Please introduce yourself and tell us about your business.
My name is Angus Mackintosh and I work for Smartkarma under CrossASEAN Research.
It’s very much an ASEAN-focused area that I’m looking at. I focus specifically on Indonesia more than any other market but I look at the whole of ASEAN.
What’s the unique edge you provide the buy-side?
My edge, I think, is the fact that I spend a lot of time in Jakarta, visiting companies and talking to management. So I spend a lot of time on the ground talking to the companies. I’ve known all of them for quite some time so I’ve seen the ups and downs they’ve had.
What’s an example of a great call you’ve made?
Let me give the example of SCMA, which is one of the largest media companies in Indonesia. It’s basically a TV company, so they make most of their revenues from advertising. They had a pretty tough time with a lot of competition within the TV market but, towards the end of last year, they saw a massive turnaround in terms of audience share. And I picked this up from having multiple conversations with management and keeping a very close relationship with investor relations.
What’s great about being an Independent Research Provider?
I think a lot of it is having 100% flexibility on what you write about, when you write about it. You also don’t have the same hours as you would in a bank, you don’t have the same distractions. I think you can be a lot more focused when you set yourself to creating ideas and writing stuff. And basically I can choose to be on a plane tomorrow and go down to Jakarta to meet companies if I think the timing is right.
