Episode Transcript
The Finance Ghost: Welcome to episode 221 of Magic Markets. We're now on the other side of the Easter weekend. So whether you celebrate or not, I'm willing to wager that a few chocolates probably found their way into your weekend. We hope the bunny visited you and brought you some nice things. The bunny has been a little bit scarce in the markets actually this year, the public markets have been somewhat all over the place. So perhaps not a bad thing that we'll be talking about private markets today.
And before I introduce our guest, who you have heard from before so it's going to be a familiar voice to you, let me say hello to Moe all the way up in Canada. Moe, you obviously don't celebrate Easter from a religious perspective, but I suspect that the bunny visited you, didn't it?
Mohammed Nalla: The bunny always visits, right?
The Finance Ghost: I thought so!
Mohammed Nalla: When there's chocolate involved, the bunny always visits. And it's. I was chuckling…
The Finance Ghost: …it's a non-denominational bunny.
Mohammed Nalla: Non denominational bunny! Look, we've got some family members, they celebrate Easter as well. I was just actually off-air saying how you just recover from all the Halloween candy, then you’ve got Christmas, then you’ve got Valentine's, then you’ve got Easter. Luckily I had Ramadan in the middle, I could fast and recover some of those calories. But again, you mentioned the Easter eggs, the market's been a bit of a rotten egg! That’s certainly kept us on our toes. And if you're eating the Easter eggs and packing on some of the pounds, the markets gives you many reasons to actually shed it with all of the stress.
I think it plays so nicely into the discussion we're going to have today because it's not just about public markets that have really had - I'm going to use impolite language, let me restrain myself - but it's been a storm out there. I'm not going to say what storm out there.
You get private markets that always look so much more attractive. They're a lot less volatile. We've spoken on the show around the diversification that private markets actually bring into the mix. But this week we're actually going to take a slightly different angle on it and we're going to be discussing how the growth that investors tend to enjoy over the longer term, investors that are looking for growth, how that growth profile seems to have shifted away from public markets and into private markets.
I think that's a great way to actually introduce our guest this week. That's Connie Bloem from Mesh. Connie, you've been on the show before. We love discussing stuff with Mesh. The last show we had with Mesh was discussing gold. I remember because I did a webinar with Mesh on this. If you missed it, go and check it out. We'll put the link in the write-up on the website. But gold around that time was around $3,000. And it hasn't been that long - it's only been about a month, just over a month. Gold now testing $3,500! So for those of you that maybe missed out on that Mesh gold offering on the webinar, go and check it out. Does it continue from here? I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. But with all of that uncertainty, assets like gold and assets like private assets - credit, equity, whatever that might be - that's very interesting.
Connie, with that as the backdrop, welcome back to Magic Markets.
Connie Bloem: Thanks Moe and Ghost. It's always good to be back. I remember the previous podcast we did, we talked about putting your gold under your mattress. But I hear today we're going to be talking about putting all your Easter eggs in one basket? And hopefully that is not the private or the public markets, but a bit of a diversified collection of eggs that we'll be talking about today.
The Finance Ghost: You’ve got to have those hedges in place, right? That's like Moe's Ramadan fast, basically his hedge against four or five months of continuous eating - obviously some very important religious stuff, Moe. But you know, gold is certainly a hedge and people see private markets sometimes as a hedge as well. They kind of get bucketed in as alternative assets etc.
The reality is that the underlying assets are - if it's equities, it's still operating companies. It's not actually that different from public markets in terms of the stuff you're potentially investing in. It just seems as though the world structurally has said that public markets are hard. They don't really do what they used to do for us, if we're looking to raise capital, not necessarily getting the right valuations.
So businesses that might have IPO'd before seem to be staying private for a little bit longer, raising capital in different ways. Is that the trend that you are also seeing out there? Because if I look just on the JSE, IPOs are pretty thin on the ground and when we do get them, it feels like it's just a spin-off of a company rather than something new coming to market.
Connie Bloem: Yes, I think maybe I can start out and create a bit of clarity around what is private and what is public. Your intro talked about alternative assets and many a time in the market we do find people that - there's a bit of uncertainty. Are all private assets, alternative assets? And how does that actually look?
I think for today's discussion, a very simple definition here is that if you are listed on a regulated exchange - so regulated exchange being the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange etc. - then you are seen as public. That is not strictly the legal definition of a public versus a private company. But for today's discussion, let's create a bit of a ring fence around that. Everything else is clumped into this big term called the alternative or private markets. And those terms are sometimes used interchangeably. It’s quite fun trying to figure out which term to use now here because the private equity and venture capital guys don't like to be clumped in with the alternative asset guys and the people doing gold don't like being clumped in with the private markets. But yet again, let's make it simple today and just say private markets include the alternative asset market as well.
If I look at this kind of trend, what is the trend? Firstly, the trend is that there are less and less companies listing and also the public markets are shrinking. To showcase this trend, let's talk a bit of numbers just to give us all a bit of a feel of what is happening in the market.
Firstly, companies are staying private for longer. That's one statement that you made Ghost. And that statistic is that in the year 2000, when I was still very much young and fresh-looking - I think I was in grade two in 2000! - the average age of a company listing on the public market was four years. And now, the average age is 11. So companies are staying private for longer.
But also what happens in that period of time is they actually experience around 90% of their growth before their listing. What that actually means is that the purpose of a listing is no longer to get capital into your business. It's much rather that people are listing or entrepreneurs are listing to take capital, take money off the table – a liquidity event for them. If 90% of that growth actually happens pre-IPO and you're only investing in the public markets i.e. the things that you can get on the stock exchanges, you're actually missing out on this massive part of the market's growth.
I also mentioned that the markets are shrinking. A very little-known fact in the market currently is that since 1996 to current date, the US market decreased by 43% - so that's the equity market in the US - 43%, that is a massive decrease in the number of listed good quality companies that we're seeing here.
Mohammed Nalla: I think those are such valid points, Connie, because we've discussed the delistings trend on the JSE. You've brought in a very interesting data point from the US because this is not just a JSE problem, it's a global issue where - and again, your point on exit liquidity is just so important because traditionally in let's call it private markets, there are informational asymmetries. A lot of people shy away from it because they don't have the line of sight. Whereas if you're a public company, if you're listed on an exchange in the US you're getting quarterly reporting, slightly less frequent if you look at European or South African markets. But that gives investors some sort of - you know, they feel good, they have line of sight. And I say feel good because just because you're a public company doesn't mean that there aren't some real nasties lurking under the hood. Steinhoff in South Africa, you know, I don't have to remind people about all those painful memories and then...
Connie Bloem: …you're just giving us flashbacks here!
Mohammed Nalla: I mean the issue here is that that informational asymmetry is a valid point when it to private markets. Absolutely. But it's also not a dead cert that if you're investing in public markets that you've de-risked that.
I think your point on exit liquidity is so vital because we covered Berkshire Hathaway quite recently in Magic Markets Premium and something that you're seeing underlying Berkshire Hathaway, everyone knows about their very large investments in listed stocks, listed companies, but a very large proportion of the underlying balance sheet, their investments are in unlisted firms. And again, some of those firms may never see the light of day in terms of a public listing. All of those juicy returns are sitting there for the private investors.
Now, there is maybe some survivorship bias there. You don't hear about the horror stories in the private markets where a company you invest in goes belly-up. But again, you're getting that in the public space as well.
A point I want to raise, because we haven't really touched on it, but it is important if we're discussing public versus private, is also liquidity. Because investors - like I say the informational asymmetry, that's one thing - but liquidity is another thing. And you get fairly deep liquidity in public markets. Obviously if you're not investing in small caps, if you go down the value chain, yes, you're going to have liquidity issues there as well. So again, for those of you that are invested in small caps in the public markets, that's maybe even more of a use case to consider private markets.
But Connie, what is your comment on liquidity? Because liquidity is twofold. One, we've mentioned the exit liquidity for founders as they list a firm. Ghost, you've written tons and tons of stuff around why we don't chase IPOs. You get the IPO hype - the stock will spike into that and then subsequently, almost inevitably in recent use cases, we've seen it fall well below the IPO price. That's just the founders getting their exit liquidity. And thereafter, even once the stock’s listed, you go into the second phase of liquidity.
But when you come to private markets, that liquidity doesn't exist. So quite often you invest, you're investing as the minority shareholder. You don't have line of sight, you don't have any real powers. And if you want to actually get out of a position, that's slightly questionable.
Connie, your comment on that, maybe as a starter?
Connie Bloem: I think those are such pertinent points to talk about in any market, because I do enjoy that you’re bringing up firstly, the contradictions between the public and private markets but also within the public markets itself, how it can differ on the same board - and we haven't even touched how that can differ across countries because, let's be honest, if you go into the African markets, what is liquidity there as well? And what is currency risk?
Liquidity is always the age-old argument and fallacy in this market and information asymmetry as well. What does that generally refer to? That is the accessibility of information, it's the transparency of that information, it's how readily it's available. Then liquidity is generally something that follows up from that information availability. If you as an investor cannot make an informed decision in the market, how can you actually know what is the fair price of something? Whether you should stay invested into that asset or not? I don't think there is a magic bullet here to cover both of the points, this is why access is so important and also why we're doing what we're doing currently in Mesh - because we understand that these are real issues in the market. These are issues that we need to address and look at.
And that's why a digital strategy and a platform is so important. Because just being listed is not going to resolve information asymmetry. It's actually the access to the information, it's a standardisation of that information. Platforms across the world are coming in and are trying to resolve this issue, firstly to provide you with that information, and then secondly, liquidity. How do you get liquidity in a private vehicle? Well, firstly, get onto a platform, but secondly, do you actually have mechanisms available to carry that liquidity? Do you have proper trading mechanisms? Do you have proper legal agreements behind it? That's also something that is very hairy in the private market.
But with those things also come certain opportunities. This is also why we're seeing a massive boom within the private credit space and the private equity space where these professional investors can step in and bring some clarity into this space. So again, I don't have a magic solution for you here, but I would definitely say that if you do step into this private space, make sure that you're on a platform and secondly, make sure that you - and if you don't want to do the investment yourself - that you do maybe have access to someone that is a professional investor that's used to dealing with these kind of risks.
The Finance Ghost: “Magic bullet” should be the one minute super-summarised version of our podcast going forward. We'll have to think about that.
Connie Bloem: I like it.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, maybe. It really comes down to this balancing act, right? The reason why IPOs have become somewhat less popular is because the level of regulation is so high, the costs are so high. The argument is that the regulation protects investors, but protecting investors by making sure that nothing comes to market is also not super helpful, right?
You've got to actually create an investment universe for people to look at, otherwise there's nothing to invest in. And it's not an easy balancing act at all. You referenced that amazing statistic of the average age of companies that were coming to market around the year 2002, I think you said, or 2000. What was so interesting about that is obviously how low the age is. Of course, that was the dot com boom and then subsequent bust was around that time and it was this very exciting time to raise capital. So you get these hype periods in the market where you get these young companies coming through and big IPOs. We saw it again in Covid, lots of platform businesses coming and getting involved on a market where there was tons of liquidity running around.
You do get the hype cycle of IPOs and we can debate how healthy that is or isn't. But what you don't want is a complete, just, death of IPOs. That doesn't help anyone. You want to see stuff coming to market. So how do you balance that off? How does, for example, the work you are doing in allowing private companies to get onto a platform, how do you balance off the regulatory requirements? You can't have nothing effectively, because then how do investors make a decision? What protections do they have at all? But then you've got to avoid becoming just another big public market that is too hard for companies to use. It's not an easy thing to try and sort out, is it?
Connie Bloem: It’s not an easy thing, but yes it's fun to sort it out. This is something that I hope I will be working on for years to come because if we keep on working it, we'll keep on improving it. Your point is very valid of how you don't actually have access to the full investor universe. I think that is something that's not spoken about enough, that if we see a decrease in listings or IPOs, and if we see a decrease in companies actually staying listed in a market, it's also no longer representative of the economic realities in a market.
We talked about diversification, having your Easter eggs in a couple of baskets. And if you just look at that example, then you don't have a diversified portfolio listed. So firstly, that is a risk for you as an investor that you do need to look at and look at closely because you do have concentration risk in a market and especially within the market like South Africa, where we have seen the Top 40 stay the Top 40 for the last couple of years. That's not supposed to be like that. There should be movement.
A market is a dynamic organism. Let's call it an organism for today. Maybe the basket of eggs analogy is not traveling here anymore. But what is always a constant reality is companies are trying to become bigger because they want to become more profitable and they want to make more money for their investors. That's the basic principle of the capital markets. What that means is if companies keep on growing, they have one of two choices. They can grow via their revenue or they can grow by bringing capital in. Since when was the capital market in the public markets the only place in which you could do that?
That's not true. That is narrow minded of us, thinking that listing is the only way to, or should be the only way of bringing capital into your market. And therefore we created this regulatory space to try to de-risk against bad behaviour and bad movements and so forth. But now we've gone and said “never again” with each of these bad things happening. So dot com bust, never again. 2008, never again. Covid, never again. Maybe with the Trump and policies and so forth coming in here, we're also going to say never again.
And every time “never again” happens, we just increase the amount of regulation that we see, instead of asking ourselves: is this still the principle that we want to maintain, is this still good for our economy? Because the regulators also have a responsibility of making sure that the economy can grow, so you can't over-regulate, you can't lock your public markets up to such an extent that there is no longer that space where companies can grow.
That's maybe a general comment on it. But now shifting to the private space is I would love the private market to keep on growing. So how do we approach this problem statement is, I said it in my introduction, we take a principles-based approach. There are certain constructs in the market that should be there to take care of certain things for us already. You don't want me to be your second SARS. You don't want me to be your second SARB. You're already paying for those things and you already have them. You already have CIPC to oversee the Companies Act and the execution of the Companies Act. You already have your board of directors. You already have your annual financial results and financial returns. Those are your basic principles.
Do you adhere to the laws and regulations of the country in which you are established? And I think we should honour those constructs a lot more and not ask companies to double up on those efforts. So what is the principle that we need to maintain? Firstly, are you doing those things and are you communicating those things then to your investors at the times that you should be communicating that? And then you should always give a company the benefits of talking to their investors more and more. That may be the second way in which we do it. We're giving them a space to talk to the investors.
I can use a very beautiful private asset that we've listed and talked about previously as well as the example of it - I just think it's very apt. We talked about the MOS Prime + 2% 10 year bond previously and this is a public offer - not public listed, a public offer. Now, I brought in a new term here, private market public offer. How dare I mix up all these things. But what that means is we have retail clients in involved in that assets and we need to make sure that it adheres to regulations.
Firstly, there's a prospectus registered on it as what CIPC says we need to do to raise that amount of money. Now they have a one-year anniversary coming up, so what that one-year anniversary means is they are in any case doing a financial audit. They need to communicate that to their clients. So we as a platform, as a company are regulated, but we're in a space that is a bit lighter and we then impose a lighter weight regulation than on our clients. We're not trying to be the regulator in the sense of a public market, but what we are trying to do is be a conduit of them executing on those responsibilities that they have and for that we are obviously getting paid because we are helping them to meet some of those responsibilities.
I think I've covered a lot of topics there but it's really just sticking to the principles of what a good market is based on.
The Finance Ghost: I know Moe's going to jump in but I just wanted to make one quick point about an analogy that I think is worthwhile on that topic and then I'll let him jump in - which is, if you've got kids and you let them play, occasionally they're going to bump their head. Your alternatives are over-regulate: “sorry, you can never play again. We're never going to the Spur again. We're never going to go to the park again,” - guaranteed terrible childhood, but hey, at least you'll never bump your head. It feels like that's what public markets have done to a very large extent. And yeah, it's kind of hard to diversify with the kids analogy. It kind of falls over at that point…
Connie Bloem: …please don't acquire someone else's kids.
The Finance Ghost: No, exactly, just in case your one bumps his or her head. But you get the point, which is you just can't overregulate these things. There are certain risks you just have to allow and then try and find a way to work with.
Mohammed Nalla: I think it's a great analogy. I've got young kids and during the COVID years, it was like, you can't go to the park, terrible childhood kind of thing. And that's the over-regulation.
Connie, you've discussed so much, and I want to try and pull some of those threads together because I want to land on what some of the nuts and bolts are here. Some of the things you've touched on: obviously overregulation. I think a theme that we've actually seen across capital markets has been this intermediation that you've actually seen from banks, for example. Big businesses, mid-size businesses looking for capital, they stop going to banks. They go to people who will give them private debt or even private equity to shore up their balance sheets. And that's why a lot of that activity is happening outside of the traditional, I'm not even going to say public, but outside of the traditional channels, because that's what we're talking about here. It's outside of the traditional architectures that have existed. I think your point's very important, though, in that you don't want to replicate the regulation that does exist. You've got to give some credence to the institutional framework that exists within certain countries where you operate and trust that the people that are doing those jobs, do those jobs.
The important point where I try and pull this all together is it boils down to access. In my head, that's the word that really resonates here, access. We've discussed informational asymmetry. And when you're looking at a platform like yourselves, you're working on the access that investors have to that information in traditionally private markets, you're also talking about access to just the investment itself, because at the end of the day, private equity, private debt, has been the preserve of those with really deep pockets, deep balance sheets, Berkshire Hathaway, large private family offices.
The democratisation of finance, which has been a theme that kind of came and went away, that's still something that's important because retail investors, as you correctly state, in my view, they've been missing a large portion of the action. If a lot of the economic activity is moving outside of the traditional channels, they're moving into these, let's call it, private capital pools. Why shouldn't retail investors have access to that? That boils down to access.
It's not that they shouldn't have access, it's that they haven't had access. And that's where a player like Mesh again comes through. I've watched what you've done in a number of spaces, and I love the fact that you raised that example that you've got on the platform. Because we're not just talking equity, you're talking a diverse range of asset classes. This is the point I want to land on this, because we've got the access to information, but it's also access to differential payoff profiles for clients, investors with different risk profiles. Someone may want to invest in private debt, and ironically, private debt may actually be lower risk than public equity because you just stack slightly higher up on the balance sheet. This is a point that I'm really passionate about because I work in the institutional space as well, and I see how large pension funds and institutional investors get access to those syndicated loans at banks and so forth. That's an area that's just not being tapped for private investors. I might want some of that private debt. I might want some mezzanine debt that comes through. I might have a slightly higher risk tolerance and maybe I actually want some of the private equity, which I do consider to be slightly higher risk than public markets. We may disagree on this, but that's how I pull all of the themes you've spoken about into an access point, because access is important.
Maybe talk to us about how Mesh is going about improving that access on all of those various fronts and touch points?
Connie Bloem: I love this point that you just made, and it is the truth. I think there was, for many years there was a bit of a reaction against the word democratisation, thinking that you can walk into, let's say as an example, an Audi showroom and go to that beautiful RS6 and then buy it for R10, where it's definitely not a R10 car. That's not what democratisation means. We're not changing the price of something.
But what access means is that I can walk onto that showroom floor and I can look at this desirable asset. I think you and I had very parallel experiences because when I was doing a lot of work with a lot of the trading floors in the banks and so forth, I also looked at some of these transactions that they were doing and it's beautiful. It's like, why can't I invest in energy or a wind turbine in South Africa? it shouldn't be this hard for me to do.
Access is the core of what we do, it's one of our values. It's also one of our value propositions. And we've said many times that it doesn't matter whether you have R10 or R10 billion. If you want to be in the market, you should be able to say I'm old enough, let me go. Let me enter into the market and explore and do what I want to do.
What we have done in our approach to the market to make sure that we can actually be true to this norm? Firstly, we've built a platform that is accessible as easily for retail clients as it is for an institution. We don't treat the clients differently when they come to our market. Most of our assets can be traded in very small denominations and if they cannot be traded in those very small denominations - we talked about in the gold example of our R50 investment, we are very clear around what is the entry requirement to do that.
Then something that we really like talking about in the market is that we have something called a Mesh Pro Club. So even if you can't reach that minimum investment amount, we can either put it into a model portfolio or you can join the Pro Club. It's actually a bit of a club transaction to step into that field. So just trying every place that we get to the market to open it up to diversify and give people more and more options - to your liquidity point, this is what happens when you start opening up this market and when you start providing people with more access.
I'm going to refer back to the MOS bond. When we originally raised that asset, firstly people said to us, no chance in the world that you're going to get R100 million from a diversified market. Well, we did. Secondly, we got 17% retail inclusion on that asset, which is unheard of in a private asset. And then what is happening now, because we had that 17% retail inclusion, is that we're seeing an 8% per year secondary market activity on it. And I know I'm loving my data here today, but it just proves the point that if you include more people, if you give more people access to an asset, you give them information and you provide them with the opportunity to have liquidity, there will be liquidity, people will be trading and they will be acting as responsible adults in the market.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it's super interesting. I just went on to the website for Die MOS, so if it sounds very Afrikaans to you, it's because it is. It's an Afrikaans education business focused on building schools from what I can see. Had a look at the team, I see the guy running it is an ex-Affies guy and I must say, I’ve just been reminded of why I didn't play rugby in high school, because he looks vastly bigger than me and stronger. So that's as expected. But all jokes aside, it's lovely to see that a business like this can come and raise, I think you said, R100 million through this process because that's a meaningful number. To raise a R100 million on the JSE, firstly, this business would have to list its equity or they could go and do it as some kind of debt programme. But again, the numbers are just so expensive. So here they've raised debt, not equity - to be clear, they could go and do it as some kind of debt programme. But the costs I would imagine of coming and doing it on Mesh, the timeline of doing it, it almost feels like we should do a podcast at some point where we actually just profile what happened here, because this is obviously a real-world example. It's easy to talk to the theory, but when a business has come and raised R100 million bucks in debt, that is an exceptional outcome, because it's also allowed for the capital stack to be structured the right way. You don't have a situation where your founders are having to give away their equity at a very expensive point in the journey.
Because, and this is the thing, is when you've worked in public markets or you've advised companies, you understand this. But if you haven't, it's not always easy to remember that the most expensive equity you sell will be at the earliest point in your business because if it goes well, that 5% or 10%, or often way more than that, that you have to sell to venture capital partners to get the thing off the ground will end up being worth an absolute fortune. That's why the VCs are there, is they're looking for the biggest returns.
Stuff like access to debt for cash generative smaller businesses can absolutely be life changing for those on the equity register at the time of doing this deal, because they can go and actually raise capital that comes with a fixed cost or even a floating cost but doesn't necessarily become more and more and more expensive as the business grows.
I just think it's an impressive thing that's happened there. And yeah, I think when we do another podcast, maybe we need to look at that in more detail. It's pretty good to see.
Connie Bloem: That's a lovely idea. And currently I would actually challenge your listeners, bring me a better money market assets currently than that one. I shall be eating all my easter eggs if you can find one. But it's a fantastic asset. It's 100% guaranteed, it pays prime plus 2% returns and it's just an awesome one to see as an example of this.
But Ghost, I think a point that is very important here is recently UBS also looked at how family offices invest and we all know what the billionaires of the world are doing and these family offices are just trending towards the private equity side. They’re either directly investing into those assets or they are finding ways to invest more into it, like funds or funds or hedge funds or privately managed assets in this space. And generally when the family office and the wealth managers are doing these kind of things, I would take note of it for us mere mortals trying to manage our own portfolios.
Mohammed Nalla: Yeah, Connie, I mean there's so much going on. And again, you for those of you that maybe didn't get the spelling, it's Die MOS. Go and check it out. It's on the Mesh website and certainly very interesting. I just like it because I like anything that's a differentiated asset class on the platform. That's something that we did discuss with yourselves in the previous show as well. Unfortunately, it looks as though we're running out of time, which is why I'm going to almost pre-load another show with you…
The Finance Ghost: We are, we are. But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait - we are running out of time. But I just went and looked on the platform now. This thing is trading at a premium to book. Is that right? At a premium to par because of the yield it's paying. That's interesting.
Connie Bloem: There's a coupon at the end of the month.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah. I was gonna ask you about the spreads and what this thing's trading at, but I've got to say that even the spreads actually look pretty decent. So all jokes aside, anyway.
Connie Bloem: Come on Ghost, you worked in the market, you can calculate that quickly for us.
The Finance Ghost: There we go. No, then I'm gonna just irritate Moe because the show is going on too long and you know all those things. But I will tell you: R5,000 rand per note and currently the sell order in the market is at R5,118. So, you know, that's a good - that's a nice investment for people who got in early. They've seen capital growth, plus they're earning a nice coupon. Anyway, Moe, back to you.
Mohammed Nalla: It's a great point. I'm glad. I'm glad you raised it right before we wrap up. A lot of times people don't understand how fixed income assets perform, right? Remember, it depends on when you invested, what the yield curve’s done subsequent to that. And then it's also a product of supply and demand. And so if you're seeing that premium to NAV come through, it's telling you that there's arguably more demand out there than there has been supply, which Connie for Mesh actually means it's great for business.
I just wish - there's so much we can unpack, and I was going to say the pre-cursor - I'm going to pre-load another show with you and I'm going to get you to commit to actually coming back on. I want to get into some of the nuts and bolts of the different assets that you have on the platform because I know there's some commodity stuff there. We spoke about the gold, but that's not necessarily the most exciting. Even though it's gone from $3,000 to $3,500. Yeah, it's exciting. There's also equity stuff on there as well where you're giving investors access to that. There's the fixed income stuff on there. And hopefully by the next time we actually speak to you, you've got a couple more of these fixed income deals coming on the platform.
Because my big gripe in the South African capital market is like we said, Connie, we all worked at banks here, right? And you work on some of these syndicated loan deals that are just so juicy. There are some amazing products out there, amazing projects out there. And in South Africa where there's this very deep need for public private partnerships, for infrastructure investment to go on because the state can't do it on its balance sheet, this kind of platform, these kinds of deals become fundamentally important, not just as investors, but for the country as a whole.
Now, I'm going to pause there because unfortunately we have run out of time. This was a fantastic show, but, Connie, go get prepared. We're going to have you back on the show to unpack some of those dynamics, the different stuff that's on the platform, because it's so interesting and goes to that point around the premium to the NAV that's come through. I think that's certainly enough to pique the interest of those that haven't gone onto the Mesh website to go and check it out. It's https://www.mesh.trade/ go and check out Mesh. Connie and the team are certainly receptive to your questions. If you have any questions, reach out to them and we will put the link in the transcripts to the show.
Connie, it's been a blast and I look forward to our next chat. Thanks so much for being on Magic Markets.
Connie Bloem: As always, it was fun. Thank you, guys.
The Finance Ghost: Thanks.
Mohammed Nalla: Cheers.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not financial or investment advice. Please speak to your personal financial advisor.
