GetBusy PLC (LON:GETB) is the topic of conversation when Stockdale Securities Analyst Brendan D’Souza caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview
Q1: We noticed yesterday that BGF Investment Management took a rather large share in GetBusy, can you talk us through the stake acquisition please?
A1: So, as you rightly said, there was an RNS that said that BGF now owns 12.63, this is 6.1 million shares that they’ve acquired.
How they’ve voted is interesting because typically, in a small cap company, you would buy a big stake through either a placing, be that as an IPO or a secondary, or you would buy it from a major shareholder i.e. an insider exiting. In this case, what’s happened is given how they came to market, it was a de-merger from an Australian company called Reckon, when the company de-merged they had in specie dividend so every Reckon shareholders got a share in the newly-formed GetBusy and there was a fundraise back then.
The largest institutional shareholder in Reckon was an Australian asset management company called Wilson Asset Management, they have something like AU$3 billion under management, roughly £2 billion under management so Wilson was the largest shareholder in GetBusy from an institutional standpoint, he held 12.63%. So, Wilson have sold it on the market and the other side was BGF so BGF are now the owner of that 12.63% and that makes BGF the largest shareholder in GetBusy.
Q2: You said that BGF is now the largest institutional shareholder, what does the shareholder register look like, following the BGF stake acquisition?
A2: It’s a great question because GetBusy’s market cap is about £21 million right now and typically, for a company that size, in our experience, the shareholder register tends to be very retail dominated. You have the founder management team all have a big stake and then you have a whole lot of retail investors and you may have one or two institutions.
Their register is very unusual in that you have some really good institutions in there so as we’ve already discussed, BGF is the largest shareholder, they 12.65% right now, second to BGF is Canaccord which was formally Hargreave Hale, they own just over 7% of the business, Fidelity has just under 6%, Herald is about 5.5% and City Financial is 5.3%. So, this group of what I would say very blue-chip institutional investors own a combined 37% of GetBusy, again, I will state that in our experience that is quite unusual for a company this size to have this kind of shareholder register.
Q3: Is there any near-term news flow from GetBusy that investors should be looking out for?
A3: The company is due to publish its 2018 interim results, this is for the half-year period ending 30th June 2018 and this is going to be on the 1st August, which is a Wednesday. Also, this is not really news flow but just a little fact, the company came to market on the 4th August last year so they’re going be celebrating their 1 year anniversary a few days after the interim results, that’s a Saturday and that’s another milestone for the company I would say.
