Last week I had the great pleasure of hosting the latest Stockopedia StockSlam at Mello London. To my mind this made for a perfect pairing; a day of intense, captivating presentations followed by a more lighthearted hour of fun courtesy of other private investors. In addition I'm very aware that the previous StockSlams have all taken place in Central London and this understandably excludes many people who'd like to attend; fortunately Mello draws investors from across the country (and further afield) and I know that for many people this was their first experience of a StockSlam.
Fortunately we had a great line-up of presenters for the evening with some really excellent ideas for investment. As Stockopedia made sure to record the event, and then have everything transcribed, what follows is pretty much a verbatim record of the event.
Hopefully this provides a flavour, for everyone who couldn't make it, of what it's like to take part in a StockSlam. Unfortunately you don't get any pizza with this write-up but you will if you manage to make it to a StockSlam in 2019!
Cheers,
Damian
Focusrite (TUNE)
Ok so, what do we have here, Focusrite. As you can see mid-cap company, £285m market cap reasonable stock rank 75, looks pretty decent to me. Now what does this company do? It's an audio products company. They do hardware, they do software. They allow people from amateurs to professionals to record their music, they also provide keyboards for electronic artists, they are very well known in this industry. They have been doing it for around 30 years.
They started targeting professionals, so they know what they're doing. They have found loads of amateurs to broaden their customer base and they now sell in something like 160 countries. So they're a global company selling high-end to mid-end audio products. They are still run by their founder Phil Dudderidge; he is the chairman of the company and he still owns 38% of the shares.
Now the company hasn't been listed that long, it listed in 2014. This was mainly so that Phil and other members of the team could realise some of their investments. Phil at that point had 53% of the shares. Now there's a pretty consistent track record of growth and profitability in this company; net profits have been steadily growing and the top line has been steadily growing. A reasonable bit of…
