Over the last few quarters, the EGM market has gone through a phase of profound transition, driven by a rapidly changing macroeconomic context and renewed investor attention towards smaller capitalization companies. As Stefano Corneliani, Head of Websim Corporate – the Intermonte division specialized in the EGM market – points out, 2025 represented a turning point: the monetary easing cycle started by the Federal Reserve and the more prudent posture of the ECB contributed to reducing the cost of capital, favoring a rotation towards mid and small caps and bringing vitality back to segments that in previous years had suffered a contraction in volumes and liquidity.
In this scenario, the EGM stood out for its selective dynamics, in which the quality of the earnings and the execution capacity of the individual companies made the difference. Despite overall positive performances, the market showed strong dispersion, rewarding excellence and penalizing less solid models. The first months of 2026 confirm this trajectory: the recovery in volumes, albeit gradual, signals renewed interest, while valuations – today at relative lows compared to the main lists – outline a particularly interesting entry point for growth-oriented investors.
From records to rotation: mid and small caps between opportunities and selection
In recent months the macro picture has changed pace: the Federal Reserve restarted the easing cycle with three cuts between September and December 2025, thanks to the return of inflation towards 2% and a labor market that has shown an orderly cooling; the ECB, however, after the four cuts in the first half of the year, kept rates unchanged with a strictly data-dependent approach. The context of decreasing rates supported the price lists and favored the rotation towards the mid and small caps sector, thanks to a lower cost of capital and attractive valuations. 2025 saw the main price lists reach record levels, dragging Piazza Affari towards new highs. In this context, the EGM achieved a positive performance, albeit more limited, characterized by strong heterogeneity: the market decisively rewarded individual excellences and the quality of profits, confirming the vitality of the best SMEs on the list.
Liquidity increasing at two speeds
That mid and small caps have attracted greater interest is evident from the numbers: in the first two months of 2026, the average daily volumes of stocks listed on the STAR segment grew by around 90% y/y, a trend that the EGM market is struggling to keep up with. The recovery of volumes on the EGM, although late, however made it possible to almost entirely recover the double-digit decline recorded in the first half of 2025, leading the year to close with volumes traded down by 0.9% y/y. The trend reversal, which began in the third quarter of last year, seems to be confirmed also in the first months of 2026, with volumes growing by 3.5% y/y. However, trades remain highly concentrated on a handful of stocks: since the beginning of the year, the top 20 stocks have attracted 54% of the overall trades on the EGM, while for 68 stocks the average daily trades stopped below €10,000, in a market that confirms its predominantly non-institutional traction.
Evaluation gap
On the valuation front, EGM today expresses particularly interesting multiples, especially in light of the expected growth profile: compared to a 2025 P/E equal to 16.8x and a 2025 EV/EBITDA of 7.4x, estimates indicate a rapid compression towards 12.7x and 5.8x in the current financial year, thanks to a significant growth in revenues which should be followed and an expansion of operating margins, in a context characterized by limited recourse to indebtedness. (aggregate NFP equal to approximately €1.2 billion). The segment trades at a significant discount compared to larger capitalized companies in terms of EV/EBITDA (up to 37% in 2026), therefore offering an attractive entry point into companies with structurally higher growth rates. In particular, the Tech sector, although trading at a premium compared to the market average, reflects superior development dynamics and sees a progressive reabsorption of the gap in the coming years. In summary, the combination of expected growth, moderate financial leverage and contracting multiples makes EGM’s current valuation positioning particularly appealing from a prospective perspective.
