Good morning. I'm writing this first bit early, at 1 a.m., to jot down a few thoughts after this evening's Mello investor evening in Beckenham. It must have been the best attended Mello ever, with about 75 investors descending on Sea Salt restaurant in Beckenham tonight, right by the railway station, just 20 mins from Victoria.
The star of the evening was John Lee, Britain's first ISA millionaire, a veteran investor, and a politician. To my shame, I've not come across him before, but listening to him speak was an absolute treat - literally every well-crafted sentence was a pearl of investing wisdom. When you listen to really successful, experienced value investors, they don't really tell you anything new - instead they charge you up again with common sense, like a flat rechargeable battery is brought back to life from plugging it into the mains.
John kindly signed copies of his new book, "How To Make A Million - Slowly", and I was particularly thrilled to receive a copy where he accidentally mis-spelt "successfull" with two "l"'s, so I quipped that it would be worth far more when I chose to sell it on Ebay due to the error! All in good humour.
We were then treated to a masterclass in value investing from Mr Lee, and to get a flavour for what he talked about, here is a link to a newspaper article.
Next, we had a presentation from an interesting little stock that I hold a few of, called Seaenergy (LON:SEA).
Now I don't want to sound critical, but if I'm honest, the presentation was a bit of a muddle. When introducing a company, an investor presentation needs to have a logical flow. It should go something like this;
- This is who we are - name, ticker, share price, no. shares in issue, market cap, key management.
- This is what we do - in really simple terms that everyone can understand.
- The investment case - explain the valuation & performance.
- The future - tell us why we should get excited about future growth.
Also, in a large room, with a lot of background noise from kitchen equipment, staff who need to prepare our food & drink, etc, you need to take control, and speak up & project your voice to the…
