# Hargreave Hale Q&A with Chairman & Fund Manager Giles Hargreave

- Link: https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/hargreave-hale-qa-chairman-fund-manager-giles-hargreave/412720834
- Published: 2017-01-12T12:34:23+00:00
- Author: Amilia Stone

**Hargreave Hale** Chairman and Fund Manager Giles Hargreave caught up with DirectorsTalk
for an exclusive interview to discuss how 2016 played out for them, standout investments
including **Blue Prism Group PLC (PRSM)**, **EVR Holdings PLC (EVRH)**, **Hochschilds
Mining Plc (HOC)**, **Hurricane Energy Plc (HUR)**, **Hotel Chocolat (HOTC)**, **
Fevertree Drinks PLC (FEVR)** & **NMC Health Plc (NMC)**, his view on prospects 
for the year, interesting sectors and stocks he likes the look of for 2017 including**
Quixant PLC (QXT)**, **Clinigen Group PLC (CLIN)**, **Victoria PLC (VCP)** & **Marlowe
PLC (MRL)**

 

**Q1: Giles, first off, can I ask how do you feel 2016 played out for you?**

**A1**: Yes, pretty good, I run 3 small cap funds and they all performed well, they’re
all under the Marlborough banner. So we have a Marlborough Micro-Cap fund which 
is up 15% and finished 5th in the league table out of 46 and then there’s a Marlborough
Nano-Cap fund, the micro-cap is a £700 million fund and the nano-cap is £130 million
fund, that was up 13.4% and finished 8th. The Special Situations fund is up 10.5%
and finished 16th against an average of 8.1% so they were all better than average,
2 of them top quartiles, 1 second quartile so pretty satisfactory.

 

**Q2: Were there any standout investments within your portfolio?**

**A2**: Plenty of them. I think the best performer was the robotics company called
Blue Prism Group PLC (LON:PRSM) which floated at 78p in March and finished the year
at 445p and still going strong as we speak, it’s not 525-538 is the quote as we 
speak. It offers robotic process automation software designed to help firms automate
a wide range of business processes for reduced costs, improving balance and increased
productivity so we’re all going to have robots in our office soon.

Most recently, a company called EVR Holdings PLC (LON:EVRH) which owns a virtual
reality content from many well-known artists so you’re going to be able to watch
your favourite artists in virtual reality using their software. The shares started
the year at 1.275p and they touched just short of 9p yesterday and they’re about
7.5p today, not bad, and we own 60 billion shares in the nano-cap and the micro-
cap.

We had some commodity shares that did well, a bit of a contrast there. We had Hochschilds
Mining Plc (LON:HOC), which is a world-leading silver miner I think, which was up
3.5 times and on the energy side we had Hurricane Energy Plc (LON:HUR) which was
up 3 times and those two did well.

One of two more, we had Hotel Chocolat Group PLC (LON:HOTC) that doubled from the
IPO price and Fevertree Drinks PLC ([LON:FEV](https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/company/fidelity-european-trust/fev.l)
R) which is one of the great stocks which did most of its work last year was still
up 90% this year. NMC Health Plc (LON:NMC) which operates hospitals in the UAE, 
that was up 84% so pretty good.

 

**Q3: So what are your views on prospects for this year?**

**A3**: Well I think in a way in the short term they’re better because the bond 
switch is on , bonds have been obviously falling so there’s no point in sitting 
in ones that are losing money. So the switch into equities has been accelerating
I would say, you’ve got some inflation coming so you need, again, equities to protect
yourself from inflation if at all possible. So I think the prospects are pretty 
good really, the danger is when you have too much inflation interest rates have 
to be put up more than we’d want and that would be very serious for the UK but hopefully
that won’t happen.

 

**Q4: I think you touched on this a little bit but what sectors do you think will
be interesting this year?**

**A4**: We tend not to be too agnostic, we are very much bottom-up stock pickers,
if it looks like inflation is coming back you probably want to have some gold shares
and we had a few of those last year which did fairly well. Otherwise it’s variety
of individual stocks doing all sorts of things and not worrying too much about sectors.

 

**Q5: Are there any particular stocks that you like the look of for 2017?**

**A5**: There’s a company called Quixant PLC (LON:QXT) we like which is a manufacturer
of hardware and software solutions for the gaming industry, fruit machines, the 
old fashioned fruit machine, they have contracts with most of the leading operators
and they’re not a very unknown company I think. The shares have been performing 
very well and they might do particularly well this year, particularly if Brazil 
allows gaming machines which they haven’t in the past, we think they’re very likely
to and that would be a big plus for those guys.

Clinigen Group PLC (LON:CLIN), which my colleague and the media seem very keen on
that, which is a global leader, speciality in medicine access, in other words you
can apply, if you want a particular medicine which isn’t on the market, to use it
and these guys will procure it for you.

NMC Health Plc I’ve already mentioned.

Victoria PLC (LON:VCP), which my other colleague is very keen on, is a consolidation
of small carpet companies all over the UK and in Australia and that’s been performing
very well.

A company called Marlowe PLC (LON:MRL) which has gone up a lot already but could
potentially go a lot further, that’s a roll-up of business services in the UK focussing
on fire and water sector. So they come and make sure your water is clean and the
water you’re supplying to your employees isn’t going to poison them and that area,
everyone has to have that so those little companies are being consolidated into 
a company called Marlowe. So there you go, there’s a selection.

Share on: