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Research We work together with our client companies, researching them extensively - looking at factors including their environment and competition, and aiming to produce the most reliable estimates available for the future. We then circulate this research to the professional investment community and press, and to the more active private client brokers. Our research is heavily spreadsheet-based and we take pride in the structure and quality of our business modelling. We help to create an informed investor base - a real help to companies which want to raise further equity finance. We also value companies for acquisition, demerger, tax and share option purposes. Hardman and Co are responsible for the HealthInvestor Index which includes monthly analysis of a comprehensive index of healthcare companies traded on the London Stock Exchange.
Rapid growth potential makes small companies very attractive to fund managers, stockbrokers and professional advisers who manage funds for private investors. However, without sufficient first class research to reassure the regulatory authorities that the fund manager has conducted proper due diligence before investing, fund managers will not invest. Small quoted companies do not generate enough stockbroking commission to fund research. Less than 3‰ of all stockbroking commissions are generated by companies capitalised below £300m.
Without adequate research:
Although stockbrokers produce research on their corporate clients, this is only circulated among their own clients and will not raise a company's profile with other fund managers or the public. As a result, these fund managers, and other stockbrokers interested in the company, are not able to obtain the appropriate research needed for investment purposes. We are glad to see that KPMG, in its paper "Investing in SQCs", sees our kind of independent research house as a way forward for smaller companies which have seen commission-hungry stockbroking firms cutting analyst coverage. Indeed, KPMG says that "These agencies... offer SQCs the opportunity to place information about themselves in the market place, with a level of detail that analysts at securities houses could not justify producing." The relevant page of the document is available as a pdf file, reproduced with permission of KPMG Corporate Finance. Our research material is made widely available in the UK market and overseas through Multex, with over 6,000 subscribed global institutions; First Call Research Direct, with over 20,000 trading desks worldwide; and Jacques Chahine System, Europe's leading equity research outlet.
Latest Research Notes - Click here to access the latest research from Hardman and Co
5th Annual Islamic Finance
Summit February 2006
Hardman & Co Monthly: July 2008 |
