Hardman & Co

We are a rapidly growing, innovative corporate research & consultancy business, based in London, serving the needs of both public and private companies.

Our expert team of sector analysts and market professionals collectively have over 400 years of experience.  This depth of knowledge and a reputation for integrity have built trust with investors. With effective communication and precision distribution, we help companies disseminate their investment message to interested investors, as well as advise them on strategy.

Our smaller, boutique structure allows us to provide first-class customer service and to deliver a wide range of ad-hoc services for multiple clients with different needs.

Regulatory Information

  • Regulatory Status: Hardman Research Ltd, trading as Hardman & Co, is an appointed representative of Capital Markets Strategy Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Keith Hiscock ... (+2)
  • Keith Hiscock
  • Yingheng Chen

Hardman & Co Insight: Investment company liquidity – steady as she goe...

Summary ► Liquidity is the lifeblood of equity markets. ► Following the events at the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF), in 2019, professional investors, increasingly, focus on liquidity when making investment decisions. ► Hardman & Co is employed to analyse liquidity by Authorised Corporate Directors, Depositaries, stock exchanges and for court cases. We have published a number of publicly available reports on liquidity data. ► This report builds on our previous work, which analysed the liquid...

Mark Thomas
  • Mark Thomas

NB Private Equity Partners (NBPE): Value creation in a higher-rate env...

In this note, we explore how the sources of value creation have evolved and how NBPE’s GP partners are expected to organically and inorganically generate incremental EBITDA growth to offset higher interest costs. Long-term target returns for new deals on the NB platform are unchanged, despite the short-term interest rate noise. This note builds on the drivers of historical superior EBITDA (see 2023 CMD: value creation from growing companies). Investors should note that interest rates are just on...

Brian Moretta
  • Brian Moretta

City of London Investment Group (CLIG): First-half results going in th...

City of London has announced its interim results for 1H’24. With the main headline figures having being announced in January’s trading statement, the principal interest was in some of the details. FUM of $9.58bn is 2% ahead of the level at 30 June 2023 and 5% ahead of the end of 2022. Gross revenues increased YoY by 2%, whereas, expenses grew 6%, resulting in a slightly lower operating profit of $10.0m. On an underlying basis, profit before tax of $13.3m was a 2% decline over the 1H’23 figure. U...

Mark Thomas ... (+2)
  • Mark Thomas
  • Martin Hall

The Hardman & Co Monthly: March 2024

Feature article: Streamed content takes over…after the Great Correction of 2022 Streaming is a disruptive, content-led, subscription-based technology. Challenging all video distribution business models, it opens up global opportunities for a growing variety of content, including gaming and sport. The Great Correction of 2022 saw the share prices of streamers plunge after market leader Netflix reported slowing subscriber growth. The slowdown in growth of subscribers led investors to refocus on ...

Mark Thomas ... (+2)
  • Mark Thomas
  • Mike Foster

Real Estate Credit Investments (RECI) - French and German exposures in...

We last reviewed RECI’s operations in France, 25% of the latest portfolio, in our note, Vive la difference, published 15 February 2022. The core approach is unchanged, but, following the December 2023 factsheet report of an unrealised hit of 1.6p to the NAV from a prime Grade A Paris office exposure, we thought we would review them again. Also, with the November Factsheet reporting a 1.1p NAV hit from a legacy mezzanine position exposed to a Berlin asset, we have considered the de minimis German...

Retail Bond Review No. 10 Feature Article: Bond Structuring

For many investors the coupon, term and rating is all they look at when they buy a bond. But each bond has a structure that affects the credit risk, and investors need to know what that is.â–º The recent Wasps Finance plc issue is one of the more complicated of the recent ORB issues. We use it as an example, highlighting some of the terms used and what investors need to look for when assessing bond structuresâ–º We also look at the different forms of security that investors may see, explaining t...

UK Housebuilding Sector in Q3 2015

​On 31 October, the Final of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) will be contested at Twickenham. Will the New Zealand All Blacks prevail to become the first team to win it consecutively (and the first to win it three times)?If the listed UK Housebuilders were rugby teams, our guess is that Berkeley would be the All Blacks with Tony Pidgley as the record breaking captain, Richie McCaw. In turn, Persimmon would be the South African Springboks - both formidable and both named after wonderful creatures.For...

Material World. “Experience has made me rich”

Summary - The UK Building Materials Sector is vital but ignored; and in terms of definition and analysis, really only exists here. - It comprises 18 companies with total revenue of £2.6 billion, net assets of £1.3 billion and more than 15,500 employees. - The London Stock Exchange value is £3.62 billion as of 5th June 2015.In the latest fiscal year it has grown revenue by 9.4% and gross profit by 12.3%. - Gross margins are a tidy 29.5%. - EBITDA has done even better with 21% annual growt...

May 2015 Monthly / Feature Article: Why Should we be worries about unw...

May 2015 Monthly / Feature Article: Why Should we be worries about unwinding quantitative easing?

Hardman & Co. September 2015 Monthly. Featured article - MiFID II –...

​For most people Tuesday, 3rd January 2017 is likely to be the first day back at work after a long weekend celebrating the New Year. In London it will probably be overcast with occasional showers whilst commuters will be suffering the effects of 'over-running engineering works'. But for participants in the London stock market it could be a momentous day, on a par with the Big Bang of October 1986 when fixed commission rates and the distinction between brokers and jobbers were swept away. For o...

Keith Hiscock ... (+2)
  • Keith Hiscock
  • Yingheng Chen

Punching above their weight? The contribution of small- and mid-cap qu...

Back in May 2019, Hardman & Co and the Quoted Companies Alliance jointly published a paper looking at the importance of small and mid-size quoted companies (SMQCs) to the markets, and their contribution to tax revenues and employment in the UK. This is a poorly researched area, and that paper helped frame the debate; it has been quoted from by bodies such as the City of London Corporation. Three years have passed since that note, and we felt it was time to update the work. Of course, the econom...

Keith Hiscock
  • Keith Hiscock

Hardman & Co Insight: Share ownership: For the many, not the few - The...

We recently published a paper, 'Share ownership: For the many, not the few', based on a statistical survey of share ownership, produced jointly with Argus Vickers, the share analysis service. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has now issued its equivalent survey. This paper compares its results with ours. Although there are, inevitably, differences in the detail, the two surveys reach the same conclusions. The two key themes from the surveys are that: i) investors from the Rest of the Wo...

February 2016 Monthly

​The timing of being invited to write this article is perfect, coinciding as it does with a) the huge uncertainty which 2016 thus far has presented to investors (resulting in the frequently heard question ‘what do I do with my money?’) and b) last week’s sale of Swiftkey [https://swiftkey.com/en] for $250m to Microsoft. The company was founded in 2008 by two people in their 20s to develop predictive keyboards driven by artificial intelligence - its technology is embedded in over 300m dev...

Feature Article: Oil Prices and Credit

The falling oil price has had many consequences, both politically and economically. In this article we look at the financial effects and, in particular at the shale oil industry. We give a brief history of its development and show how its combination of a high cost of production and higher debt funding, together with some technical failings, have led to the difficulties it now finds itself in. We also briefly consider the two ORB born oil and gas bonds, from Premier Oil...

Paul Mylchreest
  • Paul Mylchreest

Hardman & Co Insight: Gold and a Chinese credit event

A western phenomenon? If you own, or are considering owning, gold or gold equities, it’s likely that you’re concerned about protecting your wealth, or the performance of your fund, in the expectation of some kind of financial instability. Maybe your confidence in policymakers is ebbing, or you’ve researched debt bubbles in history and concluded that physical gold and silver have been the safest places to be invested when they unwind. Maybe, you can’t put your finger on it. You don’t know where ...

Martin Hall
  • Martin Hall

Hardman & Co Healthcare Index: 2020 – greater appreciation of science

The Hardman & Co Healthcare Index (HHI) has been running since 2009. Its main function is to highlight the attractions of life sciences investments over the long term. 2020 was an exceptional year, with the index rising 19.9% to 590.6, broadly in line with the FTSE AIM All-Share Index (+20.7%), but in complete contrast to the performances of the FTSE 100 (-14.3%) and FTSE All-Share (-12.5%) indices. A number of our life sciences companies really stepped up to meet the challenges posed by the COV...

UK Housebuilding Sector: Q1 2016 “Eat My Shorts, Man!”

​The Simpsons, as if you didn’t know, is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a satirical depiction of a working class lifestyle epitomised by the family members Homer, Marge, Bart (our hero), Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture, society, television and many aspects of the human condition. Since its debut on 17 December 1989, the series has broadcast 591 episodes over 27 ...

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