Tech Chat – June 2020
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This week, we share a selection of our very own finnCap Tech Demos.
One of the stranger uses of technology deployed by any of our corporate clients was motion sensors attached to domestic boilers. The concept of a boiler failing to self-isolate and driving to Barnard Castle tickles me, but the logic was even more depressing. Rarely, but still, on occasion, social housing tenants would take up residence and complain there wasn’t a boiler fitted – the new tenants’ first action having actually been to remove the boiler to flog it, which was prevented when the boiler was “seen”, virtually, ambling over to the back of a nearby van.
Castleton’s product range has come a long way since, ultimately providing an ERP for the full tech requirements of a Housing Association from finance to maintenance supplier logistics and management, including integration with Alexa for tenants to book appointments for repairs, report issues in the common spaces, or check balances. It’s been quite a journey from winning it as a corporate client (as Redstone) in 2009 – the only corporate I have ever won holding a sell recommendation, with a market cap of £1.8m and net debt of £29m. As we know, it recovered and evolved, including demerging Redcentric, to have a combined market cap of £267m, which compares equally well with the other current AIM winners at the time: Tracsis was a £10.0m market cap (now £192m); dotdigital was £2.9m (now £300m); Ideagen was £1.5m (now £424m); and First Derivatives, floated in 2002 at £7m by what-was-to-become finnCap, was £35m in 2009, and is now £673m. This exercise hasn’t been to suggest all AIM stocks are going to the moon, but rather to both demonstrate the benefits of active fund management and what can be done to spot the future winners.
For investors in Castleton the Eureka moment came with a first full demo of its software. Enterprise Resource Planning for the not-for-profit sector fails the “can you explain this to your Mum” test in some style, yielding upside only if you can profit from blank stares. However, the demo in 2017 – complemented by a good roadshow, refreshed management and improving financials – enabled a much better understanding of what the software does.
So, it’s time to show you some more demos. We’ve had a successful run of finnCap Tech Demo Days: in-house demos of four or five companies – and next week we begin our one-company-at-a-time Lockdown Demos via Zoom: give us one hour, twice a month, to help to show you what the products you invest in actually do. Click here to access a selection of recorded finnCap Tech Demos.
We begin with a finnCap Tech Lockdown Demo by Netcall (17th June), which has enlivened its Liberty platform with Low-code, enabling rapid creation of apps from existing systems, saving capex and ‘death by powerpoint’ through tech designed and often created by the end-user, not the well-meaning but not-involved IT teams. See how Croydon Council span up a COVID app in days, to distribute funds to cash strapped small businesses, interrogating (and feeding back to) existing disparate systems, for example; or how NHS Trusts can take creaking systems and deliver efficiency to patients and practitioners through new dashboards corralling together the info that was always there but in many different places, all integrated with the Liberty contact centre engagement platform.
Amino (now Aferian as of 2021) then follows with a Capital Markets Day on the 18th. It is rapidly delivering its January 2019 promise of strategic transformation towards software & services, delivering TV platforms to fixed, mobile and cable telcos as well as smaller content providers, all of whom can gain the functionality of a soup-to nuts TV platform for live and on-demand content anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
Then on the 24th at noon, Access Intelligence’s finnCap Tech Lockdown Demo will show how the Pulsar platform acquired in 2019 integrates with its reputation management platform Vuelio. Pulsar gives social media insights leveraging AI and visualisation, to monitor social trends and influencers down to niche levels, and analyse and engage with a target audience.
So farewell Castleton, which was delisted last week having been acquired by MRI Software. It is the first listed stock in London to have been bid for during lockdown, and it’s always sad to see good quality UK-listed tech going for a better appreciation of value elsewhere, although interestingly here, to trade and not to PE. So, here are the next candidates for you to be wowed by a demo (click on links above to sign up), albeit there won’t be any ankle-tags for boilers.
Happy Friday