucial to the long‑term equity story. ^[44]
Dividend and capital allocation: with net debt already near 1x EBITDA, RS has room to tilt more aggressively toward M&A or buybacks if opportunities arise – but that would change the risk profile compared with a pure organic and dividend‑led approach. ^[45]

Bottom line

As of 4 December 2025, RS Group PLC sits in an interesting middle ground:

The share price has rallied from its lows but still trades well below its peak.
Analysts broadly like the story, with consensus ratings around “Moderate Buy/Outperform” and targets clustered in the 730–760p range, implying mid‑teens to mid‑twenties percentage upside from recent trading levels. ^[46]
The dividend profile is solid rather than spectacular, but appears well supported by cash flow and a relatively modest leverage position. ^[47]

For investors, RS Group currently looks like a cyclical recovery and operational‑execution story wrapped inside a steady, cash‑generative distributor. Whether that combination deserves a higher multiple will depend on how convincingly 2026 numbers confirm that the worst of the industrial downturn is behind it.