Stock market valuations have fluctuated throughout the year as economies and investors worldwide react to the COVID-19 pandemic. While some companies have experienced an uplift in financial performance during COVID-19, many more have struggled to stay afloat.

Listed companies in Glasgow have seen the third-strongest recovery outside of London, with an average company share price down 13.02 percent in Q4. While this performance is still troubling, the city has seen promising improvements in the second half of the year.

At the end of Q1 (and pandemic’s start), Glasgow’s companies were down 27.52 percent on average. However, they’ve steadily improved as the year progressed and, as of Q4, their performance is beaten only by Sheffield and Leicester.

The city’s best-performing company was Collagen Solutions. This isn’t to say that all the city’s companies are doing well though – some are still seeing large dips in share price as of Q4, including Virgin Money and Celtic.

As for Scotland as a whole, their companies saw a lot of improvement over 2020. Although they were down 27.52 percent at Q1’s end, their average share price has slowly grown to-23.29% in Q2, -22.23% in Q3 and -16.67% in Q4.

England’s companies, meanwhile, are in a fairly similar position, having seen a good increase in share price from Q1 to Q4 with -31.03% in Q1, -18.18% in Q2, -17.28% in Q3 and -11.76% in Q4.

Where the two countries differ is that, while Scotland experienced a smaller initial drop than England at the start of the pandemic, it has actually taken longer to recover. As of Q4, the average share price of England’s companies are nearly 5 percent closer to complete recovery than Scotland’s companies, with an average of -11.76 percent.

Edward Croft, CEO of Stockopedia.com, commented: “COVID-19 brought the most volatile stock market environment we’ve seen in years, and with it some clear sector winners and losers. But the virus has also been hitting some regions harder and longer than others. This study shows the impact this has had on the typical company’s share price across regions, and the regional disparity is clear to see.”