Trustpilot Group (LON: TRST), the online consumer-review platform, saw its shares fall as much as 21% intraday yesterday after H1 2026 results were overshadowed by two self-disclosed accounting and buyback errors, despite strong underlying growth.
The shares closed yesterday at 213.00p, down 18.6% from Monday’s close of 261.80p, having fallen as low as 206.60p during the session. That wipes out much of a rally that had taken the stock up roughly 60% ahead of the results, though shares sit within their 52-week range of 125.4p to 299.8p and traded up slightly this morning at 215.60p.
Alongside the results, Trustpilot disclosed a historical US sales-tax issue, where tax had not been applied to some customer invoices in prior years, leading to a $2.6m restatement and a further $1m provision. Separately, the company said it had incorrectly assessed distributable reserves, the legally available profit reserves a company can use to fund buybacks, when funding share purchases for staff incentive schemes. That error now requires a shareholder vote to retrospectively approve the purchases.
The disclosures came despite genuinely strong trading: revenue rose 23% to $151.4m and bookings rose 22% to $171.2m, while adjusted EBITDA, a measure of underlying profitability before interest, tax and one-off items, rose 46% to a record $26.3m. Statutory pre-tax profit rose 32% to $4.3m, but roughly $6m of one-off charges, including the tax provision and an Italian competition-authority fine, tipped the group into a statutory net loss of about $1.1m, against a profit a year earlier. Full-year guidance was left unchanged.
Brokers were largely unmoved on ratings. Panmure Liberum, which rates the stock a hold with a 250p target, called the issues “a couple of missteps” but said “this is undoubtedly a speed bump on the company’s maturation journey, but it is firmly on that journey.” JPMorgan, which rates the shares overweight, said investors “may perceive this release to be slightly noisier than usual” compared with the company’s prior clean beats. Peel Hunt kept a buy rating with a 380p target.
Chief executive Adrian Blair said the company enters the second half “with confidence in our full-year guidance and the long-term opportunity ahead.”