Q&A with Paul Scott of Stockopedia

Thanks Paul, and hi to everyone. Great to be back.

Well, I think that's a bit of an edited highlights version of my career, edgy Paul. I've had some absolute disasters along the way. But the main mistakes I've made were all concerning gearing. So I've just decided now, you know, I've had fabulous returns from geared accounts for years, but then you'll just hit a bear market and everything just gets totally screwed up. So that side of things was a total roller coaster ride. But I've stopped gearing all together now. So my ungeared portfolio is relatively small compared to the money I had last year when I lost nearly all the money in this betting account.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, things go wrong in all our lives. So I don't think there's really any secret sauce. I mean, I redid my numbers this morning. Since I took over running a SIPP myself, which was in 2012, and actually this is a really good tip for people: if you've got lots of little pensions lying around that are just dormant from previous jobs, consolidate them into a SIPP, which is what I did. I was really surprised at how much money was there when I did this in 2012, and it was money I'd forgotten I had. So that was a good start. And since then, since 2012, the money I had in the SIPP I've more than six-bagged it. Wow. Which works out at, with no extra money going in, that was just a frozen portfolio, it's six-bagged in 10 years. And that works out at a compound annual gain of 17%, which I think was up from 14% last time we spoke because I've had a really strong year this year, but a terrible year last year when it went down. So I think if you can compound at anything in the teens or above, you're going to make serious money long term. I mean, I put the numbers into a spreadsheet, it's staggering how these amounts compound, you know, at 10, 15, 20 years.

I don't know, it's difficult to say, isn't it? The market goes through different patches where different strategies perform differently. I mean, I tend to just boil it down to the individual company level. I think in good markets or bad, there will always be some companies putting out really strong results and outlooks who buck the trend. I mean, obviously it's a smaller percentage of stocks that are doing that right now, but one of the readers on Stockopedia put up a couple of lists of shares that have done very well over the last 12 months, and they've put up plenty of them. So for me, I'm just a stock picker. I look at the individual shares and I try and find stuff that's relatively small where nobody's really looking, you know, there's no broker coverage, where they'll particularly in bear markets at the moment, they'll put out positive trading updates, nice strong outlook. You compare it with the last one and you can see a change in tone. Big substantial director buying I think can often be a good signal. So I'm really looking for individual stocks that I think will outperform in any market.

Well, actually I've learned quite a bit in the last year or two from my mistakes. Whereas I always used to just stubbornly stick with things once I've done my research, you know, I would say the market's wrong, I'm right, and I've been there. And it doesn't, quite often it doesn't end well. So what I've decided to do now is just be a bit more ruthless with positions. I'm trying not to form sort of quite extreme or strident views on stocks. I'm trying to look at both sides. We're continuously learning, aren't we, Paul? All of us. I mean, we've been doing this as you say 25, 30 years each, and you learn every day, that's why it's so fascinating. So yeah, I'm definitely being less stubborn, less dogmatic about stock picks. And I'm looking at my portfolio, and when I want to buy something like my current biggest holding that we'll talk about in a minute, I'm having to look at all the other positions to say, well, something's got to go. And I've been quite ruthless in just chopping out things where I've just been stubborn and got it wrong so far.

Mean reversion, yes, mean reversion. I mean, okay, you look at 2021, there was lots of stuff we all got a bit over excited about, wasn't there? Without sorry... And I think you've got the structural problem at the moment where a lot of these small cap funds are facing big redemptions, and you can't blame the fund holders who look at how badly they've performed and want their money out. And of course they cut, there's no liquidity, they can't sell a lot of these positions, so you could have overhangs in some small cap shares for a year or more possibly. Yeah, I understand that. It's throwing bargains at us, so we can take our pick, we can be highly selective. And this is where I think you and I and the listeners lay the groundwork for big gains once this market turns, which it always does. We've seen quite a few cycles over the years, and it always does turn. In two years into a nasty bear market, you're definitely nearer the end than you are the beginning, aren't you? Yeah, of the bear market. Oh, so when do you think the tide will turn on AIM and small caps then?

Early next year. I think it might be starting to happen already selectively. I'm starting to see some little green shoots of good decent companies that are really bombed out in valuation that are warning on profits again, and you know they spike down 20% but then they kind of recover, some all of the way within days. I mean, a good recent example of that was Anna Aqua, which I think you're quite familiar with. The Headlam, the carpets distributor, a similar sort of thing, absolutely crash on a profit warning but buyers came in and they've held it. So things like that are starting. Plus of course all these takeover bids, we had another one this morning, didn't we? Go Med, yeah, yeah, from Premier Private Equity. So the private equity guys are happy to pay quite full valuations for structural growth companies, I think, aren't they? So I'm looking a bit more at that area as well. I'm naturally drawn towards value, but I think actually if you see structural growth, a company consistently doing well, I mean Ergo Med was a 10-bagger from 2019 to 2021. So yeah, amazing. I unfortunately didn't pick up on that one, I don't know how it slid through the net, but you can't pick up on everything, can you?

Yeah, I think those are very wise words, Paul. I agree with all of that. I think one of the things I've noticed from the reader comments on the daily reports I write on Stockopedia is that a lot of the especially the newer subscribers are so despondent and are so down, and they're really feeling emotional, quite serious emotional pain from the losses. And so I do think sharing people's troubles with other investors on forums where people are going to be constructive and helpful is actually very valuable. You know, a bit of 'we're all in this together', we've all suffered substantial losses over the last couple of years, it's quite helpful.

Yes, no, but all very sensible stuff, Paul, definitely. And I think the other thing I found when you've had a really dire year as I did last year, mainly because of the gearing but also because everything was dropping, I think there's a lot to be said for just wiping the slate clean and chucking everything out that's causing me anxiety. You know, if I'm... this isn't everything, yeah, but not particularly say over the balance sheets. I just decided I didn't want any more 70, 80, 90% falls on anything, so I just selected some fresh ideas of new stocks that were obviously oversold, and I made sure I was buying stuff with bulletproof balance sheets, maybe get some dividends as well. And I think you can rebuild, and it'll take time. The one thing that so many investors lack, and I think the thing we all need to learn from really, is just to be more patient. This is a long-term game. We're trying to build up pots for our retirement in 20, 30, 40 years time or whatever it is, and you don't need to make spectacular percentage gains each year. If you're even doing sort of 7, 8, 9% per annum, you compound that and it'll deliver a really good result. So I think this is why it's so important for youngsters, people just starting out in their working career, saving a thousand or two a year into a pension scheme, they'll be really glad they've done that later in life.

Yes, in fact I think you pushed the share price up this morning actually bought so possibly... Well, I mean, I've been buying this since I think it was on the 21st of August. It came out with a very interesting RNS, Plexus Holdings. Absolute nano cap, I mean the market cap, there's about 100 million shares in issue, it was about 4p. And I just read the last five or six trading updates and contract win announcements. It doesn't take long, there's not many of them, but they're full of little nuggets of really quite promising sounding stuff. Like a record contract win of £5 million was announced in March, and in June I think it was they announced that contract had gone up to £8 million. That's the biggest ever contract that company's ever had. They do sort of well heads for the oil and gas extraction industry, largely for gas to stop methane leaking from oil and gas works. It's high-end well heads. They've been quite widely used in the North Sea I believe. And Plexus was profitable and I think it had a market cap of around about £200 million back in 2015, was making £5 million a year profit, has patented IP. Then it all started to go wrong in 2015, and basically there was just a drought of drilling for oil and gas as this whole ESG business took hold, and the whole industry now is under-resourced. And we're now coming into a cyclical upturn, this is why lots of oil services companies are reporting much stronger outlooks. So I think this is a good sector play generally. And Plexus I think was ridiculously oversold. It's 59% owned by management, who are the founders. The CEO has been there for 37 years I think, totally passionate about the company. He's propped it up personally with £2.5 million in cash injected into the business in a convertible loan and buying a long leasehold property because he believes in it. And you know, he could have taken it private for peanuts a year ago, but he seems very committed to the listing and to the company generally. And it's landed this major contract win which the company says will actually make it profitable in the current financial year. It's been running about £4 million year losses for the last seven years, now amazingly they got through that without any dilution, so the CEO really jealously guards the share count as founder managers often do. And as I say, we can't be sure at the moment, one contract doesn't make a boom, does it? But certainly the signs are there when you put it together with for example a big deal it's got with Schlumberger on licensing. And they've just renewed it for another six years, and basically a three-year non-compete agreement with Technip expired, and Schlumberger has been developing the next generation of Plexus wellheads which I believe are going to be launched quite soon. And Schlumberger, $100 billion well services giant, you know, basically Schlumberger is well known in the oil and gas services industry as the technical leader.

I'm not a sector expert, Paul, so I'm going to admit my own limitations on this. But I look for sort of external signals that tell me this is good. So really the key one is that Schlumberger have licensed it and then have extended that license from three years to another six years to 2029, and are funding and developing a whole range of products using Plexus's IP. That tells you that the IP is good, it's tight, it's patented. There's a new family of patents that Plexus are about to file which they say will give them another 20 years of what they're doing. They've got quite a big in-house R&D team, so they're continuously refining and developing it within Plexus. So I just think we got that validation that this tech is good. And Plexus should receive, I've seen figures of between 3% and 6% royalty from Schlumberger, and I believe the wellheads are kind of a million pounds or a million dollars a pop, so they'll be selling globally. So the big unknown at the moment is what the royalty stream will be for Plexus. And I doubt I would even begin to want to guess at that, it's just an unknown, a known unknown. But when I was buying, Plexus's market cap when I started buying at 5p a share was £5 million, and it's risen now to 12p per share and it's still only £12 million market cap. And it peaked over £200 million. You've already bagged one or two bags on it, so it's not one bag. But I mean, I'm not in it for 10 or 12p, you know, I think if this works it's 50p to a quid. But there's no guarantee, I can't say that's definitely going to happen. I don't know, my time machine is in for servicing, I can't visit the future unfortunately. Yeah, well it's up 28% today. The only thing that bothered me, I've bought quite a big chunk of these, I had to break it down into about 30 or 40 individual transactions, so I was just nibbling at it. And the stock's coming from somewhere, I don't know who's selling, I haven't seen any RNS's. But with management owning 59%, the free float is everybody else only about £4 million, and the trades are just steaming through constantly. I've stopped buying now because I ran out of money. So I think I stopped buying at about 9.5p just literally because I could put everything into it, though it isn't in my other core positions. And I just hope to God it works. But I am a risk taker, I will take a calculated risk. This may well be too illiquid and too risky for lots of your listeners, so it's not a recommendation, just flagging up ideas for people to research.

I think I'll have to check, but I think I own about 12 or 13 stocks. A couple of big ones. I've got about 20-21% cash at the moment, looking to deploy into stocks and shares. And I typically hold for five years, six years, ten years, whatever it is. Sometimes you don't get a chance because it might be taken over, or alternatively if the thesis doesn't run through, but I'm prepared to hold thick and thin until the investment thesis is broken, then I typically retain it in my portfolio. What about you? How many stocks do you own? It's pretty similar actually, about 12 to 15. I'm concentrating heavily when I find something that I think is a real, when risk-reward I think is really favorable, I tend to put 30, 40, even 50% of my money into one stock. How much have you put into Plexus so far? Well, you'll be disclosing your 3% position probably soon then. Well, I'm over 2%. Oh, okay, right, okay, well that gives us a good idea anyway. So it's really, but also I think you've got a plan for the downside, haven't you? So if something calamitous happened with Plexus, I've worked out the numbers so that it wouldn't kill me, it would be a disaster but the remaining portfolio would be okay. I think a lot of people, I was talking to a reader the other day who was saying he was averaging down on something and he said he'd worked out his breakeven pricing, it was some absolute piece of junk. And I said to him, you shouldn't be trying to work out your average breakeven price, you should be working out what your loss would be if it goes to zero. That's the key number, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a really key point because a lot of investors fall into that trap of doubling down on stocks they've got wrong but they don't admit they've got wrong. And if your hit rate is only two-thirds, which is a good number in smaller micro caps, that means a third of them are wrong. So a third of the time stocks are going down. If you double down, you're going to get extremely lopsided onto a losing position. And I always say if you're losing, you've got to decide three outcomes: you either sell it, you hold it, or you buy more. And I rarely buy any more because I know I'm wrong a third of the time.

Going forward then, well I don't think the Chinese direct to consumer side is the threat at all, because that's right at the bottom end, and the Sander customer is an affluent customer who'll be shopping at the nicer brands, they wouldn't entertain buying direct from China. I don't think that's what that fashion is, that's sort of your younger demographic. So Sander is not for fast fashion at all, it's sort of Next and a bit above in terms of the customer. They've got very good repeat business, very loyal customer base. It's profitable now. The last update from Sander said that the growth rate had slowed to only about 10% in Q1, which I think for them, I think it's a March year end, so that's April, May, June. Now that did disappoint some people understandably, because the full year forecast is 36%, so it's going to be quite a big ask to get from 10% to 36% in the remaining nine months. So I think the market understandably lost some of its enthusiasm for Sander. So I'm not saying Sander is a raging buy now, I'm saying it's doing all the right things and its long-term track record is now established. It's a significant player in women's wear. The third party deals are all going great, it's selling very well through Next and M&S funnily enough through their website, it's going into physical Sainsbury's stores imminently. They've just launched through an international partner on a low risk way of doing it. So there's lots of stuff in the pipeline, and I think they've proven that they've got this niche brand that does resonate well with the customers. So I think just as a long-term thing for me, I want to be holding Sander for five years plus, and I think we should do very well if that delivers, unless they get the fashions wrong. Yeah, this is the big problem with the fashion sector, isn't it? And there's been a lot of M&A, hasn't there? You've had Serifine which I know you benefited from, and you've had Mike Ashley's Frasers always getting pieces of bits and pieces, you've had Boohoo looking at Revolution Beauty and all this sort of stuff. So there seems to be quite a lot of M&A actually for good quality. Yeah, I mean a lot of it though is sort of picking over the wreckage, isn't it? Yeah, okay. I mean, God knows what Mike Ashley's strategy is, it's just bizarre, isn't it? But I can't see the Kamani family at Boohoo in particular having much time for him being on the shareholder register, so I wouldn't be surprised if they take it private, but I don't think they'll be generous to outside shareholders because they're carpetbaggers. So I'm just generally avoiding that sector. I think again, my sector knowledge from when I was an FD in the 90s is now a lot of it out of date. So you can't hang your boots up yet there, Paul, and you're an expert compared to me, that's for sure. I don't think I've really picked the winners in the sector, although Sander's been all right, but Shoe Zone I missed, and I've missed quite a lot of the winners, so I don't think I've really got an edge in that sector. So it's time to look at other sectors really. Okay, what about Card Factory? Because I know you're quite, that's knocked the ball out of the park. It's surprising really because it's obviously been a beneficiary of Clinton Cards' demise when they went bust. But you've got that sort of secular, well, not tailwinds or headwinds as much as anything to all things online, I just see Card Factory because it's really growing strongly despite what you'd think longer term.

It's doing tremendously well, actually. I've top sliced my position in Card Factory because I was raising money to buy more Plexus, but my enthusiasm for the share has not dimmed at all, and I do want to go back up to a full position sizing in Card Factory when I can, when funds are available. Now one thing I would say is I looked at the stock report on Stockopedia earlier today, and they've got this little graph showing the trend of broker consensus earnings forecasts, and it's had two quite significant upward revisions Card Factory has in recent months, and the forward PE I think now is about 7.5 or something. Yeah, it's less than 8, you're right, it's very cheap. And the bank debt is coming down quite rapidly. The cash, I looked at the last cash flow statement, really very impressive cash generation. The new management, Darcy or something, seems to be doing very good common sense things in terms of broadening the product range into complementary items that you buy at the checkout. And I mystery shop it occasionally myself, and the prices are very keen. You can buy a bag of balloons and some happy birthday streamers and it costs a couple of quid each. It's a brilliant business, very cheap. Now the only downside on it is the biggest shareholder is dribbling shares into the market. They put out a number of holding and company announcements showing them dropping 1%, I think from 18% then to 17% then to 16% possibly to 15%, I can't remember. But that I think is definitely quite obviously causing an overhang in the market. But when that clears at some point, I don't know why they're selling, I don't know whether they want to sell all of them or just some, no idea. But I think that is presenting an opportunity. Just wait for the overhang to clear and then the thing goes up. It's about £1.15 now, I think it really should be worth £1.50 in due course if the current trends continue. So I think there's nice upside on that, and I think they're bringing in the dividend again possibly next year. So medium term, I think Card Factory looks terrific. Yeah, yeah, I know Richard Crowe with Cockney Rebel, he loves it, it's his biggest holding. Yeah, I'm speaking to him in a month's time, so I'll be interested. I think he's bright. Now what about XP Factory, experiential sort of like Boom Battle Bars and Escape Rooms? Escape rooms actually have benefited from the work from home because a lot of corporate bookings for team building at Christmas, so they seem to be doing pretty well, could be a bit of an inflection point this year as well. Yeah, I think I remain, I've got a significant for me size position in it. I think it's very good. Management, I think Richard Harper is superb. I've met him a couple of times and he showed me around the Option Street site, which I think he might have done for you and for Justin and a few other commentators. The whole business just really runs off his energy and enthusiasm. It's got a different feel to it to other businesses I've visited, and it's very popular. The customers really enjoy the sort of slightly retro themed games. And I think the experiential leisure sector is definitely taking a chunk out of the business that kind of standard regular bars have. And that was the reason I decided to part company with Revolution Bars. I only bought them around 5 or 6p and I sold them at a small loss for about 4.9p or something. It wasn't a huge position, but it's got too much debt. And I think some of my readers persuaded me out of that one actually, funnily enough. I was sort of writing up the positives of it, the readers said, 'Well, hang on, have we thought about this, this and this?' And they basically said that they feel the £18 million drawdown on the HSBC facility to buy Peach Pubs, the readers on Stockopedia see that as a sort of management buying a life raft really, in that the core late night bars side of it is just... And your problem is if your like-for-likes are down 10%, when you're on a 75% gross margin, that 10% drop is ruinous for your bottom line, particularly when you've got cost inflation coming in as well. Yes, yes, exactly. So I think Revolution Bars is a bit dicey. I just don't want to take the risk. Yeah, I mean, look, somebody could come in and bid for it for 10 or 15p, I just don't know. But it's the debt that I don't generally want to be holding companies with debt right now, because the days of leniency and zombie companies when the interest cost was only 0% plus 1.5% margin or something, the banks were happy to let them just buy their time and trade their way out. Now that the interest is accruing, and some of these companies, you know, Superdry for example, it's only got borrowings on 10, 12, 15%? Well, that compounds quite badly, doesn't it? Yeah, Superdry came back from trading today, didn't it? I didn't know. Yeah, they're down about 15%, I think, 45, 46p. I think that could go bust next year. Yeah, I mean, basically I think it does seem as though the consumer is getting far more discriminating. They've got a certain budget that they're going to spend on leisure and retail, and the winners are going to be stronger and get through the softer patch, whereas the weak ones in a higher interest rate environment are going to really struggle if not go bust. Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing with Superdry though is that they did actually get the money in for that £35 million IP sale in the Far East, and that does prove that the brand actually is worth something. So you can argue it both ways, but I just personally wouldn't want to take the risk. I got clobbered with Joules where I stubbornly thought I knew best and it would recover, and it totally crapped out. So I'm just not going to get involved with any more struggling fashion businesses. It's such a low percentage of them actually turn themselves around. That's the thing. Yeah, well, turnarounds are high risk. You can make great returns on the back of them if you get them right, as some shareholders do, but most of the time they don't go right, and it's harder than you think. So, yeah. And it was something interesting in the paper about Hilco as well, you know, they do the sort of lender of last resort. It was saying how they basically lend at high interest rates to struggling retailers, so they've got their foot in the door for effectively taking over the business and buying all the stock for pennies in the pound when the thing goes bust, and they make money in two or three different ways. So really seeing Hilco as a second lender to Superdry is actually quite a red flag, I'd say. Yeah, and Hilco have got a checkered reputation. I've seen a few of those that haven't gone their way either. So it just shows how difficult it is to change the psychology and perception of consumers. They're usually the big secured creditor, they call the shots in the administration and they make money out of the administration apparently. But overall they can still lose, I've seen a few of them when they've even gone through pre-packed deals. But anyway, regardless, what about SCS, the sofa guys? Because they were a pandemic winner, they still seem to be gaining market share, and they've got this cash mountain which is just enormous on their balance sheet. Yeah, it's about the same as the market cap, and some people say it's not really their money, but it continuously rotates so it'll always be there. And if you look at DFS, they've stripped every penny of that cash out and they've maxed out their overdraft as well. So you can extract that cash, but what's interesting is I would have thought private equity would be all over this, but the private equity guys don't seem to be interested in value type players, do they? They're only going for these structural growth, particularly software and healthcare type businesses. So SCS just sits there languishing. But I think risk-reward on it is very good. I did dip my toe in recently with a small purchase on SCS, and I think as funds become available I'll buy more. I think the yield is about 8.5% on SCS now, and they've been doing buybacks as well, which enhances your EPS and DPS. Probably not the best management out there, I think DFS is a much better business but it's got diabolical finances and balance sheet, whereas SCS is having a bad issue but it's on a PE of about 10 in a fairly suppressed consumer spending environment. So the way I look at that is that in more normal trading economic circumstances in a year or two, SCS could be a 50-100% gainer from the current level, and you've got absolutely no solvency worries, and somebody might well come and bid for it as well for the cash pile. So yeah, I think risk-reward on SCS is pretty good actually. You raise a good point on private equity in terms of what they're looking to buy. The reason is they tend to go for secular growers in tech or healthcare with high gross margins, where their expertise is bundling up a bunch of those similar businesses together, stripping out all the overheads on a high gross margin, high human economic type business, and therefore it just drops straight down to the bottom line, and then they re-list it or sell it as a bigger business on a higher multiple. It's that buy and build, and that's the easiest way to raise money particularly in a higher interest rate environment from investors. So if you're looking for private equity to buy companies, it's technology, software, and healthcare. Yeah, it is, isn't it? And that's kind of your sweet spot as well, isn't it? Yeah, well, I'm listening much more closely to what you say about some of the stocks you cover because they could well be bid targets. Some of them could be big targets. But yeah, I have my travails, I get blown up many a time, don't worry, so don't follow my portfolios. Sanderson Designs, which I think does wallpaper and decorative designs for house improvements and this sort of stuff. How did you see this one playing out? I like this one, I bought quite recently on an update. Everybody keeps expecting it to warn on profits because it's sort of middle to high end fashion orientated fabrics and wallpapers, like a Laura Ashley sort of revisited. They've got five or six different brands. There's a similar one, a smaller one called Colfax as well, which is quite obscure, in a similar vein. Sanderson Design Group, it keeps putting out reassuring inline trading updates. What it's basically been saying is that there has been a slowdown in the wallpaper and fabrics division, but the licensing division is putting in a barnstorming performance. Licensing revenues are normally valued on quite a high multiple, although actually as some of the reader comments pointed out, the licensing deals tend to be quite short term, so quite a few of them are for example for a one or two seasons range of clothes with Next or H&M I think did. And of course it's got this design archive, massive historic designer archive, it owns all the Morris & Co. designs, the William Morris designs. And I think at some point somebody might well buy it for that back catalog, which does seem to have watertight intellectual property over these designs. And there's been a deal with Disney recently which I would imagine could be quite lucrative. And the CEO, Lisa Montague, is a force of nature, I think she's brilliant. I interviewed her a while ago, and she's really done a lot of very good commercial stuff at Sanderson, and the balance sheet is absolutely bulletproof. Yeah, yeah, I think you've got to accept that for me, I like to have a basket of things like that, and I know in a situation like we've got now, one maybe two of them will have profit warnings, you can't avoid it. I wish I would agree. Yeah, but actually the interesting thing is on my top 20 watch list for this year where I flagged up my sort of value GARP type picks for the year, that's actually up 6% year to date, so that's outperformed AIM by 18%, which I'm very pleased with. But within that list there'd be at least two profit warnings, so it's quite interesting, isn't it? That within a diversified portfolio of 20 shares, you can absorb a few profit warnings. My portfolio this year is about that 6% up, but I've had about three profit warnings. So you can absorb them, and if you have one takeover bid, that'll mop up at least one profit warning. So what were your three profit warnings? Some poor interests. It's a census which does software for large-scale business buildings for work from home sort of stuff. Anyway, that's been a nightmare share for me. No, no, I know there's that one, and then I've had Inspiration Healthcare at a profit warning last week, small one. I'm hoping to speak to the CEO. And then I unfortunately got absolutely taken to the woodshed last... it was a smaller position. Sandra? Oh, no, oh yeah, sorry, no, no, no, no, absolutely, it was basically only 60% down on the day, so it wasn't a big hit. I had a look at that one last week, I think it's bloody awful, I have to say. Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, just to let you know, I've had a good look at it and I'm going to hold it, and the reason why I'm holding is because the investment thesis is still there as long as they can get through the short-term cash problem which they've got. And they should be fine for this year because if you look through the balance sheet and the cash flow statements, they've got a working capital unwind from last year because they had a large tier one OEM EV manufacturer who hadn't paid them £4 million, which came in in the first half, and receivables were peculiarly high. But they've got a weird and large credit, and that is SAS software they've bought, just the way they do it, and that's over three years. So essentially what they've got is the SAS software is about £200,000-£300,000 of outflow each month, and they've got a similar amount on their salaries. And if you put it all in, they need to hit their engineering division needs to hit about £15 million turnover, they're currently on £13 million, need to hit £15 million, it's much higher margin, to basically be cash flow break even. So the big problem which they've got is, are these three delayed contracts synonymous with the industry stopped, as they basically not going to get any more orders? And if that's the case, then they're going to really struggle in 2024. Or is the US, which is buoyant, going to be able to get them out of the pain points and they can win contracts and deliver the £15 million plus?

For next year.

No, because I'm holding it now. No, no, no, I'm not doubling, I'm not doubling down, that's for sure. I mean, the thing is, is such that what they've got, their customers are things like Tesla and Apple, and lots of electronics manufacturers. And it's a two-speed industry. The US is absolutely flying, but Europe and Israel is really struggling. And because it's the two-speed situation, is the US going to slow down like Europe in the ASIC chip design, digital chip design line, or alternatively, is the US going to carry on and continue going gangbusters and they're going to get through it? And I don't know. There is an argument you could say you want to just get rid of it just for the sake of it, but there is a large seller actually at the moment, which is why it went down so much. And therefore it's sort of pretty low. But this is also, I think, a structural problem with recent IPOs in that, because of the way brokers float things, they usually just place large blocks of stock with 10 or 12 institutions, usually the same names. And so there's no aftermarket liquidity, particularly if everything goes wrong. Everyone's just left high and dry. So yeah, well, they had that. And so when you had one institutional shareholder and they haven't announced who it is, selling five million shares, it goes down by 60%, which is what happened. But I mean, the thing is such that you and I have been through these kinds of things, and it comes down to emotional stability. You know you're going to be wrong, you just don't know which shocks you're going to get wrong. Yes, at the moment, this is what I've got badly wrong. It's cost me a lot, but mentally I can get through it, financially I can get through it. And on that basis, you learn it. And if you look at it on a positive basis, if they do come through, then that will do well next year as a potential upside. If it goes south, it's a very small position now compared to what it was, so it isn't going to do much. But more importantly, it gives you as an investor hunger and it gives you a reality check. If you've been through a good patch, you can just wait until you get smacked in the face, as Mike Tyson says. That's what will happen, it's just a matter of when. And it gives you more hunger and more passion and desire to look for other opportunities and to improve, learn from it. That's it. It's a learning game continuously.

Yeah, you can. Yeah, throw the dice. Yeah, and you can end up just punting on things that in normal circumstances you wouldn't touch. Yeah, I definitely find I do that. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's easy, it's natural, it's human nature, isn't it? And you've got to please yourself. But I think the big picture is, if you go through a lucky patch, and I've been through some lucky patches, at the time when you have three, four, five, you do really well in a couple of years, this sort of stuff, and your portfolio rules. Then equally, because we both carry a lot of idiosyncratic risk, you can have a similar period of one or two or three years when actually you do a lot worse than the actual market, and you've got to get through it. But overall, the direction of travel is still up, sort of mid-teens, which is a great overall return, but you've got to go through that fluctuation to get to the end point. Yeah, and I think also it's very easy to start doubting yourself and saying, 'Am I actually any good at this? Maybe I'm just no good at it.' But I think the way to respond to that, certainly what I've done in this year following on from a poor year last year, is just to work harder. Just to raise the selection criteria. This stock-picking business is really a game of elimination, isn't it? You're looking at hundreds and hundreds of opportunities, and I find I do best when I eliminate nearly all of them and I literally just distill it down to a handful of key stocks where I think I've genuinely found something that's highly advantageous to me. Yeah, and that then lays the groundwork for a big recovery, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, yeah. And it's risk management and also risk of reward, because as you talked about with Plexus, looking at the downside as well as the upside. The upside's enormous, but if it goes wrong, you're going to be able to walk away. It isn't going to change your quality of life or your family's quality of life. It's mentally wise. It's going to dent you, it's going to dent your confidence, but it isn't an all-or-nothing. You never want one stock to break you. No, and I think because I've suffered catastrophic losses on the spread bet accounts in 2008 and again in 2022, I'm kind of hardened to risk and to losses. If my ungeared portfolio drops to 20 or 25%, I just think, 'Let's just get it back, take a couple of years to get it back, get on with it.' Whereas I know a lot of friends, particularly younger investors who maybe have not been doing that long, are utterly distraught. Some of them almost having breakdowns from wondering whether they should tell their wife that they've messed up. It's very worrying. That's why I think it's just best for everyone not to use gearing. It's an accident waiting to happen. Yeah, no, I would move well away from derivatives. As Warren Buffett says, they're weapons of mass destruction, wealth destruction. He tells me about it. The one he's like, you know, if you're an investor and you get the classic IFA question, 'What's your risk tolerance?' and they have all this sort of catalog, but frankly, you can bend that because the only thing that tells you what your real risk tolerance is when you blow through it and it's real painful. That's when you really know you've risked too much. I've been through it, and as you blow through your risk tolerance, you get hardened to it over that period. Let's be clear, I've still got a smile on my face, and Sandra thus you know was 60% decrease on last week. Not that I didn't sleep well — I haven't slept well since — but you've got to get through it, haven't you? As simple as that. Yeah, it's part of the process. Yeah, we all have to accept profit warnings, and that's just the way it goes sometimes, isn't it?

I can't have another Valium tablet. Well actually, I'm feeling quite chilled out today because I had a can of drink containing CBD. Well done, okay. Yeah, I've never had it before, and I thought, 'Should I be having this just before doing an interview with Paul?' I'm never heard of a camera with cannabis in it. It's meant to chill you out, isn't it? So did you get that? No, exactly. Did you get it from Holland or something? No, no, just the local Sainsbury's. Really proud of the meal deal as well. So okay, right, you have to go. I've nipped down to a local supermarket, then.

Yeah, I mean, you just asked me to flag up some interesting stocks that I'd reviewed in the last three months on the Small Cap Value Report. This one came up where it's not one I hold personally, but I do think it's interesting because it's dropped by about a quarter in the last few months, but actually the fundamentals reported have been good. It's an interesting special situation where it's got surplus cash and surplus freehold property. It's developing the surplus land — it's like a business park that it owns. It's finally, after years of waiting, got planning permission. So there's fat, I mean the market knows about that, that's all in the price. But I just thought you've got a nice thing here where you've got downside protection with the cash and the property, which supports about half the market cap, and you seem to have a nice little business that's also actually trading rather well. And when you adjust out the surplus assets, the PE ratio is quite cheap. So it might be one that people might like to have a look at. I don't have a particularly strong view on it, and I've got no idea what it does, I don't understand it. But it's obviously got some IP there. It's been around a while. I think it's quite a nice little company.

Yeah, well, that was really what drew me to both of them, actually. I mean, I've been aware of both Cohort and MS International for years. They've been around for quite a while. But I think they're both particularly attractive at the moment because they've both received very large orders, in some cases for new products. So you've got these multi-year order backlogs that give you tremendous visibility. Cohort I think is on a forward PE of only about 13. Historically it's always been rated a lot higher, so it's had a derating and yet the fundamentals are good and the order book keeps growing. They've had six or seven large contract win announcements this year. So I think this is a bit of a coiled spring for a re-rating. I would expect Cohort, as the next bull market emerges in small caps, which will happen, we just don't know when, you could probably look at this re-rating up to a PE of 17 or 18, and you get a nice dividend in the meantime. Management struck me as very capable. I interviewed the CEO, Andy Thomas. I just do CEO interviews for fun really, for interesting companies. I don't charge for them, I just enjoy doing them. And he gave a very good account of what they're doing at Cohort. So yeah, I think it's a nice quality company on a value share rating. So yeah, have a look at that one. Now MS International was slightly different. They've just announced actually on Friday a big contract win from the US Navy, very unusual for British companies to be able to sell products to the US. And it's for large caliber guns, I think for warships, destroyers or something. And as you know, there are large numbers of destroyers, dozens of them in large naval fleets. And one thing I didn't understand though, it announced a maintenance and support contract win, but it hasn't actually supplied the guns yet. So it seems to have been announced the other way around, which people who know the company better than me are speculating means that the actual big contract to buy the guns must be in the bag, because you wouldn't sign a support deal for it. So that's a bit peculiar. I don't understand that bit. But the other angle on this is that the directors have got, I think, four different divisions. MS International has all sorts of unrelated businesses, quite weird that they're in a group, but they're all good, high-margin niche businesses. And the guys who run MS International have been running it literally forever, decades. They're all getting on a bit now. So I think it's one of those situations where it's probably going to be maximized for sale value when they want to retire, probably in the not too distant future. And I've done very well on situations like that in the past. Avesco was one — yes, I remember that — and we got more than five or six bags out of it. The value was obvious, it was just sitting there on a plate, but nobody was interested. The owner wanted to sell it so he could retire. The founder CEO closed down the loss-making bits or sold them off, and suddenly you had this fabulously profitable business, and he got a real premium bid for it. So I think you could have something similar happen at MS International. Very illiquid, very tightly held. Yeah, nice business.

I've bought shares of this at about 10, 15 years ago and I struggled putting about 20 grand in it. It was like, yeah, you'd have to break that up probably into four purchases. It was amazing. But you see, I've got one of these internet dealing accounts now where I'm only paying 5.95 for each trade, so there's no problem with breaking it up into four or five grand parcels. You just nibble away. You wait for it to go red one day, that means somebody's selling, and it'll quote you a spread of sort of 7.10 at 7.70, but actually you put in a dummy trade, you can probably buy it at 7.20. You know, so I don't know what the market makers are doing with these prices they quote. They're ridiculous because it deters people from even bothering to look. Yeah, you know, I give up if I can't get a reasonable chunk. I just say, 'Okay, it's too small for me, I can't get the liquidity.' I think well, I tend to be more patient. I mean, my position sizes are a lot smaller than yours these days, but I'll happily just nibble away over a few weeks and months, a few beers, a few... accountability continues. Yeah, you can build up positions gradually, but trouble is then if something goes wrong, you can't get out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, what it just annoys the hell out of me is that to build a big position, I'd be there for like four weeks or a month or two months, every single day, and I just haven't got the time or the patience to do it. Forget it, I've just got to move on. If there's no liquidity, it just isn't for me. Or you can just ring the house broker and say, 'Put me down on your list. If an institution wants to sell some, give me a call.' I've done that before. Yeah, no, true. Anyway, yeah, and I think they're both very good. And the other thing about MS International isn't it, it's got that really quite unique anti-drone gun as well.

Yes, I mean, which is good. Well, given the amount of drones flying around Ukraine and Russia at the moment, you see how it's strategically changed the whole sort of land battle defense and naval defense. So if you've got something that does that and can shoot these things out of the sky, then it's going to sell a lot. Yeah, absolutely. And I think MS International has announced, again similar to Cohort, some large contract wins in the last six months. That was actually the catalyst for me buying into it. Actually, yeah. And I think you've chosen both well. I mean, I've got the defense stocks, but yeah, I think both of them are top-drawer. Love to buy them.

Yeah, it's specialist high-performance foams where it claims world leadership in terms of technology and know-how. And I think that's backed up by the fact that it makes pretty good margins. The biggest product is a trainer specialist trainer sole for Nike. Nike, yeah. And I think that's about 40% of its business and pretty good margin. Nike's just renewed an exclusivity agreement with them for another five or six years, so that's good. Those are the Air Jordans you're wearing at the moment. I don't know which products they are, but it's staggering the money people will pay for these. Only $300 for an Air Jordan, so it's cheaper, half the price. Amazing, isn't it? And they're benefiting as well from the turnaround of the aviation sector. That got clobbered during the pandemic, obviously, but now that's building back up again. I think Zote Foam supplies that. So they've got some nice sector tailwinds. Same with the automotive recovery, as the semiconductor chip shortage turns around, it means production's rising. I was very impressed with the way management handled the energy crisis at Zote Foams. They were able to pass on all the additional costs to clients. I mean, they made it look easy. I'm sure it wasn't easy behind the scenes, but the fact that they were able to pass on those costs, whereas you look at a company like McBride or consumer manufacturers, they got absolutely clobbered because the supermarkets wouldn't accept any price rises, or they were delayed. Zote Foams didn't skip a beat. So I think actually, with both the pandemic and then more recently with the energy crisis and higher inflation, we're really getting some fabulous information on all these companies about the strengths and weaknesses of their business models. Companies that have got through these multiple crises intact and with great skill are telling us those are the ones to be investing in for the future. Isn't it?

Yeah, I agree. And it's also got the cherry on top, if you like, is this resource with the Zed, which is a fully recyclable drinks coffee that's in development. They're spending about £2 million a year on developing that. So you could arguably add that onto the profits and say that's a discretionary separate project. If it doesn't work, we'll just drop away and profits will go up. If it does work, it could be a big seller. So I like to have something a bit blue sky thrown in for free. Yeah, absolutely. And interestingly, to go back to your other point, the management on the Q&A I did with them a little while ago said, 'We've never known normal.' They started the business I think in 2017 or 2018 and it's been one massive crisis after another ever since. And they've grown and taken market share and moved into profits. Well, that tells you once things are more normal, that business is probably going to fly. Yeah, absolutely. Really good point. Gives you that resilience and more certainty as an investor that they can get through the toughest times.

Bollex, which is a large company in that Rothschild sort of stable. They've been on a buy-and-build strategy. They do cabling and all this sort of stuff, but it really started moving to healthcare with MRI scanners, into data centers, and I think they've even got a contract now with Tesla. They've had all of those for a while. But the strategy, I mean, Rothschilds has worked wonders of Bollex, I think he really has. He owns 25% of it, although I think his shareholding in Bollex is probably worth less than his super yacht, which apparently is abroad quite a lot of the time. So you would think, well, maybe Bollex is just a plaything for him, but it seems to me he's really committed to it. If you like proof that he can run and build a great business, I think so. I don't know, I've never spoken to him, but he sounds really upbeat on the webinars, and they're doing acquisitive growth. It's a sort of buy-and-build type thing, and they don't seem to put a foot wrong. They've just announced and completed another big acquisition in Turkey. That's at least two fairly chunky acquisitions in Turkey. Bollex has a global footprint now, and each deal they do, you can see exactly why they've done it. It's complementary markets, complementary products, buying synergies. I like acquisitive groups, actually. Conventionally, a lot of us would turn our nose up at acquisitive groups because so many of them went wrong and they had to write off goodwill. But I think actually now I'm changing my mind where they're disciplined buyers of businesses in the same sector that they know inside out. They know exactly what they're buying, they're buying it at the right price. I think it can create a lot of value. In particular, retirement sales, we've seen that from SDI, from Judges Scientific, and I think Bollex now is also picking up on companies where the owners want to retire. I think Ticker Murat was one like that. So yeah, I think Bollex is basically a successful buy-and-build group that's really well managed, and it's on a value share rating of a PE about 12 or 13. And you can see it coming through on the EBIT margins, it's over 10 now. So it's making good margins, that just shows you there's good IP there. No doubt about it. And you're right, if you've got a blueprint for integration having done acquisitions, it's just really keep turning the wheel. The squad come in, they know what price they've paid, they know the synergies they need to do. It's not learning going up the learning curve, you just basically know what you're going to deliver. I think acquisitive groups go wrong either where you've got delusional idiots running the company who think they're great deal makers but aren't, or where they buy something diversifying into a sector they don't know anything about. That's where the really big clangers seem to happen. Or if they buy something that's fashionable, something that says it does AI, and they pay some insane multiple and borrow the money for it. Those are the type of deals that go wrong. Any company which says 'adjacent market' is a red flag.

Very positive again. I should declare I own shares in Bollex and Reynolds, they're long-term core holdings of mine. Reynolds, very good turnaround. The guy running it is excellent. I think it was a slow turnaround that took years and years, but it's worked. He's now really on the front foot buying complementary businesses. They bought one in Spain, they've just done a tiny acquisition in Australia. It's industrial chains, transmission couplings, gearboxes, things like that. So they really know their sector inside out, and they're just bolting on good businesses, often again retirement sales, they pay a low single-digit multiple for them. They know the markets, and it's just rinse and repeat really. The extra benefit of what they're doing at Reynolds is that each acquisition helps dilute the pension problems. So it's a bit like what Norcross are doing, they're just gradually slowly over time the pension becomes less of an issue. They've managed to fully support it for many, many years without doing any equity dilution. And now it's self-funding acquisitions as well. So yeah, I think Reynolds for a nice patient long-term buy and hold will do well. And again, somebody will probably come along and buy it. With a PE of less than six, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's because of the pension deficit swallowing up about £5 million a year, which obviously doesn't go through earnings, but even allowing for that, it's too cheap.

Well, actually, the core business is doing okay. The problems seem to emerge because it tried to move up the value chain and buy a load of complementary businesses of IT-related, and that doesn't really seem to work. The CEO who was behind that strategy had to walk the plank. It was previously a real go-go share, going up and up, everyone thought it was great, but it's absolutely tanked. So it came up on one of my filters as one of the biggest fallers, so I thought, 'Right, I'll add that to my watch list.' When it next updates, I'll have a look at it and put it up on Stockopedia by before the 8 AM opening bell if it shows any signs of life. Anyway, it did the most recent update, maybe two, three, four weeks ago, basically said things are not getting any worse. It reaffirmed guidance that we gave you a couple of months ago, which wasn't that much reduced from the previous forecast. The main issue I was worried about was debt. They gave updated numbers on debt that showed it was reducing, it was under control, the covenants were not going to be breached. So I looked at this and thought, 'You know what, this thing's oversold. We're going to get a bounce out of this.' The shares were £1.25, so as you know, I never give recommendations to the readers, but I did say, 'Look, have a look at this. I think the conditions are now set for a bounce because it's not getting any worse, it's very cheap, and debt isn't a problem.' I said I might buy some myself, which I did. I waited to see what happened in the first hour of trading, and it did actually drop a little bit further, and I couldn't buy any because there was no liquidity. But anyway, I managed to pick up a few, not a lot, of Restore at around between £1.25 and £1.30. I said I think it's worth about £1.72. Pretty good, then. Sounds very precise, but that was just working out a modest lowish PE on the revised guidance and taking off a bit for the debt. I said, 'Look, I think this thing's 30-40% too cheap.' Anyway, it played out perfectly over about a two-week period. It rebounded to £1.70. So we got, I think one or two of the readers bought some as well, a nice 30-40% quick profit. After that, I think that's what the... So you've got several opportunities at the moment. One is loads of takeover bids coming through. The second one I think is being quite nippy, nipping in and out of these bounce-type situations where things are oversold. You're getting up, you're looking, reading quickly through all the updates, and every now and again I'm finding one where I'm thinking, 'Oh, that's overdue a bounce.' And sure enough, we're making some quite good money on some of these things. So maybe we're all just turning into traders.

Yeah, well, when it came back from trading, it dropped from £9.50 to 50p. So I increased my position size by 35 times, talk about averaging down. On a special situation, I thought it'll go to a quid, and it did. So I got all my money back. The key thing was it was fully funded because it had done a placing, so you knew you didn't have to worry about cash for a few months. I only wanted to be in it a few days really, or a few weeks, and that one worked. Tiny builds, I did very well. An institution dropped the price 80% on a profit warning, bottomed out about 5p. You couldn't get them at that level, but I think I bought it at an average of 7.5p, and it rose the next week to 30p in a piece. So I do think these bounces, if you pick them carefully and you really do your homework, there are nice opportunities right now.

I would say as well, Paul, it's not either or. I mean, I've got most of my portfolio for medium to long-term positions, but I like to have maybe 10 or 20% of it doing some of these nipping in and out type jobs. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how we make money, does it? No, no, I'm not proud. As my mentor says to me, 'Paul, just do more of whatever works for you.' So I think let's be flexible and adapt to market conditions.

Oh, he remains anonymous. I'm impressed. He's a great guy. He's supported me with great wisdom and emotional support over about 25 years. So he's a fantastic friend. We're very lucky. He doesn't live in Omaha, does he, with Mr. Buffett?

Well, I mean, people are going to be getting sick of this, aren't they? They're going to think, 'Oh, Paul thinks he's so clever and he's good at everything.' But if you've made good money in one area and you know the ins and outs in that area, why do you run away from it when you can see a similar opportunity? That's all I would say. But anyway, on Gaming Realms, I was late to the party. I didn't spot it until quite recently, so I'm only slightly up on that one. It was flagged up to me that the 2022 results were really strong, and for some reason, probably just too busy on other things, it slipped through the net. I didn't cover it on the Small Cap Value Report. So belatedly, I had a look at them a month or six weeks ago, and I thought, 'Gosh, this is really good.' It's gaming software for Slingo, which is the main one. It's a strange combination of a slot machine and bingo, sort of integrated, and it is really, really popular. For example, on television the other day, there was a gaming company, I think it was Red 24 or something like that, who had a TV ad and they mentioned Slingo within it and had a screenshot of it. And Gaming Realms is behind the software, and I think it hosts the software as well on its own servers, and then online casinos sort of link into it and pay a royalty based on the amount of customers who play it. It seems to be just going from strength to strength. So I would say to people, have a look at them. Have a look at the figures for Gaming Realms, and the forecasts look eminently achievable. It's only on a forward PE of about 14 or 15 times, which is very cheap for a company that's generating this amount of organic growth and selling this product globally. A lot of quite big US gaming groups are licensing it. So I think it looks really good.

Yeah, no, I would agree. Another one in the sort of gaming sector is Rank Group, which has the physical Grosvenor casinos in the UK. I think it's got about 45% of the casino market in the UK, and then it's got the Mecca Bingos, which is more lower value. So it seems to be covering all bases. What's your latest on this one?

Yeah, exactly. What about On the Market? Because this was a sort of Chris Mills' favorite, and it keeps getting largely sold off, I think on the back of some of their long-term shareholders just dripping stock into the market. It's actually got a really rock-solid balance sheet. It's a challenger to Rightmove. It's on about 8 times PE and has cash on the balance sheet. It's one of these baby-and-bathwater situations in a bear market. Everyone just can't even get anyone to look at the numbers. I can tell them, 'Look, it's got £10 million cash in the bank, a quarter of the market cap, it's profitable, it's got a really good CEO who's enhancing the product and service offerings.' On a tech basis, they're trying to build a suite of tech features that are of benefit to estate agents. Nobody's interested. You can say anything and people will not even listen. It's often situations like that where you can get your biggest percentage gains, where everybody's written it off. I think it looks really good, and I wouldn't be surprised if somebody comes along with a bid. On the basis that it's trying to develop a tech-oriented alternative to Rightmove, what if somebody comes along and says, 'Right, let's stick some AI in this,' and a private equity group or something bids, throws £100 million at it, and if it even becomes the number two portal, it's currently number three, if it even becomes number two, it could be worth 10, 20, 30 times the current market cap. I don't see a lot of downside. Either Zoopla could buy the thing, if they were allowed by the competition authorities. Assuming they've already allowed Rightmove to have 60% of the market, they should allow somebody else to have a bigger chunk. But hey, it could be one of these things that absolutely nothing happens, but it's not burning cash, it is profitable, and you've got the upside for free. So yeah, I like it.

Yeah, Wilmington just cropped up on one of my small cap reports, and I thought this looks jolly good. Trading well, reasonable valuation, good outlook, sound balance sheet. So I just wanted to flag it to the listeners. Some of them might want to have a look at it. Yeah, no, I've spoken to a few fund managers and they all say it's a rock-solid business.

Yeah, I mean, I always say to people, I don't want to own a pawnbroker because I wouldn't be comfortable with it. But then I realized, actually, if it dropped in price another 20%, I'd probably buy it. 7.5 times PE, it's so cheap. And you get... I mean, again, I wouldn't particularly feel comfortable getting a dividend from financially distressed customers, but again, if the dividend yield went up to 12 or 13%, I'd buy it. So I think the moral argument is BS, basically. If it's cheap enough, we will all buy anything. I listened to the management webinar recently, downloaded it onto my phone and listened on headphones on a train, and I thought these people sound really switched on. They've got various elements to it, as you say, the pawnbroking and the foreign exchange and various other things. I think it looks terrific. Track record, it's the market leader. I think it was Alba and Ball and Bond, so H&T is the survivor really. It's got a really good balance sheet, not much borrowing at all. So yeah, have a look if you're a value investor. Definitely have a look at it. I don't hold personally, but it does seem to be in a downtrend share price wise, I don't know why. So it's on my watch list. I might pick some up if it starts forming a bit of a base.

Oh, just go to Stockopedia.com. There are free trials, two-week trials. There's a wealth of stuff on the site. My articles are just part of the editorial on there. And then my podcast, if I can just quickly plug those as well, they're on Apple, Google, Spotify, and Audiobook. All you do is search for 'Paul Scott's Small Caps' and it'll come up. I do one every weekend, just a 40-50 minute summary of all the news and trading updates each week. I love doing them, they're great fun.

Well, I know. This is the problem. Do you mention something that's an absolute nano-cap, and even if only a handful of people start buying it, it will move the price. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about that. All I would say is whenever I talk about shares and I say I own it, I never sell shortly afterwards. I think that is crossing the line. Some people slip up, some of the Twitter type people, they'll have lunch with a friend and you love a particular stock, and you say, 'Oh, how about that one?' He says, 'Oh no, I sold that ages ago.' Great, thanks for telling me. So with my stuff, what you see is what you get. If I'm enthusiastic about a stock, it's because I own it and I'm expecting it to go up a lot. That's where I am with Plexus. I am not going to touch that one. As I said, I bought 2% of the company. I'm just going to run with it. We'll see what happens.

Yeah, yeah, no, there is a lot of that. I don't generally even look at that end of the market. It's very unusual for me to go as low as the market cap on Plexus. But I just think there could be an opportunity there. We don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah, I can't get volume, so that's the one area I can't play in anymore. Anyway, thanks again, Paul. It's a pleasure. I'll touch base in about three months' time.