Diving deep finds you the treasure

Hardman & Co

Hardman & Co Report Report DownloadsWe believe that to properly understand debt investment companies, they need to be analysed as lenders first, and investment companies second. To understand their specific credit, business model, accounting and growth characteristics requires detailed expertise in lending. This report employs the analyst’s experience of researching debt vehicles and lending businesses for more than 30 years to tease out the investment-critical characteristics.

The debt investors category has grown exponentially in recent years. The Association of Investment Company classification of this sub-sector encompasses 38 ‘investments’ with a further 5 in its leasing sector. We believe that the time has now come to recognise that a broad-brush categorisation is no longer appropriate, and this large diverse sector should be split into more focussed constituents. The companies are facing fundamentally different risk profiles and have a range of accounting policies, making NAV comparisons fraught with danger. They also report their NAVs at diverse intervals, further complicating comparisons across the sector. Our analysis results in the following sub-sectors: specialist lenders, secured lenders, Collateralised Loan Obligation (CLO) vehicles, peer-to-peer/platform lenders, mixed asset and leasing companies. Such an approach allows the discount/premium to NAV to be considered in its proper context rather than a muddy pool of non-comparable businesses. Given we are including leasing, we will refer to the sector going forward as credit investment companies (CIC)

In this report, we provide investors with our thoughts on the key issues for CICs. We start with thematic considerations that apply across all types of the company (understanding credit risk, the outlook at this stage of the cycle, accounting and valuation), before deep-diving into each of the sub-sectors. We have also provided investors with a simple tick-list of questions to ask each different type of company.

Share on:
Find more news, interviews, share price & company profile here for:

    Ferro-Alloy Resources raises £1 million through 16.7 million share issue

    Ferro-Alloy has issued 16,666,667 new shares at 6 p each, raising gross proceeds of £1,000,000 with participation from directors and strategic shareholder VBR. Funds will optimise the carbon black substitute element of the Balasausqandiq Project.

    Renold and Bidco agree recommended all-cash scheme

    Renold’s board has agreed a recommended all-cash acquisition by Bidco via a court-sanctioned scheme, with scheme and general meetings scheduled for 28 July 2025.

    Touchstone Exploration completes Cascadura 5 well, confirms hydrocarbon sands

    Touchstone has drilled the Cascadura-5 well to 7 020 ft, encountering approximately 620 ft of Herrera Gr7bc sands with continuous hydrocarbon indicators, and will mobilise to Cascadura-4 once funding is secured.

    Thor Energy discovers elevated hydrogen and helium at HY-Range

    Thor Energy’s soil geochemistry survey at HY-Range licence 802 in South Australia recorded hydrogen up to 3 000 ppm and helium to 27 ppm, defining four high-grade focus areas for exploration.

    Aptamer Group raises £2.0 million in share placing

    Aptamer has raised £2.0 million (before expenses) by placing 666,666,666 new ordinary shares at 0.3 p each, representing 25.1 per cent of its enlarged issued share capital. The proceeds will accelerate commercialisation of the Optimer® platform, support in-house manufacturing, launch new biomarker services and develop AI-driven aptamer discovery.

      Search

      Search