There is a wonderful cocktail in Hawksmoor called Shakey Pete’s – a delicious mixture of beer and gin, with ginger syrup and lemon juice to which if I were to gain an addiction, I’d happily succumb. However, on reading the list of ingredients, you’d be forgiven for baulking at the combination of beer or gin reminiscent of an experiment in the parents’ drinks cabinet when you’re fourteen and they’re away for the evening (or was that just me – I can only assume this is how my interest in Malibu and milk began). Anyway the thing about Shakey Pete’s, is that once you try it it’s a revelation. It’s something you get to know.

In the same way, over here at finnCap towers, with four analysts and 43 companies to explain (plenty of capacity for more btw) we feel we know tech fairly well – and in quite a few cases we have served those businesses for longer than the current boards. We’re aware, though, that we don’t know the whole market, and so we continue to forage for new and under-represented ideas – and this week, we’ve picked the best of the tastes we’ve been experimenting with: stocks which have grabbed our interest, and with which we do not have a corporate relationship. We like them, or we wouldn’t have written about them, and we hope you will do too: if you find you’d like to know more, or to meet them, please get in contact – details for meetings after each stock. The detailed reports are in our quarterly, the Joy of Techs: Four Plays for Growth, out this morning for distribution to MiFID paying clients (unlike our corporate research, which unusually in the market, is free to all).

Bigblu Broadband (BBB) provides broadband to homes and businesses in mostly rural areas in Europe and Australia, through satellite and fixed wireless technologies. We believe BBB is at an inflection point that is catalysed by transformative developments to its core technologies. These developments will substantially expand BBB’s addressable market while increasing the speed and quality of its service. At the same time, governments are looking to encourage the rollout of gigabit speed broadband in rural areas and providing increasing levels of financial support. We expect these tailwinds to strengthen BBB’s structural position, which is founded upon strategic relationships and economies of scale from sources including its centralised, cloud-based billing and CRM platform. This should generate compelling growth in BBB’s financials, and with execution we expect BBB’s share price to increase due to re-rating on considerably higher and potentially upgraded financials.*

Audioboom is a premium podcast publisher of its own original content and some of the world’s leading podcasts, and enables content to be monetised through engaging, host endorsed advertising. We believe that Audioboom is attractively positioned in a rapidly growing podcast market given its focus on host endorsed advertising and its strong, current line-up of podcast content. As Audioboom continues to create, acquire, and co-produce new content, we expect that it will at least sustain its recently strong growth in premium advertising impressions and deliver strong revenue growth. This can see Audioboom achieve positive EBITDA and cash generation in the medium-term as it leverages the investments it has made in its core platform. When combined with the value of Audioboom’s data, its investment in originals, and the development of the standalone Sonic Influencer Marketing platform, we believe that Audioboom has a strong strategic position that is currently underappreciated by the market.*

ULS provides software to facilitate the conveyancing process, and launched the innovative DigitalMove platform in January 2019. DigitalMove enables the solicitor and consumer/home buyer to interact securely and in real-time through its platform/apps, instead of through letters, calls, and emails, and ULS has been proactively investing in DigitalMove since 2015. We believe that DigitalMove could deliver transformational growth for ULS in the medium-term, and as DigitalMove starts to scale following its launch in early 2019, we expect that ULS will make access to the DigitalMove platform free to most users because the company’s core business will benefit from growth in DigitalMove. We consequently expect ULS to drive adoption of DigitalMove when it is confident that it can efficiently integrate the platform, and this should enable ULS to structurally benefit from strong economies of scale and network effects. At the same time, we believe that ULS’s core platform is well positioned to benefit from any turnaround in the UK housing market, due to the investments that ULS has made in its technology and platform.*

Beeks Financial Cloud is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider that specialises in providing cloud-based services to the financial services industry. We believe that Beeks is excellently positioned to generate strong growth as the financial services industry increases its adoption of relevant cloud-based services. As an early mover in this area, we expect Beeks to leverage its existing scale and strong reputation to win new clients and offer new services. Moreover, as Beeks strives to add new tier 1 clients, we expect it to strengthen its structural position by benefitting from higher switching costs. If Beeks is able to successfully deliver new tier 1 clients and strong operating momentum, we expect Beeks to see substantial upside to the current share price.*

Rather like sampling a cocktail list, not all will be to everyone’s tastes – but amongst these we’d be delighted if we find you an under-broked Shakey Pete that will become your preferred tipple.

Happy Friday