Laurence Hulse

Correct.

And they spend probably quite a bit of time doing it when they do?

So I'm starting to find my sort of co-manager for the fun because you're picking up our investment thesis here, which was really, you know, very rarely have we invested in retail.

But if you're going to do it, retailing fishing tackle is a damn good place to start because it's a large hobbyist community.

what's really interesting is you tend to have to go to the store to buy the bait because it's live and therefore it's a genuine omni-channel proposition and that ring fences it from some of the online i mean i don't think many people do buy fishing reels from timu because they're quite complicated and expensive but it sort of ring fences you from the amazon effect

And you've seen that come through in, you know, there aren't many retailers that upgraded profit forecast twice last year, but Angling Direct did, even after absorbing an unexpected employer's national insurance contribution of three quarters of a million pounds and their profit target was five.

So that's quite a meaty.

The market cap was roughly 20.

They had net cash of 16, no, net cash of 14 and inventories of 16.

So it was trading at a negative tangible net asset value.

That one we invested in the depths of 2023.

And I think that was the real bleakest nadir of UK smaller companies.

um but interestingly you know that's the whole reason why we launched the fund to one of your comments at the very start of the podcast why on earth have you done that done this i'm a bit of a contrarian by by nature but of course the same reasons that made it really hard to launch a fund were the same reasons why we can buy angling direct at a crazy valuation like that and generate those returns of thanks to our early investors

Yes, by the larger funds, yes.

But interestingly, not by larger strategic acquirers.

We've had three acquisitions now in our first three years.

We had nearly our fourth just this week with Audioboom, which is the podcast publisher I mentioned.

Yeah, that had three, confirmed now publicly three cash bids, but the board who owns 6% of the company themselves deemed them not representative of the accelerating growth and margins in the business.

They refreshingly actually rejected the offers and are going to go it alone and I think are going to acquire other podcast businesses themselves.

Interesting.