RE: Move to the market.4 Jun 2025 10:42
Extract from an interview in the Sunday Times published on 16 February 2025:
On Aim, Danson’s grand vision has not quite garnered the investor support he thinks it merits. While GlobalData’s share price has remained relatively flat since the end of 2019, its annual earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) have risen from £45 million to £140 million.
"It’s just mad,” he says. “Everything in our sector is valued at 20 to 25 times ebitda. Absolutely everything … All the companies that get bought by private equity. And, as of a month ago, I think we were ten times — so half the valuation.” Danson says of Aim: “I think that it’ll just keep on declining … and we sort of don’t want to necessarily be the last one there.”
Presumably he’s feeling optimistic about the main market? “No, not really,” he says, drily. He hopes the senior market will offer more “stability” and better share price growth. But, if not, he is prepared to look elsewhere. “There’s lots of companies I know that have been taken private. We get calls every week saying: ‘Do you want to go private?’”
He adds: “I think there’s obviously options to go to the American market”, before backtracking slightly to reason that GlobalData probably needs to build more of a presence in the US first.
Danson spends around a week every month in New York. When I ask if it is true that he owns Michael Jackson’s old Upper East Side home, he looks uncomfortable. “Er, yeah,” he says sheepishly. “He lived there a long time ago. In the 1990s.”
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