Past Events & Webinars

19 December 2023

Jim Mellon on 2024 investment opportunities, technology and economics

As 2023 comes to an end, influential British investor Jim Mellon discusses what he’s learned from the last 12 months and his expectations for 2024. Jim will be expanding on these themes at the Master Investor Show on 9 March 2024, get your free tickets today using code JIMVIDEO.

13 December 2023

Trident Royalties aiming to continue ‘blistering pace’ of acquisitions

The fifteen acquisitions that Trident Royalties Plc (LON:TRR) has made in just over three years has been described as a “blistering pace” by its chief executive Adam Davidson.

Positioned in the resource sector, Trident acquires royalties in mining companies, and in doing so is entitled to a percentage of generated revenue.

“The mining royalty sector is not tiny,’ says Davidson. “It’s $80 billion in aggregate market cap of mining companies around the world.”

While other royalty companies focus mainly on gold, Davidson realised there was a gap in the market for “a multibillion-dollar market cap diversified mining royalty company that’s got iron ore and copper and zinc as well as gold.”

Trident is building a pure diversified royalty business. This year it’s made five acquisitions across copper, gold, silver, and mineral sands and Davidson is wanting to add nickel and zinc to the portfolio.

“We’re trying to come up with an index fund style exposure. You can get your exposure to real assets to mining commodities through your holding and Trident because we get a royalty exposure across the whole depth and breadth of the sector.”

With a robust register of institutional shareholders, the board is in alignment with its investors with directors buying shares when they can.  The ultimate ambition according to Davidson is to build more scale within the portfolio and announce an inaugural dividend “when we can put in place a policy that’s progressive.”

12 December 2023

AI will be revolutionary for Cerillion and its customers

In addition to expanding resources to accommodate its growing register of really large and regular customers, Cerillion PLC (LON:CER) has added Generative AI into its product set which gives clients more tools to monetise existing infrastructure.

“It’s going to be revolutionary across the board”, says founder and chief executive Louis Hall, and he should know. He’s been with the billing, charging and customer relationship management software solutions provider for over two decades and has been quick to adopt and provide initiatives for customers looking for economical solutions that can be deployed quickly.

“A task that might take a good product marketing person, a couple of days sometimes can be completed within minutes”, says Hall who recognises that AI is just as useful a tool for Cerillion itself ‘in terms of productivity in developing and maintaining software’.

With the most recent figures showing record financial performance, the GenAI offering is one device dedicated to protecting Cerillion’s long-term recurring revenue growth.

8 December 2023

Diversification is the differentiator for Manx Financial Group

Manx Financial Group PLC (LON: MFX) celebrated a financial services first in October 2023 when its Conister Bank became the first Isle of Man bank authorised to accept deposits in the United Kingdom.

Chief executive Douglas Grant says being awarded a UK Branch Banking Licence demonstrated regulatory recognition of the company’s “really transparent operating business model based on sound economics”.

Expansion of the group’s overall model says Grant will come through diversification. It will come from organic growth, acquisition and backing management teams. “We’ve got almost like an incubator kind of theory”, enthuses Grant who references an FX business the company backed from ‘zero’ which now “makes a million pounds a year for us”.

Depositors also have the company’s back with Conister Bank passing on interest rate increases to its savers. While that magnanimous gesture resulted in corporate margin contraction, more importantly it made for happy customers.

6 December 2023

Charting the Course: Navigating 2024 – A Financial Outlook

In times of turbulence, the right investment decisions can make all the difference. For our final webinar of the year, Master Investor partnered with Netwealth to help you navigate the economic landscape with confidence and maximise your investment potential in 2024.

Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther is joined by Netwealth’s Iain Barnes and Tom Kimche to share their expert insights and perspectives on the volatile financial markets as well as tools and resources you can use for your own wealth management going into 2024.

28 November 2023

2024: Better times ahead for investors

Not only will the next 12 months be “fascinating” for investors, but according to investment trust authority Jonathan Davis, the UK stock market could do ‘quite well’ mainly because it’s cheap.

While the word “cheap” may sound derogatory, buying low represents opportunity, and with 2024 being an election year in both the U.S. and the UK, investment opportunities may not ride on which parties are elected but what the ‘voted in’ can do to reinvigorate the economy.

In his wrapping up 2023 conversation with Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther, Davis suggests that the direction of interest rates will continue to feature in market making strategies and in terms of his specialty field “things are looking quite good for the UK, wind and other renewable energy, renewable infrastructure trusts” with a hat tip to battery storage trusts, some of which have enjoyed gains of 30% recently.

“It’s a very good time to become an investment trust investor”, says Davis. “Discounts have widened and that’s created all sorts of opportunities. Looking forward, there is at least the hope of some better times ahead.”

16 November 2023

Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023

Held online on 16 November 2023, Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023 offered an unparalleled opportunity for investors to help build their longevity investment portfolios. Exploring “Longevity Now” and “Longevity Next”, the masterclass once again attracted scientists and business leaders from the cutting edge of the field, giving participants a run-down of the latest sector developments and investment opportunities.

5 October 2023

2023 – A reckoning postponed with live investment opportunities

After years of cheap money and low interest rates, Master Investor’s Jonathan Davis describes the year so far as a “reckoning postponed”, and while he is gloomy about the markets he talks about the very much alive investment opportunities that exist.

Greencoat UK Wind (LON:UKW) is one such opportunity. “It has an inflation linked yield commitment which it’s going to keep”, says Davis who explains that while there’s a lot of issues around wind power, “that’s actually a positive because the worse the conditions are at the moment in wind power, the more likely you are to make money out of it when supply and demand comes back into balance”.

Davis also says Japan and the yen look very interesting with the currency being “very, very weak” which is its historic behaviour before financial crises.

4 October 2023

UK Property: Trouble in paradise or the perfect storm?

Take a deep dive into the world of property investment with market leading experts, as they discuss how to tackle the challenges and understand the opportunities.

Speakers:

Lewis Finn, Global Sales Director at API Global
Hiten Ganatra, Managing Director at Visionary Finance

27 September 2023

Artisanal Spirits Company: maturing into a highly profitable premium spirits group

The Artisanal Spirits Company (LON: ART) creates and sells what it describes as “outstanding limited edition whiskies and experiences around the world.” It does so primarily through its Scotch Malt Whisky Society established some 40 years ago.

Crucially, Artisanal is not a distillery or a primary producer. It buys from a huge range of distilleries and has just bottled from its 157th malt whisky distillery.

Chief Executive Andrew Dane says Artisanal’s space within the global whisky market is in the ultra-premium price point of typically over £40 a bottle. “That part of the market is really significant and growing. It’s over $8 billion and three quarters of that global market is in the markets in which we already have a presence.”

The business is globally diversified with a recent franchise opening in South Korea attracting 300 members in 90 minutes.

Ultimately, Dane says the business is “about creating a highly profitable, highly cash-generative global premium spirits group, and we look to expand the ways that we can reach a broader audience, while keeping the society at the core of what we do.”

20 September 2023

Master Investor Sector Focus: Healthcare

A webinar for investors interested in learning more about healthcare companies.

14 September 2023

Bitcoin: A game changing technology for the world

In Conversation with Sam Volkering, Editor of The Crypto Handbook.

The move towards more digital assets is “inevitable,” says Sam Volkering. The amount of physical cash in circulation in the U.K. is a mere 4% and society is becoming more comfortable with Bitcoin as a new form of money.

With its many gatekeepers and administrative demands on users, traditional finance doesn’t work argues Volkering. Bitcoin on the other hand is a new democratised digital asset that is inclusive for everybody. It’s many things says Volkering. “It’s digital gold. It trades like a stock. It’s money.”

There’s a lot more to this wider crypto ecosystem than just the price of Bitcoin says Volkering, and it’s one that is developing and expanding and growing and providing opportunities for people.

“What people will start to hear a lot more about in the next 12 months is the tokenization of assets. Companies tokenizing their assets, funds tokenizing their assets, where and how things were exchanged and traded.”

In this video Volkering talks about how investors can buy, hold, own, sell and trade crypto directly and indirectly.

A free eBook of Volkering’s The Crypto Handbook is available on the Harriman House store.

14 August 2023

ZOO Digital in prime position to capitalise on new opportunities

August 2023 saw ZOO Digital Group plc (LON:ZOO) updating investors about a fourth successive year of double digit revenue growth, margin improvement and record pre-tax profitability. 

The company provides services to the entertainment industry including large streaming companies and other organisations that create content such as feature films and TV series.

With its proprietary cloud-based software ‘ZOO’ provides myriad services to its customers including subtitling and soundtrack dubbing which it does so in 80 languages.

Chief Executive Stuart Green and Chief Financial Officer Phillip Blundell tell Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther about the pain that is being created by screenwriter and actor strikes in the U.S., but are confident that they will “come out of it stronger”.

Irrespective of the industry-halting strikes, Green describes debt-free ZOO Digital as a disrupter “in prime position to be able to capitalise on new opportunities”.

New opportunities may come in the form of a potential acquisition in Japan home to the greatest proportion of non-English content that’s consumed on Netflix, and the second largest territory in Asia after China.

5 July 2023

Deal winning Cerillion targeting bigger contracts with bigger customers

Cerillion plc (LON:CER) is a growth stock. It’s recognised as such by the many long-term ‘sticky’ shareholders and by a city-respected panel who recently recognised founder and CEO Louis Hall as Executive Director of the Year.

Hall owns more than 30% of the shares of the business that has seen “a quite steep rise in growth in share price within the last few years.” That ‘quite steep rise’ is a seven-fold increase over the past five years.

The company at a simplistic level provides enterprise software to telecoms businesses and it’s doing well at attracting new customers and keeping them.

Hall is proud of his team’s efforts. “One of the things that we work very hard at is bringing onboard more of these larger customers and doing some larger, all-inclusive deals. We’ve gone from a business that ten years ago was selling perpetual software licenses and 20% maintenance support to a software service business selling quite large typically five-year, software or service deals that encompass license support, hosting a solution, managing the solution. And that’s a much bigger stickier long-term recurring revenue scenario.”

The ambition is simple. “We have to keep working at planning up the value chain ladder and continuing to win deals with bigger, bigger customers, bigger deals.”

30 June 2023

Are gloomy times a good time to buy?

In this month’s Master Investor cogitation, Jonathan Davis and Sarah Lowther discuss whether the AIM market is suffering due to predictions of an impending Labour government and despite a plethora of bad news investor confidence is actually returning.

Davis considers the plight of indebted U.K. water companies using the Warren Buffett analogy of “You know who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes up.” He also references the third-party casualties of those with exposure to those utilities.

He shares his conversation with fund manager James Henderson who suggests now is the time to load up on mid and small cap shares. Lowther meanwhile shares her delight about Sam Volkering’s just released “The Crypto Handbook” and how she’s no longer afraid of a world she’s long been in denial of.

The pair agree on the market adage that the value of shares can go down as well as up, and this lesson is learned the hard way by fools and the foolhardy. “What’s the best way to become a millionaire? says Davis. “To start with a billion and invest in an airline stock.”

27 June 2023

Adapting to the New Normal: Investing in Volatile Times

In times of turbulence, the right investment decisions can make all the difference. For our June webinar, Master Investor have partnered with Netwealth to help you navigate the uncertain economic landscape with confidence and maximise your investment potential.

Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther is joined by Netwealth’s Gerard Lyons and Matt Conradi to share their expert insights and perspective on the volatile financial markets as well as the tools and resources you can use for your own wealth management.

30 May 2023

Master Investor Sector Focus: Going for Gold

With global uncertainty has come a renewed interest in the precious metal and we discuss the gold outlook with four companies in this space.

On 24 May 2023, Master Investor hosted four gold companies with exciting projects in development to help keep our investors ahead of the curve.

26 May 2023

Is market sentiment emerging from the shadow of the global debt mountain?

In this month’s Master Investor podcast, Sarah Lowther and Jonathan Davis disagree about the direction of the markets. Lowther, at a grass roots level, sees market sentiment on the up while Davis cites renowned financial strategist Russell Napier who errs caution due to the global accumulation of debt.

Napier’s thoughts are shared by United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen who suggests the U.S. government will run out of money at the beginning of June, and if that happens Davis says June will be ‘a lively month’.

Davis shares Napier’s thoughts on debt eradication and why ‘the right kind of equities’ could be a solution. Davis’s own solution is ‘rack up your risk tolerance’, or ‘do something less frenetic than watching the markets go up and down every day’ which Lowther interprets as permission to study to become a vet.

16 May 2023

The Circular EV Revolution – a 360-degree investment opportunity

The electric vehicle economy is accelerating at full throttle, and as with all supply and demand there comes investment opportunities.

Emily Liu, Associate Director of Research at Hybridan talks to Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther about the regulatory stimulus driving the sector and the companies assisting the transition to clean tech and net zero decarbonisation ambitions.

Liu also talks about the recycling enterprises at the end of the value chain which are just as essential as the critical mineral explorers at the beginning. She talks about why 80% of UK-made vehicles are exported and whether Cornwall could be at the heart of the EV economy in the U.K..

27 April 2023

Is ‘Sell in May’ the right advice for coronation month?

In their monthly gossip about the markets and dominant actors puppeteering the investment stage, Master Investor’s Jonathan Davis and Sarah Lowther consider whether it’s worth following legacy advice about selling up in May and returning in October.

May 2023 also coincides with the UK’s first royal coronation in seventy years, so will this noble event invigorate the market? Davis suggests the coming month might be dull unless China invades Taiwan when the advice would be ‘it’s better to panic early’, but 2023 as a whole he suggests could be shaped by the amount of debt being held by the US, UK and European governments.

Davis and Lowther also talk about the highlights of the recent Master Investor Show, hoodwinking a young investment guru and the companies that are the gate keepers of ‘affordable’ and regulated alternative assets of the luxurious kind.

15 April 2023

Master Investor Show 2023

Held on 15 April 2023 at the Business Design Centre in London, Master Investor’s flagship event offered an unparalleled opportunity for private investors to help shape their investment plans and find portfolio inspirations. With presentations from renowned investment experts on future trends and market analysis, as well as an exhibition comprising companies from across a range of asset classes and services, Master Investor Show once again proved it’s the UK’s leading event for private investors.

31 March 2023

VCTs – tax efficient alternatives in uncertain times

Master Investor’s Jonathan Davis and Sarah Lowther talk about why March 2023 was a mega merger month, and why there’s so much consolidation in the broking sector and activity in the private equity space.

Davis advises those with surplus income and the younger investor to consider venture capital trusts as they ‘essentially’ give investors tax breaks. “They are very risky,” says Davis, “but they do provide a very tax efficient alternative for higher risk, smaller company investment.”

8 March 2023

Jim Mellon meets Graham Rowan of Beaufort Private Equity

Graham Rowan, Chairman of Beaufort Private Equity, interviews Jim Mellon ahead of the forthcoming Master Investor Show (this recording was made before the date of the show was changed to the 15th of April 2023 due to rail strikes).

28 February 2023

Make investment decisions during the summer and not at the end of the financial year

Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther and Jonathan Davis talk about what stopped the FTSE 100 from breaching the tantalising 8000 level, and the latest survey from FTSE creator Professor Dimson and friends.

Davis suggests foreign investors need to return to the UK market and reinvigorate its position in the World Equity Index after halving over the past two decades. He also reveals the golden rule concerning dividend yields and equity purchases.

Generous to a fault, Davis also summarises the latest 272-page survey from renowned financial historians Dimson, Marsh and Staunton and discusses how Gen Z’ers can still make money from investing, and why investment decisions are best made in the summer and not in March at the end of the financial year.

31 January 2023

As goes January, so goes the year. Will 2023 be a stormy one?

Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther and Jonathan Davis discuss the investment themes that have started to materialise this year.

With some equity market indices approaching or breaking through their 200 day moving averages, is this potentially a positive sign for the rest of 2023?

Davis talks about the phenomenal success of passively managed funds over the past two decades, and names the active fund managers who deserve honourable mentions.

Inflation in the UK is discussed. Will it return to the Bank of England’s 2% target and why is BOE Governor Andrew Bailey eating humble pie?

And discover why Davis says this is the year that the trip to the US should be a vacation destination and the Western Isles shouldn’t.

13 January 2023

Lingo: the blockchain driven vacation and real estate company

Glen Goodman interviews Hassam-Moussa Rawat, Co-Founder and CEO of revolutionary blockchain start-up Lingo, to find out how Lingo is using blockchain technology to create a token which enables real estate investment to deliver vacation rewards.

10 January 2023

2023 will be more civilised as the retail investor makes a comeback

Master Investor’s Sarah Lowther and Jonathan Davis tackle the stories and themes that defined the investment landscape of 2022 – a year that saw the return of double digit inflation and a war on the continent of Europe.

The pair talk about the returns being made by investment trusts, the new wave of consolidation in the publishing industry, why you should worry if a company changes its name and whether we’re experiencing a short term or serious bear market and how investors can thrive regardless.