Investor Meet Company, Fevertree, Closet Trackers, Politics and the Environment

I recently came across a company called “Investor Meet Company” (see https://www.investormeetcompany.com/ ). They claim to enable individual investors to meet with company directors over the internet, i.e. via a digital web cast. The service is free to investors but there is a small charge to companies who take part.

The company was formed in 2018 by two founders, Marc Downes and Paul Brotherhood, who seem to have lengthy financial backgrounds and the web site looks professional. However, their contract terms are over complex and their privacy policy likewise so I am not rushing to sign up. They also invite you to provide details of companies you are interested in, which may be your holdings, which is not ideal. But if any readers have experience of this service, please let me know.

I mentioned Fevertree (FEVR) in my last blog post and Phil Oakley’s review of the business. Today the company issued a trading statement which was positive – it mentions “acceleration in key growth markets of the US and Europe in the second half”, but UK performance seems to be mixed. Growth in the USA is now expected to be c. 34% which is ahead of previous expectations. But the overall revenue forecast of £266 to £268 million is less than the previous consensus brokers’ forecast. The share price is up 7.8% today though. I may have to look at this business again because US growth is key to the share valuation.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have fined Janus Henderson £1.9 million for running two funds as “closet trackers”, i.e. actually closely tracking an index while charging high fees that are more normal for actively managed funds. This apparently was particularly obnoxious because they did not tell the investors in the funds that they were switched to a passive approach in 2011. The funds affected were Henderson Japan Enhanced Equity and Henderson North American Enhanced Equity. Investors have been paid compensation. Investors in funds need to be very wary that the fund managers of actively managed funds are actually putting in the effort and not sitting back and being a pseudo index tracker while charging high fees.

I watched some of the debate last night between Johnson and Corbyn but as it was so trivial in content I turned it off fairly quickly. I can imagine a lot of people did. The programme producer and compere can be mostly blamed for allowing such bland questions to which one could guess the responses and allowing evasions and irrelevant interruptions. The format of the US presidential debates is so much better.

Rather surprisingly I received a flyer in the post yesterday from an organisation called “Tactical Vote”. If I go to their web site it advises me that the best choice for me is to vote Labour in the Bromley and Chislehurst Constituency. The flyer makes it clear that their agenda is to keep the Conservatives out! But I suspect that they won’t get far in my constituency as Bob Neil had a 10,000 majority last time. If anyone was to switch it might be more likely be to the Brexit Party or the Liberal Democrats but there is not even a Brexit candidate standing so far as I can see. I am all in favour of “tactical voting” in some constituencies but we really need reform of the political system so that we have better representation. A transferable second vote system as we have for London Mayor is relatively simple. Tactical Vote seem to be pursuing a false agenda though; they should call themselves the “Labour Vote Promoters”.

One of the hot political issues, at least so far as the minority parties are concerned as the major parties are more focused on Brexit, the NHS and give-aways in the current General Election is the environment, i.e. how we become carbon neutral by 2050 or a date of your choice. Even the Conservatives wish us all to be driving electric cars, changing our home heating system and changing our way of life in other ways to avoid disastrous climate change. There was an interesting article in today’s Financial Times showing how this is quite pointless because China will soon be emitting more carbon from burning coal than the whole of the EU. They are expanding the number of coal power stations and the result will be to offset global progress in reducing emissions. In 2017 China produced 27% of world CO2 emissions, while the UK produced 1.2%. China’s emissions have been rising while the UK’s are falling so any extreme efforts by the UK are not likely to have much impact on the world scene.

However if you want to save the world and cut your heating bills (the latter is a more practical objective) I suggest looking at product called Radbot from Vestemi. The company was founded by a long-standing business contact of mine. It’s basically an intelligent radiator valve that monitors when a room is occupied and adapts to your usage.

Apart from that point, I consider there is so much misinformation being spread around about climate change and the impact of CO2 emissions that it is impossible to comment on the subject intelligently enough to refute much of the nonsense in a short blog article. But I do think it might be helpful to reduce the population of the UK which is just getting too damn crowded and leading to housing shortages, congestion on the roads and in public transport and other ills. That would be a better way of reducing emissions.

Part of the problem is that the NHS has become very good at keeping people alive despite what some politicians believe, while immigration has boosted numbers as well. You can see this in the latest forecasts for London’s population which is likely to grow by 18% to 10.4 million by 2041. See https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/projections-documentation for more details.

Those are the issues politicians should be talking about.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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