PIWORLD Investor Podcasts

This week, Progressive's Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans wonder whether there are signs of life... UK plc is perhaps "priced for failure" and recent share price moves suggest that even in-line performance (or only a small warning!) can lead to material upside. Severfield is a case in point, but this week has seen a number of examples. Jupiter and AJ Bell are also talking more positively. Still, risks abound, as the unfortunate Argentex investor base have seen - a canary in the coal mine, showing that volatility or abnormal market activity can lead to unforeseen consequences. Jeremy wonders whether the attack on US university funding could likewise lead to unexpected outcomes....

Progressive's Jeremy McKeown talks with Lawrence Lam, who invests globally in founder-led companies. Lawrence has run the Lumenary Global Founders Fund since 2017 and is the author of "The Founder Effect - The Three Pillars of Success in Founder-Led Companies." – A great read if you are trying to understand good long-term management decisions and how to spot them. Jeremy and Lawrence discuss what exactly is the founder effect, and how can investors accurately determine whether a management team has this elusive characteristic? This is a fascinating conversation with someone who is passionate about his work and carefully studies the world’s stock markets to find his formula. We learn how he balances the less correlated world for opportunities to buy founder-led companies that offer good value, why China offers a great way to diversify a portfolio, and how BYD is poised to become the next Toyota. The pair further discuss how meeting management is useful for understanding if the company is likely to do well next quarter, but not so useful for understanding whether it will compound for you over the coming decades. Brought to you by Progressive Equity.

Progressive's George O'Connor and Ian Robertson catch up on events in and around the UK small and mid-cap listed tech. Alphawave’s lack of guidance for 2025 is no great surprise, but in an industry as complex as semiconductors can anyone take forecasts seriously. Ensilica’s recent newsflow suggests not. We can, however, confidently predict that the forecasts are wrong. Kainos is steadier than it was, but do the cuts mean that it is now out of sync with the rest of the market. George looks to the global picture and raises the long-term question that faces the UK IT services business. Accesso also looks to be regaining its poise but reminds us that it is not just hardware companies that are subject to customer and supply chain timing issues. Cirata is growing sales but is it just the old UK small-cap trap (AIM business model) of sales before profits before fund raise. The change in sales strategy in the US keeps the focus on how this company can make and grow profitable sales. Tiny Build looks to a busy year, with new products – is the games sector in a comeback year? Finally, we touch upon the Stanford AI report – nearly 500 pages covering everything from models, to hardware, to costs to energy. Thankfully, concisely summarised.

This week, Progressive's Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans consider the ongoing shocks to the global system - and wonder whether the UK (or UK plc at least) is unusually well positioned, as well as attractively priced. Although Trump's "shock and awe" has calmed this week, gold is rising, the dollar is falling and US government debt is highly volatile...it feels as though we've had "America's Brexit moment", a "global Liz Truss event" and now a re-run of Covid supply chain pressures - as we hear reports of ships halted in ports awaiting instruction, and markets can't tell whether current demand is real or stocking-up for an uncertain future. The UK has had more than its fair share of such volatility - and maybe we can manage it better. Micro-cap news from Progressive clients tinyBuild and Gear4Music shows that stocks delivering "not worsening" news, having cut their costs and adapted their models, can perform strongly - both up 20% at one point this week. The Easter weekend weather in the UK is forecast to disappoint - let's hope the UK's broader performance across the rest of the year reflects what we see as quite some potential.

David Seaman of Alpha Cygni Asset Management and a seasoned emerging markets investor joins Progressive's Jeremy McKeown for a fascinating discussion with Sean Peche, the manager of the Ranmore Global Equity Fund. Sean recounts how he honed his value investing credentials at Orbis after qualifying as an accountant in South Africa and before launching Ranmore in London in 2008. Sean has a first-hand take on how capital flows have shaped equity values and built up today’s imbalances. While relative value is not sufficient reason for capital to flow, it is a necessary pre-condition. Sean says there are now multiple reasons investors, typically fully loaded in the US market, want to recycle their capital. He talks about how he looks for value, why he has recently moved overweight in the UK, why emerging markets have many developed market characteristics, and why he doesn’t meet the management of the companies he invests in. As he says, he can best objectively determine the effectiveness of management by watching what they do, not necessarily by listening to what they say. Sean delivers a master class on the principles of value investing combined with an acute sense of how the world is changing and how best to load up on asymmetric risk opportunities that will likely operate in his favour as we confront an unforecastable future.

This week, Progressive's Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans talk less about tariffs and more about their impact on capital markets - bonds in particular. Jeremy makes the point that the USA is now experiencing a Brexit AND "Liz Truss" moment at the same time - resulting in a falling dollar and rising rates.  Keep an eye on those two, and the gold price, and you have three metrics which give dashboard of the current situation - and level of trust in the US administration. While Trump's economic guns are all trained on China, Scott Bessent is on his way to Japan - a major owner and buyer of US treasuries....remember the carry trade unwind panic of mid-last year...? Closer to home, we hope that the UK is next on Bessent's list, with a trade deal in the offing.  Small-cap news was from Nexus Infrastructure, Beeks and SDI Group. Big data next week includes China GDP (required to be c.5%), UK inflation for March, US retail sales and hopefully a rate-cut from the European Central Bank.

George and Ian catch up on the jumble of news, both good and bad, for UK-listed tech. Pinewood.AI and Raspberry Pi deliver – although inventory build at Raspberry Pi is an issue that must be monitored. BIG Technologies and the broken small and mid-cap due diligence stack. Whilst there’s still an interesting business, there is a far more interesting story that highlights how share-based remuneration can be a useful pointer into the heart of a company and its management. And Alphawave Semi which has had Qualcomm come sniffing. Could the market be just as confused on Alphawave’s departure as it was on Alphawave’s arrival?

Jeremy and Gareth react to Donald Trump's tariff pronouncements - major downward moves in US equities, and increased risk of a US slowdown. But there is  some hope that the UK could navigate these choppy waters cleverly - and even a small proportion of the capital currently being reallocated could make a huge difference to the UK markets. UK stock news from Gear4Music, Pharos, tinyBuild, Intuitive Investments, Peel Hunt and Alphawave.  Next week - in addition to early responses to the US tariffs - we get Chinese inflation data, plus both inflation and sentiment survey info from the USA. Brought to you by Progressive Equity. 

Progressive analysts George O'Connor and Ian Robertson catch up on small and mid-cap tech news. George has been looking at some resilient and upbeat news from smaller less well-known players SRT, Xaar and Microlise and is still recovering from the not too surprising news that Computacenter has not delivered its 20th year of earnings growth.   Gamma results have encouraged Ian and whilst enthused by Judges Scientific as a company he is disappointed by the analyst meeting – where did all the research go?   The leads to reflection on Ian’s recent blog comparing listed company micro-cap funds and VC funds, which suggests that something has gone wrong with the small-cap due-diligence / investment decision ‘stack’.  This has knock on impacts across small and mid-cap.  Is more research the answer?

DF Capital Holdings CEO, Carl D'Ammassa provides an overview of the group's results for the year ended 31 December 2024. Carl D'Ammassa, CEO 00:24 Introduction 02:10 FY24 Review 04:57 Strategy update 06:45 Looking ahead DF Capital was founded in 2016 to support the working capital needs of manufacturers and UK dealers. Today, having received full authorisation as a bank in September 2020, we work with over 90 manufacturers and over 1,250 dealers in the leisure, commercial and powersports sectors. In 2023, we provided over £1.2bn of distribution and inventory finance across these sectors.