By Edward Sheldon, CFA
Publication Date: 2026-05-06 07:07:00
Penny shares are high-risk investments. But they can be worth including in a portfolio due to the fact that they occasionally produce enormous returns.
Here, I’m going to highlight a penny share I currently own in my Stocks and Shares ISA. Year to date, it’s up over 40%, meaning it’s outperformed many more well-known growth stocks such as Rolls-Royce and Nvidia.
Small but mighty
The stock in focus today is Calnex Solutions (LSE: CLX). This is a tiny (market-cap of £57m) Scottish company that specialises in test and measurement solutions for telecoms, cloud computing and data centres, government and defence markets.
It currently trades for 65p. Like most penny shares however, the share price can be very volatile (over the last few years it has been up and down like a yo-yo).
A pickup in performance
As for why the share price is rising at the moment, there are two main reasons, in my view. One is that after a period of operational weakness (due to soft conditions in the telecoms market), business performance is improving.
In an April trading update, the company told investors it had made good progress in the year ended 31 March, delivering double-digit revenue growth and improved profitability, while continuing to invest in its long-term strategy. For the year, revenue was up about 19% to £21.9m (FY25: £18.4m).
Management noted that gross margins had remained strong, which had contributed to an…
