SimplyBiz (LON:SBIZ)
Share Price 169p
Bid/Offer 166p/172p Normal Market Size 3,000
Market Cap £129.3m No. of Shares 76.5 million
Revenue £44.1m
Mello 2018
Really enjoyed Mello which exceeded my expectations. Mello's business model works well because private investors will pay for a ticket to come to hear quality presentations while at the same time listed companies will pay for access to the same private investors.
SimplyBiz plc operates a similar model except at a rate of 400+ much smaller events a year whereby Individual Financial Intermediaries (IFAs) members attend conferences for professional development reasons while the fund managers anxious for IFAs' attention pay SimplyBiz a fee to be able to promote their funds at the same venues.
An attractive business where you collect from both the financial intermediaries and also at the same time collect fees from finance institutions wishing to be present at the event. Finance institutions are always anxious to attract additional funds to manage that the financial intermediaries attending might recommend to their clients.
SimplyBiz Founding Shareholder
Kenneth Davy (chairman) aged 76 established the company back in 2002 and is a 40% shareholder. Some inheritance tax planning may be evident in obtaining an AIM listing at this time.
In any case, he correctly identified that the FSA had created a regulatory landscape that suited individual financial intermediaries (IFAs) to operate as directly authorised firms rather than as appointed representatives of networks. IFAs normally operate alone or only with a few staff. If SimplyBiz could make the complexity of regulatory compliance easier than a successful business could be established.
SimplyBiz recent AIM Listing
Listed on AIM on April 4th, 2018 when the company issued 38 million shares at 170p to satisfy selling shareholders and also to raise new funds by selling 17.6 million shares representing 23.1% of an enlarged share capital which netted the company after expenses £26.3 million
About the Company
Today, the company is the largest provider of outsourced regulatory and business support services to the financial services market, currently supporting over 3,400 directly authorised financial advisory businesses in the UK.
The Group provides services to the demand-side, financial intermediaries, and the supply-side, financial institutions, of retail financial services via…
