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And we're not a large asset class on its own. I mean, it's billions and billions of dollars and growing but institutional investors are not going to build a team internally and say, okay, we need to become proficient in this particular asset class, to assign several hundred million dollars to the strategy or more. So at the end of the day, shareholders should say, okay, our business is very straightforward. We're a specialist. We know the ins and outs of the financial aspects of this asset class as well as the actuarial science behind the asset class. So we marry the two together and we're sort of a one stop shop. So if a person is looking for advice in this area, they come to us, and we have strategies. We don't necessarily have products per se so we're sort of agnostic as to do you want our AGI, or do you want the Black Oak or do you want separate manage account would you like us to be the engine underneath your body? I mean, that sort of thing using my mechanic analogies. But you know, so this is what our company does, we bring the expertise of the financial side, the actuarial side and then we also bring the creativity in helping provide solutions and solve problems or achieve targets for our clients.
AS
Andrew Scott
15:26
Very interesting. Look open, I spotted in the conversation, you said you're essentially a start up but now moving on to that next phase. What do you make of the current market cap sitting around 3, 4 million pounds? Is that a fair reflection of the stage of development that you're at now? I mean, what are your thoughts there?
GS
Gobind Sahney
15:46
Well, obviously, I gotta say, I think we're a bargain at this price. I mean, it's almost like an option on the business. You know, but look I think that as we grow and we're able to reflect revenue with our strategies. I'll let investors or shareholders do the math for themselves, they can apply the PE for diversified financial services or whatever the categories that we fall in. And we hope to define this better going forward for our shareholders so they can see exactly how we stack up and that's just through performance, which we're focused on. We're focused on execution. You know, we're focused on getting these strategies out into the open and getting our AUM in place. It's very simple as that we get a management fee. We have a lean operating structure, and a lot of that falls to the bottom line. So when we start exhibiting that you can apply the multiples to that. And so I would say, at our current market cap, you know, we're not satisfied there. We're not happy to be at this level, but we also realise that you know, we have nowhere to go but up.
AS
Andrew Scott
17:04
Gobind. Looking forward to many further conversations. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you
AS
Andrew Scott
10:32
So Gobind, a number of strategies here, as you say, a number of irons in the fire. What can you tell me about what we can expect next from you? As far as news?
GS
Gobind Sahney
10:42
Yeah, I mean, we're always thinking and we're always responding to questions and then we also look internally and say, Okay, what can help us as well? So I think I can share with you what I shared in my recent interview with your colleague, guitar choudry, we're looking into a form of longevity insurance, which has not been in the marketplace for quite a long time. Essentially longevity insurance is a way of providing the life settlement investor a form of hedging if the maturity does not occur as expected and what this does is gives the investor a floor and promotes greater investment into the asset class. So, we feel we have developed a sensible way of pricing and managing this risk and this is all with our internal skill sets. So, the business opportunity for Alpha is essentially the establishment of an insurance company and provide this coverage to life settlement investors. Now, we would obviously reinsure so we offset the risk and minimise the risk for ourselves so having the expertise to underwrite life settlement values helps us manage this risk and we also see this as a way of underpinning some of our strategy. So if we are able to offer this along with some of our existing strategies, it makes it even more appealing for our clients. So if all goes according to expectations we hope to say more about this and in the near future, so I'll leave it at that for the time being.
AS
Andrew Scott
12:27
It is quite a specialised area in which you operate. Do you feel that there's sufficient understanding in the marketplace as to what Alpha Growth actually does?
GS
Gobind Sahney
12:40
Well, I think there's two sides to that, clients understand because they're obviously focused in on the prospects of the of the asset class. So those conversations are easier. The difficult ones are explaining this to perhaps someone that comes across us, someone meaning a shareholder, that says, Okay, look, you know, I like this as sort of a counter cyclical counter conventional thought idea. But what does this company really do? And so, I think that it's essentially, look at it this way, there are a lot of auto mechanics out there, a car has an engine, tires, transmission, etc. but look at the number of car models out there. So if you own a Porsche, you're not necessarily going to take that to a Ford dealer, or vice versa. So, you know, we like to think of ourselves as the as the experts in a particular asset class within the spectrum of all the other asset classes out there.
We're being recognised for what we're doing. And what we want to do is get into a very sort of consistent growth phase where we can at periodic times announced where our AUM is and that will be reflected in our income statement. And the blessing is that we're in the right asset class at the right time. And timing is everything. And I think that, as I mentioned before, this, the situation with COVID, has been a great opportunity, not to take away from some of the distress it causes, but it's been a great opportunity for us, and our clients are recognising.
AS
Andrew Scott
7:33
You had launched or you've announced a new strategy, the Alpha Growth and Income Fund, Gobind just tell us a little bit more about this.
GS
Gobind Sahney
7:42
Right. so the AGI or Alpha Growth and Income fund as we're referring to it, so the AGI invests in two types of longevity assets, a life settlement and a structured settlement. You can see our release for further definition of a structured settlement. But essentially a structured settlement provides cash flow and a life settlement provides the growth. So this came out of discussions with several family offices that said, Hey, listen, we like the growth aspect, but we still like a little cash flow and yields are not that great. So what can we do that's uncorrelated and can provide both. Well, fortunately, we have a great group of people and part of the company and Danny Jason, and myself, we sort of sat down and said how can we do this with skill sets we already have so we're not going out and having to bolt on more expense and overhead. So what we said is, okay, look, 50 million is a scaleable number but it's also a meaningful number to start with so it's essentially we designed a product that combines these two assets and it's either designed for a single large investor or it's a commingled fund, minimum of 15 million with a 10 year duration and so let's say for example the 10 year duration, over the 10 years, they'll get a dividend of somewhere between three and 5% annually, and then an ultimate return of near 7% or a little higher depending on the mix of the two assets. So as yields are low, they're projected to continue to be lower. To stay low. You know, we feel this is a very attractive product. So it provides us with an annual management fee plus a performance bonus and all the pieces were here in our company and we decided that if the investors wanted this, we're gonna react to it. So we built the models, we have working models that we are showing our potential clients and we can source these assets, we can manage them and, we're looking forward to putting more information out on this as it comes along. So conversations are going on with family offices, pension funds, and other institutions that are looking for the combination of yield, cash flow and growth.
approached constantly with opportunities. As I mentioned we have limited resources, we have to be very selective on who we work with. And that was recently discovered online. These mandates take time to occur, they have a process that is dictated by our clients. And when we can finally make an announcement, it's usually you know, after it's been in place for a little bit of time. So on this area I can say that we have great situations, especially now, coming out of the general environment and we hope to provide some more meaningful news on this strategy going into the fall. And then a topic that our shareholders have always been talking about has been this warehouse loan and short term credit facility. And that was going well. We are working with a very large Counterparty, they move at their own pace, they were impacted very harshly by COVID-19’s impact on their business Beginning of this month we finally got to a point with them that they said, Okay, look, I think we’ve got our ducks in order here on our side of the table so let's talk about moving forward. So not much I can add to that other than that's not a forgotten strategy that's still very much on the table and we look forward to progressing that and sharing more information as it comes along.
AS
Andrew Scott
5:04
Right. So timing is one of the harder parts to gauge here in the business.
GS
Gobind Sahney
5:12
Yeah. Our shareholders are always asking, when are you going to make an announcement on this, when are you going to make an announcement on that, and, you know, the only thing I can say is that we can control what we can control. We work with very sophisticated individuals who have batteries of advisors, lawyers, consultants, and we interact with all of them. So as one can appreciate when you have many cooks in the kitchen, it takes a while for that recipe to come together. So we're very fortunate. So our strategies are highly appealing. And that, as I mentioned, spawns a lot of discussions. So and this is not by accident I mean, the purpose we started the Alpha Growth was to deliver a, what I call mono line advisory business focused on longevity assets. There are others that sort of do this along with some other businesses, but this is our business. This is longevity assets, our business. So it's not by accident that we have all these strategies, multiple irons in the fire and these utilise the same skill sets. So when one of the strategies experiences a slowing phase, we have others to keep us busy. And not to mention, we're always getting increased filtering opportunities, as I mentioned before, joint ventures, collaborations, we also put thought into additional structures and strategies and we want to make sure that all of this leads to our goal of building AUM and generating sticky revenue. So we are a start up, we're now growing out of that phase.
I started with the Otter transcription but have edited out most of the "you knows" and other bits where GS stumbled over his words and made a lot of corrections where Otter obviously didn't know what GS said. I hope you find this easier to read.
AS
Andrew Scott
0.05
With me today from Alpha Growth is Gobind Sahney. Gobind good to meet you. How are you?
GS
Gobind Sahney
0:12
Good, Andrew, good to meet you too. I wish I was in London with you there. It's my favourite time of year in London.
AS
Andrew Scott
0:18
I've seen it. You've had a corporate update out this week go and just tell us a little bit more about the current strategies that you're working on.
GS
Gobind Sahney
0:25
Yeah, happy to, it's very hard to convey enthusiasm through an RNS, you're always trying to keep it brief so people can have time to read it and there's a lot that goes into the strategy. So we appreciate the time to convey our thoughts to you and working with institutional clients requires a certain level of discretion so that keeps us from sharing names of specific activities until it's after the fact. Even in ongoing situations when we're trying to update our shareholders there are a lot of details that we can’t always share and we get “hey, can you say more?” So, I'm hoping that your viewers and our shareholders are able to see the enthusiasm that comes across here. And there's never been a better time that our asset class has had to show itself and show the benefits than right now, I mean, the low yield and volatility in our economic, our capital markets are great for an uncorrelated assets, such as a longevity asset. So listen, with that said our whole goal, just to remind our listeners and viewers, is to build assets under management with sticky revenue. So to that end, we create strategies and or structures and then execute these on behalf of our clients. Now, the ones that we've announced the Black Oak Alpha Growth Fund we've created that very intentionally with features that align itself with investors and this has been recognised in a very big way now. And our marketing is currently targeting registered investment advisors in the US. These registered investment advisors manage billions and billions of dollars on behalf of their clients. And so right now we have some very large firms that have at least a billion and a half that they manage on behalf of their clients doing deep dive due diligence. On top of this, we're also leveraging our actions on this to show traction and make up for timing we lost with the onset of COVID. We were actually doing quite well until February and then I think people got a little distracted as you can imagine, so the positive side is that we will show management fee revenue this fiscal year. So we're moving ahead and that's something that is a very positive takeaway from the activities with Black Oak. On the separate managed account front we're progressing with select groups and we're approached constantly with o
For those of you that can't listen but can read, here is the text of the interview. I make no promises with regard to the accuracy of the translation of GS's transatlantic accent :) https://otter.ai/s/cN_uIN_1QuOy6ECD9QJqTg
Excellent interview. ''At our current market capitalisation we're not satisfied, we're not happy to be at this level but we also realise that we have nowhere to go but up''.
https://www.pellocapital.com/spotlight/spotlight_landing_page.html
Covid-19 is a real thing and California has been hit very hard so it’s hardly surprising that everything is taking much longer to finalise.
On the plus side the research done proved correct and the Lido/Oakhurst tie up is confirmed. This started in March so we’re 4 months into that already, let’s hope the Covid situation improves so the deal can be done soon.
Warehouse Loan is coming out of ‘on hold due to Covid-19’.
New strategy, I think this is tied in with DRB (Jason Sutherland) who recently completely revamped their web site to concentrate on ‘Life contingent structured settlements’. https://www.drbcapital.com/
Sufficient working capital for it’s current strategies = No raise planned.
The move to Proactive is positive. Proactive have a serious following and their articles are often published in the financial columns. They are in a different league to VOX.
@Rambo23: I only commented on 'new' info. The Insurance product has long been one of GS's 'arrows' though it hasn't been progressed much to date. However neither it not the RCF are dead just on hold until he can safely get back to the UK. Likewise the interviews with the several prospective UK/Europe based candidates for a Directorship, probably to handle IR/PR, will have to wait until it's safe to have lengthy face to face meetings.
Points of interest from the Proactive interview:
Para 2: Longevity assets are relatively modest compared to other asset classes in the investment spectrum and don’t merit creating an internal team. Hence, outsourcing the asset investment and management to Alpha Growth makes a lot of sense.
Para 3: First time stating that LS is uncorrelated specifically to the Real Estate.
Para 9: JV’s and M&A specifically mentioned as an accelerant to building AUM.
Para 10: Alpha Growth & Income Fund.
IMO this is yet another pointer to some sort of deal with Oakhurst or similar.
This was a buy. I should know it was me :)
It’s always worth revisiting the reasons that ALGW is a good investment:
(Thanks are due to 2Mex for the original post which I have edited)
1. Alpha has probably the top life settlements market maker, Danny Swick, with $8Billion of trading experience.
2. Alpha with SLIM has in-house actuarial expertise specific to life policies - a quality not found in usual settlement businesses.
3. KPMG has validated a 16.2% annualised return on this uncorrelated asset
4. Alpha has structured a tax-efficient system which will bring in global investors.
6. The market is absolutely massive at $19Trillion with $57Billion policies lapsing each year.
7. Only $2.8Billion of policies are settled each year. The $57Billion lapsing is there to be taken.
8. The market will climb over the next 10years as baby boomers retire.
Further reference: "The number of seniors (Age 65+) is projected to continue rising from 42 million in 2012 to an estimated 70 million in 2030."
"So, both the supply of qualified policies, as well as demand for life settlements, is growing."
https://windsorlifesettlements.com/life-settlement-market/
9. Note the wave retiring is more tech-savvy, internet dependent: ideal for targeted marketing.
10. Perhaps THE key point: Life settlement is a great option, far better than surrender or lapsing.
11. Legislation is already present in 6 states to ensure life policy holders are made aware of the settlement option.
12. This is a scalable, low overhead business which has potential ahead to 10bag, 20bag etc.
13. "The life settlements market could experience a double-digit compound gross market annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next decade, according to a forecast from investment management consultancy Conning. https://www.artemis.bm/news/life-settlements-forecast-for-double-digit-cagr-over-next-decade-conning/
14. Highly respected institutional investors have individually invested in life settlements worth billions of dollars. These include: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Deutsche Bank, AIG, Credit Suisse, Fortress, Apollo Global Management.
15. “We believe that life settlements are going to be very common consumer transactions in the future,” says Acheson, noting that “reverse mortgages were not well-understood or widely accepted 15 years ago.”
https://www.cfo.com/profiles/2016/04/life-settlements-cfo-eyes-vast-potential-market/
Added to all the above we now have the very exciting possibility, as explained by HullFC4ever, of a tie up with a well respected Asset Manager in California who already looks after UHNW families in the US who need to protect their wealth during the coming economic turbulence which, if the 2007/8 crash is any indication, will last for many years.
Even if only a very modest slice of the AUM of these UHNW families is channelled into ALGW we could see the MCap reach £20 million very quickly.
@GrahamHoliday: The bit I like is this: "Danny isn't moonlighting) and 'It's a VERY positive indicator' about what is going on." GS said very much the same thing to me on 24th June.
I think it was the 28th June.
That's interesting. Last time I spoke to GS he said he was just back from San Francisco. I had asked what travel was like in the US.
@ BobbyAxlerod: I'm sorry but to say that "People could lose money that they can’t afford to lose." is not a point that you should be making. You should NEVER buy shares with money you can not afford to lose and also not with money you may need in the next few YEARS. If you are in the habit of buying shares with next months rent you will, inevitably, become homeless because NO ONE gets it right all the time, not even good old Warren Buffett.
I take my hat off to you HullFC4ever :) You obviously found that 'photo of DS a week or so before I did. I also spoke to GS shortly after I found it and asked if DS had resigned and, if so, why had there not been an RNS. GS was adamant that DS was still COO of ALGW and was not moonlighting. I then started telling him what I had found out about Lido/Oakhust/Kushner and asked if I could expect details of a deal to be announced. He simply replied that he would release an update by the end of the month (June). He later said June / early July to others and I am well aware that he has a history of thinking that things will be done more quickly than they actually will so I'm still OK that the update hasn't yet been delivered.
@BobbyAxlerod: (note that I have managed to get your name right this time) Just as a matter of interest when did you last do some serious trawling of the internet as research into ALGW? I do it regularly, though I have to admit that I have been lax while in lockdown, and there is information out there if you look for it. Obviously it doesn't give the detail of what GS is up to, unless, I suppose, you could hack his phone, but it does give pointers. HullFC4ever obviously found something, I have found something too. These may or may not be the same thing. Time will tell. I am confident in my investment. I am also patient.