When I was listening to Justin Braitling yesterday, I thought he...

When I was listening to Justin Braitling yesterday, I thought he must have been muttering under his breath 'Memo to self: Never do a presentation after Geoff Wilson has been to town'.

By way of background, Geoff is a very relaxed presenter, and gets a lot of his team involved. He's at the top of his game, and it shows. It was a 9.30am kick-off, but whilst some of us were getting in an early cuppa, Geoff was inside at the lectern, answering questions from investors before the formal presentation began. He just seems happy to talk about stocks and his funds. I guess they've been performing well (as long only funds) and there were no gripes from the audience. In fact, as per his usual style, there were a few chuckles as well. Plenty of stock specific stuff as well, which people like to hear. He quizzed the audience (by way of a show of hands) on the suitability of the venue, and whether we'd prefer to
move back into the city.
A brief description of the relationship wetween WAM and the satellites, then touched upon where he sees the market (fully valued) and that the funds have achieved reasonable performance whilst still holding a large percentage in cash, as a backstop for a market correction.

The ALF / Watermark presentation could best be described as 'frusrating'. From an investors perspective, as Justin stuck very much to talking to each slide in the presentation, and almost NO stock specific information regarding what positions have worked well for them, which ones hadn't etc. He was trying to emphasis their long / short
strategy, and that, whilst the last 6 months had been disappointing, they have a long history of doing very well, and even produced positive results at the time long only LICs were turning in negative results. But, he said they'd made some mistakes recently, that hurt the funds performance. Moreover, as ALF had a goodish period of outperformance, the share price moved to a premium to asset backing, but this period of underperformance has been exacerbated by this premium unwind.

He emphasized that you (shareholders) had some of the best fund managers out there, and that your capital is largely protected by the strategies that they have in place. There was a LOT of emphasis on trying to explain the inter-relationship between having their capital safely in the bank, whilst trying to make superior returns from their long / short strategy. The ALF audience seemed a little more 'narky' with their questioning....no doubt as a result of a falling share price.

Personally, I felt that by three quarters of the way through the presentation, if I held ALF shares, I'd promptly sell them, but after he moved off script as a result of the questions, I could sense that he was rally feeling frustrated, that their offering was a good one, and that people need to understand it won't work their way 100% of the time. By the end, I actually felt that they were probably more a buy than a sell.