Investor's Chronicle hello again and welcome to Lee and the IC I'm Alex Newman an associate editor at the investors Chronicle and I'm back once again in the Ft studios in the company of Lord John Lee John how are you fine thank you this is our sixth episode but as always I need to start with the disclaimer that everything we talk about on this podcast is for educational purposes though hopefully it makes for an entertaining listen to and none of it should be taken as Financial advice or recommendation to buy or sell shares this month we're doing things a little bit differently as normal John and I will be taking a deep dive into one of his portfolio Holdings but to help with that and open up the conversation into broader matters of shareholder engagement we are going to be speaking to the chief executive of that company and that company is the aim listed concurrent Technologies whose CEO Dr Mars Adcock is I'm very happy to say in the studio with us today so it's two interviews and a discussion all for the same normal price miles thanks so much for joining us today you're welcome I know John like some people listening into this will be very familiar with your company but for those who don't know the business very well might be new to concurrent might be hearing it for the first time can I just ask you to briefly outline what concurrent does who are your customers what problems you're trying to solve for them absolutely so the company was formed in 1985 to do one thing and that was take Intel processors which were pretty novel then uh and integrate them into computers so if you think of a processor back then it may have had just a handful of pins the little legs that come out of a processor and then our job was to connect those little legs to memory and comms and all the other things that make computer and they target custom customer base were people who had particularly exacting needs for environmental robustness or particularly high levels of performance roll forward to 2024 and rather than a handful of pins on an Intel processor there are thousands so the core competence of this business is to take those thousands of pins and in a very small space create a very high-end computer with literally thousands of components targeted at customers who yes want the highest performance but have very exacting requirements around architectures um the the long-term viability of that product so they get exactly the same product on year 10 as they on day one uh and very harsh environmental requirements that is typically but not always defense so defense being the dominant sector you service I think the last update you put out it was around around 3/4 of of sales though there are other are including telecoms and and medical I I think the big change in your offering since you joined the company has has been a move from product based Solutions you talk I think sometimes about cards um or boards the the hardware that you're you're putting together for your clients to what you've called Services based Solutions can you just out outline what this means what what is the nature of the change you've been trying to introduce yes so for 36 years the company did that one thing they made computer boards that plugged into slots and other people's products plugged into slots nearby for example graphics cards or memory or storage uh and when I joined we were actually pretty late to Market with our core product so our our strategy has two very simple themes get back to being really good at being on time early to market with the very latest technology in customers hands we've made great progress there and then the second strand is actually our computer boards plug into things that we call systems so there are other people's boards alongside ours and then they're all in a rather complex box of chassis which is often custom to what the customer requires rather than more of a commercial offthe shelf product and the acquisition we made in September in particular as a systems integrator gives us the ability to say to a customer what's the application you're trying to run what are you trying to achieve in for example your vehicle or your radar or your medical instrument and we can give you the entire solution not just to sell you a computer that was Philips Aerospace the correct the acquisition okay so Ju Just to sort of tie tie things in a little bit to the financials obviously we're going to unpack all of this in Greater depth 2022 was your first full year in the job that was characterized by and you know this this isn't a wasn't a theme unique to concurrent it was quite broad across your industry it was characterized by shortages of components which see hurt the share price but and also your ability to meet demand in the market can you bring us up to speed on you know the status of the supply chain how it's currently affecting working capital and and and you're trading more yes of course so I joined mid 21 yeah uh by Autumn 21 I'd laid out this this strategy for developing a a much more capable core business but also getting into these things called systems that implied quite a lot of investment and then early 2022 it became really apparent the world was going through a global component shortage what many people chose to do at that time perhaps understandably is cut costs to maintain inear profits we stuck to our guns in terms of investing in the company to really upgrade the capability of what the business was capable of for example more than two-thirds of our employees started after I did so we really leaned in to transforming the company so yes components were a massive problem in 2022 dropped Revenue actually about 10% on a typical prior year so not enormously but of course we'd grow the cost Bay so 2022 was not much better than a break even year in terms of profit but we maintained investing as we come into 2023 by mid year the supply chains have eased significantly mid 23 so we already enjoyed our strongest ever half one but that was still frankly hard yards in terms of replanning the factory based on what components happened to be available our inventory Holdings went up substantially uh but through half two we were able to ship to the maximum of our capacity we've doubled our ability to generate product in our culture based Factory we have the ability to increase capacity yet again and as we're in 2024 Supply chains are virtually back to normal certainly not something that I'm currently concerned about just to put a couple of numbers on that you've disclosed on on those figures the first half of 2023 you had results out your interims stated that sales were just over 12 million pounds correct and then your latest trading update has said that your revenue for the full year should exceed 30 million so you know you've generated as much in sales in the second half as you did in the entirety of the previous year or there thereabouts can you just shed a little bit more light I know you unpacked it a little bit there for me but the was it just pent up demand or was it the new acquisition what was how do how do we understand that no it was not the new acquisition our sales Cycles are very long so the new acquisition does very little to our short-term financial performance okay on my first day with this fantastic company our sales lead said to me miles I have nothing to sell um and that was representative of a product portfolio that was a little old in the tooth I talked earlier about how complex this technology is designing a product and taking it to Market is really tough and I think the company had got to the limit of its ability to do that as a very small company with if you like small company tools and practices so we did two things in particular we added a lot of new Talent into the design team and with that we had to do scalable work around processes tools of the trade all these things so completely redesigned how we design our products and we upgraded much of the sales so historically we've largely farmed based on people who happen to know us wanting to use us again we hired some of the best known salespeople from our competitors and you are much more assertive in the marketplace in 2021 80% of our orders were for last time buy or end of life product so that that is a portfolio really running out the road in 2022 and maintained in 23 we flipped that so 80% of the purch orders placed on us were for what we designate new or current product that that's probably the most important thing to understand about the transformation that we have been through um and Order intake you know 2022 order intake was in excess of 30 million from a background of typically being around 20 so we're starting to see the order intake really reflect us leaning into both better newer ontime products and a refreshed sales team I suppose the the product suite and its longevity is obviously one one factor that investors often going to look at when when looking at suppose engineering or defense businesses the other one is the concentration of your customer base can you talk a little bit about there that's sometimes that's sometimes a fear either for for a company of your size or or just the nature of of of Defense work that actually you are dependent on uh yeah a lower number of of contracts than you might otherwise want what is your the kind of breakup of your uh Contracting so two years ago a very common question asked of Me by investors was your single biggest order is with a Malaysian Communications company representing around 10% of our Revenue what if you don't get that what if that tails off to which my response was well our job is to add five or six customers of that scale panum and plan for one or two dropping off that's TR and easily said but it's actually what we've done right so indeed last year we derived no revenue from that comm's customer it did indeed drop off but you can't tell that from our numbers and as you pointed out the market is currently expecting us to be up by about 60% year on year between 22 and 23 we we are a small company in what is a very large market so re-engineering this company so that it can compete like for like against other companies who may be hundreds of millions or perhaps even billions of dollars in size is what it's all about and there are lots of those opportunities out there if you have the right product John I'd like to perhaps belatedly bring you in um if I may you've said before in this podcast that you're you're holding in concurrent predates miles appointment in 2021 what initially Drew you then to this this company well I was looking back last night actually as to when I first came a board concurrent and I think it was about uh 2009 okay uh when the company obviously was uh uh was smaller uh and um was run by a chap called Glenn foret who really built it up and I like the you know the the business it it ticked all the boxes for me you know it looked a good it was a good solid established small cap paying a nice dividend uh it was cashr and it seemed to me to to be in a niche a area that as far as I could tell um gave the company a certain value and uh you know I I tend to be loyal to the companies I invest in so I I stayed with it and I got to know Glenn well and um who can be sure but I think his his plan and endgame uh was to build the business to a certain size and then probably prepare it for a takeover Maybe by a us company I think that was my assessment although of course it was never quite uh confirmed in that sense but of course you know I've not got the the the knowledge uh to to Really assess the quality of the the product or the speed of delivery to Market this is the disadvantage of of uh an amateur investor like myself as it were so you take a certain amount on uh on trust and then of course uh what happened was that Glenn died uh and um 2019 uh sorry it was in 2019 yes uh Glenn died and um the business was on a little bit of a plateau at that stage as far as I was concerned and miles came in uh and um I made it my business to to meet miles fairly early on and he was coming in of course from a you know from a a much larger industry background and it was quite clear to me that that he was you know in the in the nicest way you know ambitious and wanted to really um uh make his mark with concurrent it was going to be you know his baby as it were which he was going to devote the next stages of his life to you know I knew that he had big plans to change things uh and change would be you would be expensive uh and there may well have been an interregnum period uh and indeed there was of course and it was compounded by the the shortage of um of components so the business went through a difficult period and pass the dividend and was some restating of um figure as well but I had faith in in the company and particularly in miles's vision and uh you know I I now feel that the company uh as far as I'm aware and hopefully um what miles is saying will confirm this is really on the runway as it were for much bigger things over the next you know 2 three four five years and and onwards so I'm very much aboard and staying aboard it's a significant holding of mine and um you know one that I'm I'm proud to be associated with a few strands i' I'd really like to come back to you there in a moment but um I just wanted to just take a step back I mean I received an email from from one listener um after we flagged that we were going to be speaking to Miles um for this episode he wanted to know what led you to keep the faith in the business in that transition period after after Glenn's death and prior to Mar's appointment because obviously you know we had a pandemic that was a a major event for for you know every every holding in your portfolio but you obviously weren to know Mars's strategy in advance and there was a period there where where things were you know in in transition was it a nervous time well I think the I think the the jwelry was out yeah at that stage but I wasn't unduly worried because you know it was a solid little business it had quite a lot of cash yeah uh it obviously had a market position and you know I saw no reason to you know to sort of cut and run uh and if anything I probably built up my holding during that period uh but you know as an outside investor you you you always have to take a certain amount on trust and and you never get it right every time and of course the other point is that I tend to build up fairly large Holdings in small cap stocks so therefore you know I can't easily exit uh a company just like that as it were uh so you know for me staying aboard was was you know no particular concern and obviously then I was very encouraged that I had done when I met males and and um you know he he he broadly spelled out his his his philosophy and approach on that trust Point as well and you you did refer to this before we're not sort of reading up on your your products miles ahead of this you know they'll look very very impressive but I suppose like John it's very very hard for me a complete non-specialist in electronics and Computing to understand you know a what they do really B who they're for see the intensity of the competition within this particular niche actually maybe John I can just put the question to you and then I'll I'll sort of also turn it to you as well Mars I mean how do you navigate these these unknowns then John is what what are you looking for in the statements that a concurrent is is is putting when you're aboard a particular company and invested for the long-term as I am you you you uh you understand the language of that company and you know what the chief executive or the chairman is saying and therefore the the the use of particular words okay is important and it conveys a c certain a certain message so obviously one is looking for a degree of uh a degree of optimism very broad brush it did seem to me that that the company was in some you know some exciting growth areas uh they had a very good relationship from memory I think with Lockheed Martin I think um the company was a a a silver supplier or whatever the you know the phrase was acknowledging a certain sort of quality uh and then of course you know increasingly one became aware that uh um defense was very much uh has become a very much a you know a growth a growth sector post uh World developments I I just think that uh as far as I'm aware anyway the the company's well positioned uh and assuming miles gets most things right and no one's going to get everything right as it were I think there is a you know very attractive growth period ahead and uh you know it's it's um stronghold of mine and um you know one that I think hopefully over the next few years will be one of my best performers yeah Mars if I can if I can turn back to you I mean the I suppose the nature of your business it's not only the technical aspects of the the the products you have but also there's obviously there's clear sensitivities around you know your Contracting the sectors you're providing to when you know whether it's institutional or retail investor how do you how do you put forward your the the investment case given all of the you know it's not it's not just like I suppose the the the investment case isn't as clear as as Greg's you know some businesses we see the demand with our own eyes we experience it we know it we've got a very good sense of of of of what the proposition is what do you have to do to to to Really spell out the investment case clearly so it's understood in the market so if you think about our customers they're often large defense primes that you would have heard of Ron ba systems Lockheed Martin yeah people like this and uh as you might imagine in defense there is an Ever growing need for intense Computing capability if you take a vehicle for example the amount of computing power in a vehicle now to understand what's going on around it how to protect itself to communicate to navigate uh is is just intense and a trend in defense is to put as much Computing as possible at what they call the edge so rather than sending lots of data back to some base don't want to do that anymore because of cyber security and latency and things like this so you want as much Computing capability as possible right at the edge uh it's also true to say that in defense by its nature customers want the very latest capability they can get their hands on whereas other markets might find that they can get the computing power they need at a very low cost defense is not like that they they really want the latest capability the market we're operating in uh for our kind of product is billions of dollars in size and there are standards bodies like Vita viita who regularly publish the size of the market who the key players are and you'll see that the the three or four biggest players in this market are large typically American corporates of significant size and we're competing directly against them wherever we can a really important thing happened in this market about four or five years ago so before my time us is by far our biggest single country customer and it's true to say the rest of the world follows what the United States uh the direction they take over time and a statement from the Department of Defense Initiative from the Department of Defense was we no longer want to be locked into proprietary architectures so think Apple if you're if you use an Apple product as soon as you have an Apple product you're in their ecosystem and you're likely to stay in their ecosystem perhaps for the rest of your life and it's been just like that in defense Electronics in the United States around the world for a very long time and what that meant was the customers got locked into one typically large provider and they were stuck because they were using that provider's interfaces protocol standards all all of that stuff so four years ago the Department of Defense said no we're going to have an initiative which is around Open Standards open architecture where we're no longer dependent on any one company because we can swap and choose as we see fit that's a huge advantage to a company like us it's perhaps a threat to a very large incumbent for a company like us it opens up the opportunities that would previously been locked to us and we can put our products in because we made the decision four years ago to really lean into that initiative and present products to Market that complied with that open architecture definition so quite a lot of the winds that we're securing now are driven by that particular initiative in the United States a key thing to understand about this business is a lot of our business comes through what we call Design wins back to John's language point we would if we win we get designed into our customers program during their own design phase for their vehicle their radar whatever they're designing it's confirmed that we're designed in we don't necessarily get a contract at that time but then 2 3 four years later when they hit their main production program that's when we start to get the annual purchase orders at volume and something we said towards the end of last year November I think was that we had secured something like eight times the number of major design wins last year where major is something that has the opportunity to deliver better than a million pounds of Revenue per anom to us in future years we we had secured eight by November last year by the end of the year it was rather more than that and I'll definitely communicate that with the full year results so broadly that's a tenfold increase in these major design winds which we will see the benefit of in maybe 26 2027 so we see it coming from a long way in that's probably the best leading indicator of this business is when we describe the progress we're making on securing these major design winds into defense and and a very good thing about the defense Market is typically the our customers opportunities are programs of record which means the government has public their intention with procuring new product or upgrading existing product I suppose the other piece of the narrative around the defense sector you know that everyone will be familiar with now uh is we're we're now two years on from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and obviously the public and political narrative around defense spending levels have particularly across Europe has changed and the the anticipation is that it's only head in One Direction I suppose the the the more subtle point for investors here is that it's not going to be indiscriminate is it you know it's not doesn't mean that there is that defense spending has doubled or that everyone involved in the defense sector is now going to be uh you know have a sort of booming uh orders base I mean you supply this sector have have geopolitical events change the logic for defense procurement in in the product nichu are in have you seen buying appetite or activity levels increase or is the the nature of the product Cycles mean that you know two years has actually quite a quite a short window for um to to move the needle it is a short window and defense budgets certainly in the west don't change dramatically year on year you you can get long-term trends but typically they don't change very quickly and that's certainly more or less true at the moment uh nonetheless it would be true to say that we know that some of our products have gone into requirements driven by current conditions not the majority of but we you we do see pull on our products to support activities that are happening directly associated with current world events but those world events in themselves don't turn into a short to medium-term GameChanger for a company like us the the market we sell into defense Electronics defense Computing is huge anyway if you were to go to one of the us-based big trade shows as I do you'll find 20 30,000 delegates uh routinely interested in our kind of technology and I suppose we should also highlight that you know we're talking a lot about defense it's not the only secty you you supply of course John I know we've we've talked in in previous episodes a little bit about the fracturing World in which you're you know you're making your Investments and and um you know how it serves a backdrop for for what you're doing in in some ways has defense always played it's been a sort of thematic focus of yours as an investor or or or is it really a company by company it's very much Company by company I've never really focused on particular sectors yeah uh and probably that's been certainly in the in more recent years to my detriment um in other words you know had I just sort of sat back at the at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine uh and the Western response uh um it was fairly obvious uh broad brush that that um you know there would be a significant boost uh in defense orders uh and so it's not surprising for example that you know ba systems uh you know have really had from an investing point of view and quite considerable growth and I think the shares have more than doubled over the last couple of years so you know it it it it wasn't rocket science and yet um you know I I I didn't I suppose by the same token kinetic another big defense company you know they've not seen you know in share price terms they've not seen no that is that is quite true and and um point of fact I fairly recently came aboard uh kinetic because it seemed to me that their valuation price earnings ratio was somewhat out of line with the with you know with the broad sector uh and uh you know they have you know performed quite nicely in the in the short term since but obviously I've got defense exposure particularly too um concurrent uh and also um slightly more indirectly but still significantly very significantly with Goodwins which we talked about before where you know they do a lot of work on submarines and Naval vessels uh so um uh you know one is very conscious of of of the macro movements in sectors But to answer the your question really I tend to the way I've developed my portfolio over the years has been much more focused on on individual companies rather than from a sort of a sectoral down approach another point you you you mentioned in your previous answer John around you know everything that that Miles has done since he joined I just wanted to touch on that it was a big decision in your I suppose in your first full year in charge or first accounting cycle in charge was to restate the accounts and treatment of capitalized assets from previous years I mean you announced this was happening mid June last year with the deadline for fing your 2022 figures fast approaching that was obviously sort of taken with some trepidation by the market you then publish those results within a few weeks you know you post a very strong strong strong trading update for the first half of 2023 things kind of rebounded how what's the feedback been like this I suppose a bit of a kitchen syncing exercise but it was you know you are you've made it with I suppose confidence looking into the future um and and and maybe can just unpack a little bit the the the rationale for for making those restatements yeah it was a it was a challenging audit M compounded by the fact which is a positive thing compounded by the fact we had a new chief executive uh who joined us as the previously the finance director for kinetics International okay business so it's clearly Chief Financial Officer yes yeah yeah uh it's clearly advantageous to her and I yeah that we had a good clear out uh it's also true to say though however the Auditors realized that prior accounts had been misstated so it wasn't a choice um them finding that meant that we absolutely had to restate previous year's accounts that did make the audit even more challenging so you're right it was the very last day really that we could possibly announce that we did uh we don't intend to repeat that exercise again this year uh indeed we have a different audit partner this year and I have to say extremely pleased with the progress that we're making john if I may can ask you sort of your your thoughts on on that whole process obviously slightly tricky tricky summer I mean were you yes yes obviously when when uh sort of you know red lights flash uh when that sort of thing H happens you restating of figures or you know there's obvious obvious concern um but um uh you know I I was aboard I'd taken the decision very much to stay aboard and and and um uh and back uh Mal's plans and Ambitions uh and uh so uh I I was happy to you know to continue to watch and and um uh hope that uh we moved through to calmer Waters which thankfully we we have done uh and um you know the the the the future looks to me to be uh to be pretty Rosy certainly in terms of uh all that Tamal has been uh indicating today i' just like to sort of conclude the you know sort of chat with a a final section on on on maybe sort experience and style um miles first we I was looking through CV and we're talking be before um uh we we came on you you you've had management roles at Bae kinetic two companies we talked about and and laterally teline Technologies um large conglomerate until 2021 when you joined concurrent but prior to all of this you a scientist so you know your your skill set is management what you like doing is it the getting into the fine grain detail of the products themselves what's what's what do you like doing in your in your job and where are your skills best applied I love transformation so my career has been characterized by being in teams or leading teams that transform uh their own destiny I find that process really enjoyable yeah I happen to have a PhD in physics so I have the ability to be pretty analytical I strive to put equal focus on culture as strategy as operational excellence and quite a lot of the way in which I go about designing a business it really drives equal priority to those three things uh in my experience a lot of managers or leaders have a particular gift at one or two of those getting all three of those things right is absolutely critical does does concurrent size provide certain advantages to doing that and maybe at the same time I can ask a a kind of contrary question there having you know you've experienced life in larger firms are there aspects of of larger businesses that you would like concurrent to emulate or build you know be economies of scale or network effects or those those just come with time or what's the that's a really interesting question uh we are certainly able to make decisions very quickly I think it's really important to get the best out of the business that you're in a trap is often getting into the worst of Both Worlds rather than the Best of Both Worlds so we're agile we can make decisions very quickly we can't uh make the kind of one-off investment easily that very large companies make uh so we should fight our battles where we're best able to quite a lot of the bids that we're submitting at the moment for much more complex I talked about systems not just computer boards our value proposition there is to say we might not actually tick the Box on every s Le requirement but the ones that are most important to you we'll aim to absolutely be compliant to a great job but we'll offer you a lower price alternative where together we figure out how we'll deal with things that this company can't yet do because we don't have the size and breadth of some of these other very big players so you got to fight to win you got to fight to your own strengths for sure I'm finding that our ability to make decisions very quickly is extremely rewarding uh it's good fun yeah John we we've spoken about a real range of companies on this podcast that you've been invested in or youve you've looked at over the years and some very large in scale others like concurrent which I suppose by comparison pretty much minnows I mean what's what's the principal appeal to you when you're looking at smaller companies other than you know a a greater opportunity you're supposed to build a relationship with with with a company as I know you like to do is it sort of growth potential or can you sort of unpack well the the relationship is important because obviously you know one can build that relationship the bridge with a chief executive or or or a chairman uh in a in a small cap stock um because uh you know they do get far less coverage and media media attention and therefore they're much more willing to talk to um people like uh people like me but I think from an investing point of view uh it really is is you know the the the opportunity and the potential to grow a a uh you a small a smaller cap company and I think what has has indicated today around the table in our in our joint interview um is that and you've alluded to this um Alex that that concurrent at the moment is a a very small company in a huge sector so the potential uh for it to grow very substantially if if it gets everything right as it were or the majority of things right is really is really is really huge whereas you know if you look at some of the the the big defense contractors the the ba systems for the sake of argument yeah um you know that company's probably going to grow steadily uh certainly over the next few years but I don't think there's going to be the explosive growth that potentially there is uh in a company like concurrent uh if it does get most things right uh and so that's why investing in the small cap stocks can be uh you know very profitable uh and very exciting and um you know that's one of the reasons why you know I'm very much a board concurrent another mainstate view investing Star John we we've talked about a lot is is dividends I suppose in concurrence case you you've you you've had to look beyond the the immediate income case for a little while now Mars I know you said at the interims that you'd consider introducing a dividend the full year is that still up for consideration and and and how are you I suppose when you think about Capital allocation decisions at the moment how are you balancing this alongside you know the many product opportunities you've you've you've talked about I mean it's everything as a tradeoff uh absolutely so we've been very clear last couple of years that we PID dividend out of inar profit and cash MH 2022 there was no inar profit or generated cash the expectation of 23 does indeed generate both profit and cash so um you know that should be reason for some optimism uh inevitably we get very mixed feedback from investors current and potential investors all the way from your growth stock why would you pay a dividend to the dividend is fundamentally important don't change anything what we have said is it's not in our interest to shock anybody uh over time as we grow we may or may not develop a little bit of a trend uh I'm not trying to lead anything there but sure but what I am saying is we won't do anything suddenly that shocks anybody so you know expect us to honor the current understanding which is that we pay dividends from in your profit and cash yeah okay um judging by last year's fundraising for Philips Eros space we touched on briefly I mean you obviously there is a good deal of trust there on the on the face of it with you know with your relationship with shareholders that you're able to tap them for cash you know imagine fairly short notice I don't know how these things always play out but um you had a retail offer part of that component that would have been fairly short notice it did seem that this also avoided the need for for debt financing are you you cap is the business Capital constrained at all at the moment do you feel you have confidence to go to either debt or Equity Capital markets if required to to do anything which might require a larger amount of cash than you current current have available to we were pleasingly oversubscribed for the equity raise we raised rather more than we needed for the acquisition uh the reason being the acquisition in itself isn't our only route to developing this systems business and indeed Philips Aerospace will need investment potentially a new facility so we raised more than we necessarily needed uh so we have we have that available to us we don't have a debt facility currently and the time around I joined in 2022 was absolutely wrong time to try and get a debt facility we are exploring that now and what we do have is pleasing amounts of interests from nonh holders whether institutional or retail so I think our ability you know assuming we continue to deliver as signaled our ability to raise money through the markets I'm pretty optimistic about okay great stuff and I mean I'm I'm guessing it's not going to be down to the wire this year I mean do you got an idea when uh full year results are going to be out in the market kind of on a month by Monon basis or you still working working timings out I don't think there's anything disclosed yet nothing disclosed yet we will disclose as soon as we can but as far as I'm concerned the process is going quite well John of really enjoyed this experiment of a kind of like a dual dual interview I mean is there anything you know I suppose Mars is technically your uh employee in some ways isn't it you could there any things you'd like to ask uh ask him as as you have him here I suppose on either on the Outlook or anything we've not exp I don't think I don't think there are any particular questions that um are an answered you know I've always found mil you know very open and very very Frank uh about what he inherited and uh uh and what his plans are uh and um uh you know all that I've heard uh being alongside him today just you know adds to the uh the overall uh encouragement and I think that um but I'm just glad I'm aboard put it that way uh and it's not for me to encourage others to they will you know form their own form their own view but I I would think that the company has got a very exciting future and uh in 5 years time is going to be I think and hope um you know much more substantial and and and better known uh and better known business I mean who can project beyond that as it were but um you know wouldn't say that the sky is the limit it's not a phrase that one uses in in in the investment uh investment world but um the opportunities uh in this in this sector and and um uh miles experience and quiet ambition uh uh to me um you know indicate that um shareholders will be uh will be fairly richly rewarded I hope whether whether when you get to my age and Stage as it were whether I will see the benefit or my my heirs and beneficiaries I'm not quite sure but um uh I'd be quite happy if they did well um but I'd like to do do fairly well myself in in the shorter term you know there's obviously going to be a little time until we have the uh you know the full story in the 2023 um figures so you got a little time to wait until a concurrent releases there John what you what what are your uh the next few weeks uh looking like for you I suppose both in your portfolio and Beyond before we uh next speak well um just putting concurrent to to you to one side and obviously I'm pleased that you know the shares have been gently rising in anticipation of uh uh a good story associated with the results um I suppose there are two main two main aspects firstly of course uh on the dividend flow it's been obviously a fairly lean period uh the start of the year because there aren't many companies whose year end is say October November but of course the the we're coming into the period where the December year ends start to report so next month for example early in March some of my big dividend generating Holdings like m&g uh and I suspect a evver and um legal in general um will be reporting and so you know the dividend flow in April May June from those December year ends you know will be uh particularly important um so that in in a sense is is um you know something personal to me but the more important uh the more more important um event coming up I suppose in the short term as far as we can tell and there always unexpected events will be the budget on March the 6th obviously the chanc has been under some considerable pressure to do something to stimulate um investment in the UK economy uh and to put a bit more life into the UK stock market so there' been suggestions as to um as to you know maybe a a new type of Isa which is focused on British stocks rather than uh allowing you know the broader uh broader range uh in something like the the the ISA um but uh chancer May well have um you know one or two one or two other things one or two rabbits to pull out of the the Hat we shall we shall see so I think the the budget could be quite interesting from from every point of view not at least the political one yeah um so the combination budget and also big dividend flow coming in you know the results for example uh from m&g to me will be important because it's my biggest holding at the at the present time um so uh uh you know we will we will see but um looking a few years ahead I'm hoping that uh concurrent will take over the number one the number one slot from mg yeah loads to explore in our next episode um you know which of course can include any questions you'd like to put to to to John which you can do by emailing me at alex. Newman f.com until then all that's left for me to say is to thank you for listening thank you so much Mars for coming into the studio today it's been great talking to you and learning about the business thank you Jon for your thoughts and to thank our producer M athor for all her work behind the soundboard until next time
2024-02-29