Master Investors

Eleanor Davies, Dealflow Steward at VitaDAO, Alex Colville, Co-founder and General Partner at age1, and Patrick Burgermeister, Expert in Life science Investing at Kizoo Technology Ventures, join Phil Newman, Editor-in-Chief at Longevity.Technology, for a panel discussion at Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023. In their chat, participants outline the investment strategies and business models of their respective funds in the longevity sector, as well as their expectations for 2024.

Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023 was held on 16 November 2023. The masterclass featured presentations from scientists and business leaders at the cutting edge of the field, giving participants the inside track on the latest aging-related discoveries and investment opportunities.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

Dr Richard Marshall CBE, CEO at Juvenescence, Bill Kapp, Co-founder and CEO at Fountain Life, and Jörg Rieker, Founding Partner at Maximon, join Phil Newman, Editor-in-Chief at Longevity.Technology, for a panel discussion at Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023. In their chat, participants present the business models and product pipelines of their respective companies in the longevity sector, and give an update on their current fundraising efforts.

Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023 was held on 16 November 2023. The masterclass featured presentations from scientists and business leaders at the cutting edge of the field, giving participants the inside track on the latest aging-related discoveries and investment opportunities.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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."

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

Greg Bailey, Co-founder and Executive Chairman at Juvenescence, joins Phil Newman, Editor-in-Chief at Longevity.Technology, for a chat at Investing in the Age of Longevity 2023.

Highlighting the importance of preventitive medicine in the healthcare sector, Greg gives his own estimate of how the longevity space is going to develop over the next five years. He also touches on the industry's focus on regulation, and gives advice on how private investors can participate in the longevity space. Having explained the Juvenescence model in more detail, Greg also gives an outlook on the company's product range in 2024.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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."

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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 (www.harriman-house.com/cryptohandbook).

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

As equity markets recover from the shocks of 2022, Jonathan Davis and James Harries of Troy Asset Management, manager of the STS Global Income and Growth trust, discuss the role that global equity income can play in delivering reliable medium term returns.

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.

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."

For more investment and economics analysis plus inspiration please visit our website masterinvestor.co.uk.