I attended Mello Chiswick back in late May. I took some notes and meant to write them up some time ago but work has been busy hence only able to post now. Thoroughly enjoyable 2 days in Chiswick, West London. Thanks to David and his team as always, I am sure these events take considerable time an expense to arrange. If/when reading my notes, please bear in mind I am a long-term investor who tends to focus on macro trends, good value investment trusts, blue chips and dividends. Feedback welcome. Any questions, I will try to answer. Last comment here: apologies for the formatting, I still can't get the hang of copy/paste from email into Stockopedia.
Schedule of presentations: https://melloevents.com/mello2024-lineup/
Christopher Mills
# For anyone that is not aware, CM is the head of Harwood Capital which operates as an activist investor and runs 4 investment trusts: North Atlantic Smaller Companies Investment Trust (LON:NAS), Oryx International Growth Fund (LON:OIG), Odyssean Investment Trust (LON:OIT) and Rockwood Strategic (LON:RKW).
# Fire side chat with David Stredder (who is very good at these, keeps the conversations going, asks relevant questions and gets a feel for what the audience want).
# April has been good for Harwood Capital with much of the performance driven by bids for existing holdings.
# The structure of investment trusts helps because Harwood Capital don’t have to worry about redemptions.
# CM thinks retail investors are not yet buying meaningful amounts in the market, is the cost of living still having an impact on people's finances ?
# Big worry is too many takeovers and not enough IPOs.
# IPOs starting to come back but no one wants to touch an IPO from private equity (too much debt).
# Liquidity is still a problem eg: HC has been buying Marlowe (LON:MRL) over the past few days but it's difficult to build a meaningful stake.
# ECO Animal Health (LON:EAH) is something that HC likes a lot (SSB: CM actually said "Animal Care" but I assume he meant ECO Animal Health). This is not a veterinary business but a drug distribution business. CEO is high quality. Good risk profile. One of the founders still owns 5%.# Difficult for Harwood Capital to buy anything with a small mkt cap…
