Any views on this one now?

Yeah, I mean, Gleason's has been doing quite well, actually.

So it seems to me that the market is maybe tentatively starting to factor in some sort of recovery, which, of course, it will generally do well before the green shoots actually appear.

So there's a bit of a mismatch.

Some investors are saying the whole sector is more or less finished.

It's on its knees and will be forever.

other people are looking forward to the help to buy thing coming in, the stimulus to the affordable housing where those budgets are starting to unlock and actually saying, well, we need to get ahead of the curve and start anticipating at least some sort of recovery in this sector and the building products companies.

How do you see it?

What's your take? How do you interpret it?

I'm just really sceptical on this one.

I always have been, actually.

So, no, I think... yeah i mean look there's only one reason the ceo abruptly disappears and this guy is kind of mr lst isn't he you know he's he's an owner manager and they've run out of cash again haven't they it's got to be that's that's that's the the only reason why in my opinion so and it's now below the one p i mean look at that you know it was ramped up to about 6p on all these expectations for their cladding stuff and then they did a placing at 1p i mean It was ridiculous.

But it did then bounce up to about 3p afterwards, as you can see from the chart.

But that's all withered away.

And then, as you say, totally unexpected immediate departure of the CEO a couple of days ago, which we spotted actually on the Daily Movers and I reported it in my end of day report.

Any quick thoughts on this one?

... to do about their quarter one, quarter two contrast with the weather.

Yeah.

Well, this was a lovely situation where the freak weather, the heatwave, uh, affected quite a few companies, uh, in, in pretty int- uh, uh, entirely predictable ways.

You know, the pubs did well, uh, the ones with outdoor space anyway.

And retailers of things, well, Dunelm, you know, c- uh, cushions, i- interior furnishings, what have you.

Obviously people aren't gonna go in there when it's 32 degrees outside.

They're gonna be in the garden or down the beach, unless they've got particularly good air con and people want to go there to cool off.

Anyway, what's your take on it?

What was your take anyway from that, uh, conversation?

conversation?Well, I already like Funding Circle, so I thought, well, I want to meet companies.

This is at the Cavendish Conference, um, who very kindly...

It was an excellent conference actually, but it was quite restricted as, limited in numbers because the, you s- you, you book meetings with companies but with three or four other investors.

Uh, it's excellent format.

So, um, uh, uh, no, I mean the story's very much, uh, as I, uh, as we thought.

Um, I, I quizzed them on how the, how much more they can scale it up as they've produced fantastic results, and I said, look...

What, what was, what, what's your take? [laughs]

But, uh, what do you-

Well, that's right.

They, they only paid about £2 a share for it, so they're laughing whatever happens.

So I think the fact that the market has sold off Brave Bison shares from around the 90p level to about a 70p level, those are just very rough numbers, that to me is a buying opportunity because I don't really care whether they get System1 or not.

Um, and I think they're now into...

There was another update this morning on the acceptances, which they haven't budged, basically.

They're stuck at 39.2%, but that includes Brave Bison's own stake is the vast bulk of that.

Mm.

What's your view? The shares have been, you know, look very, very cheap.

I have to declare an interest here.

I did buy some not that long ago.

Unfortunately, I bought right into that big spike.

You can see there, I think I paid pretty much the top of them, but nevermind.

These things happen.

I get excited, you know, like everyone else, but no, I think it's very interesting.

i think is basically basically it's a challenger cosmetics brand with wl7 as their main sort of like you know flagship brand i think it's sort of like specializing copying um sort of like well-known makeup trends and moving those fast into the field anyway they've really struggled this year shares have not been great and i think they had they've they've almost had a bit of they've got a lot to do in the second half i think to make their numbers what's your take

on monday do you want to take us through what they said and what that means

yeah i think we've talked about cerulean uh which i do hold personally we've talked about this quite a lot really good quality business but the share price was clearly indicating to us that a profit warning for september year end uh seemed uh fairly likely so i think we've discussed that before and um What was it? And I think last week we were saying, oh, they're going to have to come out and say something because that was it.

Last week, there was that critical blog, wasn't there? Two critical articles, one claiming, alleging that the Omantel project had gone badly wrong.

And we were, I think, saying, oh, the company's going to have to make a statement.

Sure enough, it did on Monday.

It was a profit warning.

It wasn't a particularly bad one, is my take on it.

What's your take on this one? They've made some good disposals recently.

Take

us through it.

Well, yes, I mean, I did catch this one around about the time of the saspocalypse.

The staffing companies were incredibly cheap, and I did buy some of these, but I messed up the trade, unfortunately, sold them way too early.

So it's had a bid approach, which was announced – two days ago, Wednesday, response to media speculation things, so it was leaked by persons unknown, saying that they've received a, quote, unsolicited preliminary and highly conditional approach from an American company called Circle 8, which is NASDAQ-listed, C-I-R-C.

So, of course, the first thing I do is look them up, and I found it's an absolutely tiny company, only $50 million market cap.

So I thought, well...

What's your take?

So to help Mike, what's your view on this whole industry and how it's going to shape out?

Well, without wanting to sound like a smartass, it's played out exactly as we thought it would, literally exactly how we thought it would.

I mean, we started to warn my readers 18 months ago that Hedlund, extrapolating out of the trends, could end up going bust.

But its immense balance sheet strength in freehold property propped it up, bought it some time.

But it became really very obvious, as I think we put out 13 and 14 warnings over it, actually explicitly saying, this looks like it's going to go bust.

But it's fairly straightforward to work that out.

I think a lot of people mistakenly thought that the freeholds would protect it forever.

Anyway, in the round, what's your view?

how do you view sort of like first of all hunting and then secondly more broadly the oil field services because obviously the middle east is a bit uncertain at the moment and it seems to be stopping quite a lot of exploration and production

well i like hunting a lot i was shouting about it and i was green on it multiple times in uh in 2025 but we we started cooling on it a little in august in the autumn of 2025 because um uh The news flow became a bit less positive and there was a profit warning in October 25, but it didn't seem to affect the share price much at the time.

But we stayed amber green on it up until now, actually.

We covered it lots of times on my website.

Very nice company.

A standout factor is this amazing balance sheet.

It's got an incredibly strong net cash balance sheet.

But what was your take on JD Sports?

What makes you notice something is not accurate in terms of like education? No need to mention names if you don't want to, but any kind of like clues or anything you've seen recently that doesn't make sense to you?

Well, I mean, for me, I don't obviously watch educational videos because I don't need to because I, you know, did it as a job.

But, you know, I mean, people send me stuff and like I say, the educational state of retail trading is disgusting.

Uh, there should be a regulatory body out there to give people the ability to teach.

You know, if you go to a college or a university, you know, your teachers there, they've trained, they've put the time in, they've done... you know, they've made the effort.

They've got their qualifications.

Um, like I say, if you've got young people, middle-aged people, whoever, you know, they're on Instagram, they're all over social media, you know, all of these claims, it's just bullshit at the end of the day.

Has anything kinda changed now with AI, with robots, with these kinds of things that affect the market? Is it the same thing as before, or is it different?

... from that conversation?

Yeah.

This is one of my favorite long positions, so obviously I'm talking my own book here.

Um, I, I...

The, the, uh, the big fundraise recently, uh, which was about a 30, 40% dilution, so it was a, a, a big fundraise, gives them about 30 odd million net cash, I think, or there's a little bit of net debt to come off that maybe, which, um, obviously i- is earmarked for buying freeholds for the warehouses.

And it was music to my ears when he said, "We just like to own the freeholds.

We don't like, you know, landlords being able to just hike the rent." He gave an example of one of their leasehold sites that's just had couple of hundred K rental increase.

Mm

Do you want to take us through? Because they had quite a shocking profit warning earlier in the week.

Yeah, it wasn't that bad.

I mean, basically, we'd given back a month's worth of rises.

So when I tipped it at Mellow as a bargain basement share, it was actually at about 33p.

So we're still about 10% above that, even after the fall.

It was very strange.

You can see that just diagonal rise upwards from July, which was well after Mellow, so it was nothing to do with me.

Anyway, what's your view on Hedlum? It's gone up again to 8% today.

[laughs]

"And make sure you make it close above this price." So he said, "I sat there for a couple of seconds and I thought, nah, the kid must mean tons.

He can't mean lots because if he does mean lots, that's gonna be the biggest order this market's ever seen." So he said, "So I, you know, shouted out, you know, 'Three months copper, 95 I sell.' He said, '500.' Guy says, 'No, you can have 50s.' '95 I give, 98 I give, 05 I give.' Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Guy's 1,000 tons jumps out of the, the ring" Which is the pit, but we call it the ring on the London Metal Exchange.

Um- Says to the clerk, "Who was that for?" He said, "This is for Man- for Manfred upstairs." And Manfred was the owner of the company.

So he clicks in on the phone line.

He says, "Manfred, you bought your 1,000 tons.

Looking back, do you have an example of any trades that, uh, maybe your dad took that stand out to you?

Can you give us sort of like a view on like the psychology around when you're in a trade and the, the, the differences between how long you hold trades for and, and, um, and what other traders, if they were gonna take on your style, would need to address within themselves to be able to hold those positions? So maybe do you wanna go first, Paul?

Yeah.

So for me, it's not about a specific timeframe because for me it's trading from a price.

So the price is gonna be exactly the same as if you look at it on a one month, one week, one day, one minute.

It's from a particular price.

Um, I know that the market has to go through a process, and it's the process of searching for liquidity.

Um, it's always about a search for liquidity.

I mean, what happens when you get a few losers in a row, and how do you keep that mindset on track?

What do you see? What's your take on it?

Well, I'm still in reading and digesting mode, but I do it.

I profit warnings.

I do in two stages.

I do the initial quick absorb what's happened.

How bad is it? Is it temporary and fixable or is it structural? So that's my initial in the first hour type of assessment.

And my view on Craneware then was, well, this shouldn't affect the share price that much, 5% or 10% drop, because it's only a 6% miss against forecast on the profit warning for things that basically are delays or disruptions, which do look to me temporary factors, although one of the readers on my sub stack is saying he thinks it's more structural than than timing.

So that's got to be good for value investors.

What's the investment case on this one?

Well, again, I'm just going to sound like a right smart ass here.

We've been warning people about the balance sheet here consistently since March 25.

Now, the problem wasn't net tangible asset value, which was strong, and they've also got freehold property.

The problem which we identified and repeatedly flagged to investors was the excessive inventories.

They've obviously got a backed up stock position with a lot of stuff they can't shift.

I mean, really big amounts.

What was your take?

But I do think outsourcing in blue collar is a better place to be than outsourcing in white collar, because I think the blue collar jobs are still staying to a certain extent.

Yeah, interesting take on it.

Thanks, Paul.

I mean, I'm still in information gathering, listening and learning mode on AI, and I sort of put bull and bear points about it as I come across them in my podcast.

But I must admit, I am leaning towards a bit of scepticism on it because, I mean, I've heard about situations where people have got AI chatbots dealing with customers and they've had to switch them off in the end because they're making chaotic... poor decisions.

You know, and I've dealt with AI bots from my Airbnb hosts that I know it's only a small version.

And to be honest with you, it just irritated me.

You've owned shares, haven't you? And then you've bought some more, haven't you? So what's the investment case for CT Automotive? Well, the funny thing is, I

Came out with, was it training update or results this week? What's your

thoughts on that? Yeah, I spent yesterday morning on this.

I did a write up on my sub stack.

So I think it's dirt cheap.

I'm not I want to buy some, actually, but I haven't got any cash available, unfortunately.

So, yeah, it's I mean, they've been putting out quite negative news flow now for a while.

um and they had obviously jd sports a fashion sports um fashion orientated sportswear and a hugely successful business i mean if you look at the long-term chart this thing's been a massive multi-bagger even at the current price but basically it's now back to where the share price was almost well 10 years ago but in that time revenue and profits have soared So I think it's just an absolute bargain, this is.

eyeball tracking that's it stop people sort of falling to sleep and this sort of stuff and it's been mandated in the EU to go live in by July at the latest and it seems as though their sales are ramping up anyway again what's your latest on it

The shares have done very well and it came out results this week, I think.

Yeah, that was, I think that was this morning.

Yes, we had a Q1 business update, basically saying, it says the portfolio, presumably they mean the loan book, was 25% ahead year on year.

So, I mean, the bull case here is very convincing, I have to say.

You know, basically it's producing great margins, good cash flows, you know, very, very low, PE.

But to balance that, you know, it's cheap for a reason, I think, because you've got all these risks of foreign exchange, hyperinflation in a lot of the economies where it operates.

Apparently, the bulls, so I think, you know, I can see both bull and bear points on this one.

A heavily indebted chemicals business, but it does now seem to be getting its mojo back.

Anyway, what was your sort of take on it? Because it was a bit of a shocking 40% drop in the share price.

Yeah, it was actually nearly 50% on Monday, but I think it's bounced probably about 10%.

So yeah, net, you're right.

Well, like everyone, totally flummoxed by it.

I mean, I've been moderately bullish on Goodwin, but obviously we've been flagging that the valuation had got to a level where it couldn't afford to make any missteps on a PE of over 30 times.

And the company acts like a private company that happens to have a listing, so they don't play by the rules terms of having any broker research out there and you know it's just a will to do as we please and look how much our shares have gone up by so the the the you know management have certainly shattered investor confidence for sure because I mean when I read the announcement on Monday which annoyingly again came out during market hours I think at 19 minutes past 9 which is not fair because the That gives an unfair advantage to professionals who are sitting at their screens, whereas your ordinary small investor is probably at work and they can't react.

So I think, yeah, I think management and Goodwin have really screwed up the communications.

So

What was your take on it?

Well, we've spent quite a bit of time on this this morning.

My colleague John did a lot of digging on it.

And basically, my view first thing was that I think it opened down 17% or something.

And it was still, it tried to bounce.

And then it was still down 13% about an hour ago or so.

And I said to the team, look, whenever that happens, because it's an inline, they put in an inline trading update with, saying there's nothing serious here.

The shares have done fabulously we spoke to the ceo and the cfo yesterday do you want to fill people in on what we found oh

Anyway, what was your take on it? Shares have done really well.

Very good.

We love this company, Cerulean CER.

I remember speaking to management years ago when it was about £1.50 a share and it went on to 12 bag.

It's incredible.

Again, it's owner managed.

A lot of these real multi-bagging companies are owner managed.

Anyway, they came out with an announcement this week that they were – bringing forward four years of royalty into one-off um payment what was your take on this and the business

What was your take from our conversation with the management team?

Well, not much different to when we last spoke to them, because we were already pretty fully aware of the story.

I should add that, just for full disclosure, that I've been a Bango shareholder myself for several months.

I think we spotted this, we were a little bit ahead of the curve on this.

I think we spotted this in June, didn't we? Yeah.

And saw that there's an opportunity here, but it wouldn't become apparent until the 2026 numbers.

So I bought in around 80p, so I'm quite pleased with that, because... obviously 50% up.

keep

I think they came out with some results this week or something.

Yeah, this is a bit frustrating, this share, because the figures that it came out with, yeah, here we are two days ago, 14th of July.

This was a trading update for June 25.

By any measure, these were fabulous numbers.

Beaks is producing terrific compound revenue growth.

It's now profitable, although there were different interpretations of the profits and cash flows, which I respect from people with differing views on it.

But they always seem to sort of snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by over forecasting.

What's your quickly latest on this one?