WEBINAR: Investing in US stocks: The why and how

JOHANNESBURG — As South Africa’s political circus dumbs down the country’s business and economics, what should South African investors do? EasyEquities is launching a cost effective platform to invest in United States equities. Purple Group CEO Charles Savage and Biznews founder Alec Hogg discuss why this should form a part of any investors portfolio. – Stuart Lowman

A warm welcome to our webinar today, sponsored by EasyEquities and Charles Savage, the CEO of Purple Group, as you can see, is looking pretty good there in Jo’burg. I’m talking to you from London. I’m Alec Hogg. Charles, you guys have been doing interesting stuff. I see behind you, you have flags of SA and the USA.

Yes, I thought we’d add it for some background decoration.

Yes man, it’s taken you guys a long time to get to this point, the opening to the American market for SA investors. It’s now looking increasingly exciting and we’re going to be talking about that in time but I’ve got a little presentation that we can go through in just a moment. Charles, before we go there though, how long have you been thinking about this idea?

Ever since EasyEquities was born the whole notion is to democratise access to shares and investments. Obviously, the natural place for us to start was to build a business in SA but right from the start we wanted to create a global platform that provided access to all shares all around the world. It’s been in the plans for 2.5 years now and we’ve been at it almost every day for 2 years now so, it’s been a long journey to get here.

I’m sure the admin has been quite intense as well.

I think America has got to be the hardest market to add. The regulatory processes and hurdles that you need to jump over are not just specific to the US organisations. There were country approvals that we needed to get in order to be able to KYC and onboard customers ourselves so SA needed to be approved as a trusted destination. Then as an organisation we needed to get accredited so lots of regulatory red-tape that we had to get through before we could even start building platforms and integrating to stockbrokers and negotiating price points, and all that stuff.

KYC, what does that mean?

Know your client so, anti-money laundering, FICA. The equivalent of what we do here in SA but for the US market.

I love this graph. I got this off the LinkedIn so you like to swim with kids. I hope those are all your own kids, Charles?

That’s ‘Clan Savage’ it’s quite a few years ago. I was heavier and they were younger so, I think I got older and they got older but I also got lighter, I’m glad to say.

I love the lamb chops. What was that about?

Alec, if I turn my head sideways you’ll see that those sideburns. I think I was born with lamb chops.

At least the lamb chops have gone down a little bit but I suppose that’s a fashion statement and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just interesting, looking through your pedigree. You’ve been in the internet space for a long time, what drew you to it?

It’s actually a funny story. I was an accountant, a very bad, failed accountant and I was working as a management accountant at Health and Racket Club, which has obviously become Virgin Club today, and I just hated what I was doing. One of my varsity mates, I used to see him out a lot, and he was building and selling websites and I didn’t even know what the internet was, but he was having so much fun doing it and he was learning so much about other businesses because every business that he had to build a website for he had to understand what they were trying to achieve and then demonstrate that online.

Just because he was in love with what he was doing I just said to him, “Listen, is there space for an accountant?” He said, “No, but there’s space for a salesman so, why don’t you come sell and build websites?” That was back in 1996, and it was right at the start of the dotcom bubble that was starting and the internet was still in its infancy. I ended building SA’s first eCommerce website. Interestingly that was the first one ever to sell product online, sold South African seed, which is amazing. They were more progressive than anyone else. Then obviously, it got into more industry and then stockbroking was an industry that caught my attention because I used to buy shares on stairs at UCT, via the telephone, and investing in shares always intrigued me so, I got to marry what I was doing and with something I was really interested in and that marrying technology with financial services became a real passion of mine and that was back in 1998.

Then eventually I jumped ship when the dotcom bubble burst, stopped selling websites and building them, and then did them exclusively for GT247.com, and I joined them as head of technology. That was my first role and I was head of technology for 5 or 6 years, right the way through to 2006, I was still running technology for the group. Still today, every part of me thinks technology first. It’s ingrained in who I am and what I do. It’s part of my DNA now.

I want to tell you something. There’s not many people in SA who’ve been in the internet space and are still there for longer than me, how’s that? And you are because I started MoneyWeb in 1997, above my garage and you were already in the space in 1996. That’s a pretty pioneering spirit, hey?

We are and we’re still here, Alec.

We still here and we’re still fighting. One of the reasons why we got involved in the offshore thing about 3 years ago we started a portfolio with Standard Bank, and there it is. It’s a global portfolio and I can tell you that we update this every month. As you can see we started off with R2m, and it is R3.8m after 3 years so it just gives you an idea of the opportunities that are available in the global market. Charles, from your perspective, why did you want to offer US shares in particular, to EasyEquities clients?

There’s a couple of reasons and the first reason is that the biggest brands in the world and the most recognisable brands for our target audience, our primary target audience, being millennials, are available in the US to purchase. I’m thinking Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Alibaba, and the list goes on. Coca-Cola, Nike, you name them – the big brands are all in the US. For us what we found is that people start their investment journey with shares that they love, with brands that they love so what better marketing tool to get people interested and engaged and investing, and giving them access to those brands. I think the average South African probably spends 8 to 10 hours a day interfacing with those brands and wearing them in their everyday lives, that was the first point.

The second point, which is for me much more interesting. Is the diversity in terms of access to investment themes, regional distribution, and products and services on the US market is second to none. There are about seven thousand shares and ETFs available in the US, or about 3,500 shares, about a 50/50 split, (3,500 shares and 3,500 ETFs), and ETFs gives you access to absolutely anything you can think of. So, if you want access to ViaTech funds or FinTech funds or super companies in Asia, or start-ups or small caps, you name it the fanatic themes available to invest in. That goes from interesting niche themes all the way through to mainstream, S&P 100, DOW 30, NASDAQ 100 so for me the US opens a world of opportunities to South Africans and is a great, first destination to get comfortable with investing in global opportunities. It’s for me, the best market to open up first.

Now, you started this with a game and I actually, pulled out my portfolio on the game for today. So, if I had put that $10,000 in when the game started I would be like $400 in front, which is quite lekker that I’m making money in the USA. How’s it been going with the game? How well supported was it?

We have 4,400 players and I’m pleased to say that your returns didn’t feature in the top 10 so you did alright but you didn’t quite… The top guys made about $2,500 in a month. There was extraordinary excitement around the game and there were some surprises for us. One is the affinity that South Africans have got for some brands that they’ve never been exposed to. The number one stock was Tesla by some margin, I’m just looking at the stats now. It was about 20% ahead of Apple. Now, Apple we weren’t surprised people wanted to go and buy Apple but Tesla has never sold a single product in this country. Elon Musk almost denies his South African heritage more than he embraces it. Yet, South Africans absolutely love Tesla. It was just fascinating to see that such a strong brand affinity can be created in a market where you don’t even sell product.

I guess in hindsight that’s easy. If you think about the news flows that consumes our everyday lives, these brands, (Tesla, Apple, Amazon, Facebook) they dominate the news flows so, South Africans are a technology economy these days. It’s not like when you and I grew up, Alec, where the news flows dominated by what happened on out bourse and the newspapers ready as a side-line, in terms of covering those international companies. Today is very different.

Yes look at Tesla. There’s my 4 favourite stocks. Well, all I did was I put my 4 best stocks, I love Amazon, and I see that didn’t perform well in the last month but Tesla, I suppose, anybody who had bought it in the last month will be smiling and why not? Maybe we’re basking in the halo of his genius because everybody knows that Elon Musk is such a superstar and it’s nice to know that he does come from SA. In fact, his cousins, the Rive’s, who are part of his business, are also from Pretoria and in fact, his dad is still in SA, Errol, you can find him on Facebook of you want to.

Just the other story about all of this is to do with ETFs. You mentioned that a minute ago. This is a nice picture of the Vanguard Group, who started ETFs, John Bogle, decades ago and of course it’s now huge in the US. How big a part of the offering and maybe you can unpack the offering. What exactly Easy is going to be offering to clients but how big a part is the ETF?

We’re going to have about 50 ETFs to start with, which predominantly are the iShares, and then some Vanguard as well. We did that because we focussed on a universe that was digestible and in SA we’ve got about 70 ETFs and that’s about enough for our market. In the US, as I said, it’s 3,500 so, we want to keep it and make it a digestible universe and stick with stuff that our customers wanted. We started just with iShares and then as a result of the game, we’ve had about another 15 or 20 ETFs that we’ve added because customers have asked for them.

When you look at them they cover everything. From a regional perspective, there isn’t a region that we can’t access. So worldwide ETFs and then regionally focussed ETFs. You’ve got coverage in terms of asset classes of bonds, equities, property, as well as currency ETFs so, pretty much anything that you want to cover. What isn’t there for now are the more thematic ETFs. I’m surprised that the guys haven’t asked for those so FinTech, Biotech, and that kind of stuff but I think that will come in time.

I think what Vanguard and Bogle has done for investing is that it’s changed the game and it’s actually led the asset management industry for the last decade. It’s increased transparency. It’s brought down investor costs and because of that transparency I think it’s facilitated a huge amount of education. People actually understand what they’ve invested in and therefore, I think that’s increased engagement and interest in these products. The cost of ownership of these things is just extraordinary low. Even when compared to what I think is a fair universe in SA.

When you look at SA, we average 30 to 50 basis points on our ETFs. In the US, you can go as low as 8 basis points, all the way to 25 basis points on the more exotic stuff. But typically, you’re paying between 10 and 15 basis points for an ETF. In monetary terms, it’s for free. So fantastic products. Our experience with the SA investor is about 35% of their portfolios are made up of ETFs, which is just extraordinary. We haven’t taught them to do that but it gives them such a great diversification at such a low cost and then they can add value by picking the stocks that they want to own and improving their portfolio by getting access to things that they’re really interested in.

Charles we’ve got quite a few questions so, let’s start hitting a few of those. The first one is from Dawie, he says, “I’m a big fan of EasyEquities. My question is about dividends. How are the US stock dividends going to be taxed?”

It obviously depends and he sounds like he’s South African so, from a SA perspective the tax rules will apply in the same way that they do here. But it depends on your jurisdiction on your whole tax base. There is a withholdings tax as there in the SA universe and that withholdings tax will be deducted and paid across in the same way that it is for SA ETFs. There’s no difference from that perspective.

This one is from Johan Schutte. He says, “What are the possibilities at being able to invest in BitCoin through the EasyEquities platform?” Is that an investment nowadays, BitCoin, I thought it was just like a punt?

Yes and I asked this question on Twitter about a month ago. We’ve had huge interest in BitCoin so, what I did is I asked the question, are you interested in buying BitCoin and overwhelmingly, everybody said, “Yes.” Then the next question I said, “Which of you think BitCoin is investment grade?” Now whilst I believe in Bitcoin it feels too much like a casino, it feels too much like gambling and it just doesn’t fit well. I’m not making a judgement call. Cryptocurrencies are the future, I’ve not doubt, but it’s just not part of a responsible investment portfolio for now.

Yes, it’s interesting the Winklevoss twins, who were made famous in the Facebook movie. They’re the guys driving the whole potential ETF but so far, not so good as you say, Charles. The SEC never let them get through. An interesting story about those Winklevoss twins, they competed in the Olympics and they came 5th in the final and SA came 4th so, I’m sure the rowers from SA will remember those guys quite well. There’s a question here, “Can you please confirm if the platform will allow investing in US Dollars also, instead of SA Rands?”

Okay so, it’s only going to be available in US Dollars. We’re not doing Rand exposure to Dollar shares so, if that’s been confusing we’ll sort that out but it’s a Dollar account so, you need to get your money offshore and then deposit into your offshore EasyEquities account, which will be Dollar based.

I think it’s worth dwelling on that just for a minute, Charles. How exactly is it going to work then? You’re going to have to put your money overseas and then invest?

So you’ve got to get your money offshore through the traditional channels, which are typically your bank. Unfortunately the banks make it easy for wealthy people to do that and not expensive if you’re moving large sums of money and my advice there is, whoever you bank with, typically they’ll have a forex service that will facilitate it In a seamless way, it’s not very easy. There’s some tax reporting you need to do but it’s worth the effort and it’s not that bad.

For the smaller investor that’s where the problem starts to appear. We researched all of the banks that on average the minimum transaction costs of moving money offshore is about R200, all in. Now, for somebody who wants to move a thousand or two thousand Rand – that’s expensive. That’s 10% – 20% of their portfolio and I would hesitate and it’s not worth doing and that’s against our grain because we desperately want you guys to taste what it feels like and start investing in small amounts of money. For now, you’ve got to go through the traditional channel, through your bank. Try bargain and make it cheaper if it’s more expensive but typically they are negotiable on these kinds of things.

What we’ve done is in responding to the need that the small investor needs an avenue to get their money offshore is that we made an application to the Reserve Bank so that we can, and I didn’t want to use the word ‘bulk’ but I’m going to use it. It’s not bulk but all we want to do is through a single bank we will aggregate all of the client requests. The bank will charge us a single transaction fee and then we’ll share that transaction fee amongst all of our customers. In order to do that we’ve got to get Reserve Bank approval. That’s been pending for 4 weeks now and we expect the response within the next 2 weeks.

It’s never been given and I’ve just got to put that caution out there. The approval that we’re asking for has never been given but I think the cause is a good one and we’re hoping that the Reserve Bank sees the need so that we can provide a really low-cost service for the smaller investor to get the money offshore.

I guess the other good news is, and we’re all pulling for you on that one, Charles, but the other good news is that up to R1m you don’t have to go through all the tax hoops. For most people R1m is quite a lot of money to have in an investment portfolio so once you get that through from the Reserve Bank it should make it quite easy.

That R1m allowance is fantastic and, to be honest, the exchange control, there is no exchange control for 99% of South Africans. We can all take as much money as we like but my disappointing aspect of the current rules is you can’t use your credit card to fund an offshore investment account. That would have made it really easy. It’s illegal to do that. Now that’s an interesting point because there are financial service providers in SA that are allowing South Africans to take money offshore with their credit cards – it’s illegal. Now the reason that they’re doing it is that they’re not domiciled here so, the Reserve Bank is not going to march into their offices and shut them down but they will if we did it.

I think it’s an old-world rule that needs to change because quite frankly if I can buy goods and services offshore what’s more responsible, investing offshore or buying goods and services? So we’re going to see if we can in time also get that changed because that is probably the cheapest mechanism to get money offshore, is just to use your credit cards.

And debit cards is it the same story?

Also illegal.

There’s a question from Jeffrey Schulman, if I could just put my portfolio back up so that he can have a look – there we go, while we carry on answering questions. That’s the portfolio that we have there. Remember it has developed over time. Charles, Thabo wants to know, “Are we going to have SENS on EasyEquities?” Come on Thabo, why do you think BizNews is around.

Alec’s response is 100% on the money. BizNews is a source and there’s probably a 100 sources of SENS news and with people who focus on it do it better and add value to that SENS so, if you take someone like BizNews like what Alec does. He adds value to that SENS news because if you’ve ever heard a SENS announcement it’s so bland and boring and so void of any information, it’s just data. I would encourage people to sign up with BizNews and get people to rather translate the SENS news and turn it into actual information rather than just what’s on the table, that news is just so boring.

Peter wants to know, he says, “I’ve already got a US Dollar offshore account from salary earnings. Will I be able to deposit the US Dollars directly into an EasyEquities account for trading shares in US?”

100% – that’s exactly it. You’ll be able to do that straight away.

Faizal – “Can one trade Penny Stocks?”

No so the universe is S&P 100, DOW 30, NASDAQ 100, and then there’s a sampling of about 50 shares that users have asked us to add that they want to see on the platform and some of those might be classified as Penny Stocks, I haven’t reviewed all of them. I know the smallest stock we’ve got on is Man United, but there’s obviously a big following and being an Arsenal fan, it pains me to add Man United to the platform but no, no Penny Stocks to start with.

We will, I reckon within the next 6 – 9 months, we’ll add the S&P 100 small caps because I think there’s some real value in those and it’s not a liquidity problem. So people understand why did we reduce the universe it’s not because we’re trying to dictate where your money goes. The real reason is that in order to keep the costs low we have to restrain the investable universe because literally if we double it we double the cost, if we triple it, it would triple the cost. There’s no efficiency in that mechanism for us so, we have to build the audience. As we build the audience, (users/clients) then we build the investable universe. Otherwise what we would end up with is a very expensive access point to buy shares and that doesn’t speak to Easy.

I understand that there are probably shares that you want to access but aren’t readily available to start with but in time that will grow as the user base grows. I would guess that over the next 2 or 3 years, if we have the same experience as we’ve had in SA, then we’ll have the whole US universe within 2 to 3 years.

Charles, we’ve got a lot of questions here. We’re not going to get through them in the time we’ve allowed ourselves but James Smith asks, “Will we spend Rands or Dollars to invest in the USA? How will Rands be converted to Dollars?”

He’s got to convert that himself through his traditional bank processes. He will withdraw the money out of his EasyEquities Rand account. Then book the forex through his bank and then deposit the money in his offshore EasyEquities account. As I said, in time, we’re looking to solve that so that you can do it on the platform but we’ve got no timelines on that and we’ll keep our users posted.

Adrian wants to know, “Why am I muted?” Adrian, there are 310 people on this webinar now. If everyone started talking at once it would sound like the Tower of Babel. Let’s move on to Nzani who says, “When is it going to open? When do we start buying US shares?”

The launch date is the 4th September. The stars have to align and currently the stars are aligned and that’s the good news. Everything is on track. The 4th September is the launch date. If it moves, guys, it will move by days and not weeks. There are tiny approval processes going on. We’re swapping our technology on the platform. There’s price fees, and a whole lot of stuff but right now the 4th September. If it moves, it will be a couple of days. So, certainly, within 2 or 3 days of the 4th September, is the worst-case scenario.

Is that Monday, have I got it right, next week?

I don’t actually know.

Well, today is the 29th August, yes, it is Monday – not a bad guess. Thinus Maritz wanted to know, maybe quickly touch on the process of conversion from Rands to Dollars, via EasyEquities. Is there no conversion?

No we’re not going to do the conversion for now. We’ll solve it in time.

Can EasyEquities trades be paid for by an offshore Dollar account?

Yes so you can deposit money from an offshore account into your US custodian account.

Will our US stocks be in Dollars so if the Rand goes down then my offshore stocks are still intact?

Yes 100%, there’s no Dollar/Rand cross currency in it. It’s a Dollar account, Dollars go up,  your value in Rand obviously goes up.

Here’s my pal, Derek Govender, “Love EasyEquities, are you going to have a mobile app any time soon? I’m a loyal customer, CMC Markets here in the UK and the apps across phones and pads are excellent and drive transactions in volumes so, bring yours on?”

That’s a great question and maybe a good opportunity just to say why we haven’t got an app so far. As you can tell from the platform, if you’ve been along for the journey and the ride for the last 2.5 years. The functionality set changes about 2 to 3 times a month. That’s how often a platform gets released. In some weeks, like this week, we’ve got to release Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of new functionality. Obviously, gearing up for the US launch but because of that, in an app world it’s very difficult to have that kind of flexibility in your development cycle. What you end up doing is splitting your resources towards app and then web and you’re running two development streams the whole time.

Now, you would have recently noted that we’ve raised capital from Sanlam, who have taken a 30% stake and that is to address the fact that we’ve been building this business out of the income statement of Purple Group, which has cost us a lot of money that nobody really pays us for, to be honest. If you look at our share price – no one has appreciated the fact that we’ve built this asset out of our income statement. Now, raising R100m from Sanlam allows us to accelerate some of the development and the number one development, which will be good news for the users that has been prioritised, from a user perspective, is now the development of an app so that work is going to start as a result of this transaction with Sanlam, and I expect the development cycle will be about 6 months and that we’ll be launching an app in February next year. We are as excited about and we really look forward to launching that into the market.

Are we going to buy US equities in the same way as we do the SA ones, through fractional share ownership?

Yes, we wouldn’t have launched – it’s not easy without fractions. Fractions, funny enough, the invention of fractional shares is accredited to the US. There are 2 markets in the world where you can actually own a fraction of a share and have been able to own a fraction of a share since they’ve opened the exchange. I think the NYC has been around over 100 years so you’re going to be able to own a fraction of any listed US company and you are going to be the beneficial shareholder of that share.

Let’s take Berkshire Hathaway, which I know is one of your favourites Alec, just imagine the access. South Africans can buy $1, $10, or a $100 or whatever they want and get access to that, which for me, is probably the best ETF. I know it’s not an ETF but it’s an ETF run by the best money manager in the world so, wonderful to be able to get that fractional access to those shares.

Yes and he’s beaten the ETFs consistently over time, beaten the S&P 500, that is our Warren Buffett. I’d like to know are the US stocks going to be quoted in Dollar terms on the EasyEquities platform?

Yes in Dollar terms.

What would the difference be between buying S&P 500 through the US stocks compared with buying it through CoreShares S&P 500 ETF?

Yes obviously in the CoreShare product you have Rand risk, which influences the price fluctuations and will increase the volatility of that product because Rand is a volatile asset. The natural first instance is that you’re buying a Dollar product and there’s no rebasing it to Rands. The second one is cost, so it’s much cheaper to buy S&P 500 from a US ETF issuer because what happens in the case of the CoreShare and the other product providers is they actually, end up buying those same underlying ETFs and then they’d price it up slightly to make a margin and deservedly because they’re bringing it to the SA market, listing it here, there’s cost and marketing costs associated with it and running that product. It’s going to be cheaper for you to buy S&P 500 in the US, and in addition to that you’re not going to have the Rand risk that you would otherwise have in that product listed on the JSE.

Tom wants to know how IDX future compares with EasyEquities offering, same story?

Yes, IDX – I got it, I was just trying to remember what IDX, and I’m not being facetious. That is Investec’s futures on international shares. So, future is obviously leveraged, geared instrument. There’s a cost to funding associated with it. The high risk, than a fully funded equity position and as a result of that, they would definitely be more expensive to purchase and to own than buying the underlying.

I wish to purchase a $100.,000 iShares emerging market ETF Black Rock would I be able to do this through EasyEquities.

100%.

Thanks Charles, let’s give it another 5 minutes – there’s so many questions here. Is there an outlook to open up access to other markets such as the London Stock Exchange, TSE, and emerging markets, such as BOVESPA?

Yes, the other part of raising capital wasn’t just about building capital. The other part of it was to take EasyEquities global. Within the next 6 months we will name another market that we’re going to enter. We’ll have concrete plans around entering that market. My best guess at now, with the research being done, is that market will be Australia. The platform has got a lot of attributes that we think are going to be very appealing in the Australian market, which is an expensive market to access., The average transaction cost in Australia is about $70, which is really high by any world standards. There are other attributes, other than costs, that we think we will work in Australia.

Australia looks like the favourite next market and there we’ll actually physically set up an office and a partnership with a local broker and we sell our products directly into that market and, as a result of that you’ll have access to the Australian market. Our partner on the ground there used to work with me. He was COO of GT247. He is now CEO of a company called Open Markets, which is the fastest growing Fintech stockbroker in that region. What’s great about them is that they’re focussed on B2B and they’re focussed on opening up and enabling other markets. So, when we integrate to him we will get access not just to Australia, but also to Singapore, to Malaysia, to Hong Kong, and a handful of other markets in that region. So Australia looks like the next port of call. And within the next 12 months, before this time next year, to have access to that market on the ground and, at the same time, open up the Asian region.

Why that region is interesting for us is that Australia is surrounded by emerging markets and for us we think that the lessons we’ve learnt or best apply in other emerging markets so we want to focus our strategy on doing what we have done here in SA, in other emerging markets and Australia gives us a good beach head to be able to access those markets because the time zones from SA doesn’t work.

Brilliant work, just this last question from Paul is still not 100% sure on the banking requirements. To invest in US stocks are we required to register a foreign bank account on the EasyEquities platform? Does it have to be a US account? If not can we simply register an account with a SA bank and put cash into it?

Okay, let me try and simplify because this can get confusing. First of all, you’ve got to open up an EasyEquities US account. Now as a FICA’d registered member of our community, you will automatically be able to do that. If your FICA is out of date and there might be some documentation that you would need to supply and there are one or two extra terms and conditions applicable to the US market that you have to read and sign but that’s easy. That’s all digital and you’ll be able to do that in the same process that you opened your EasyEquities account.

The second thing is, so now you’ve got an EasyEquities account. You don’t need to open up a foreign bank account. What you need to do is use your local account to take money offshore and that you can do through all the major banks, so FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, Investec – they’ve all got the ability to send money offshore to a foreign destination but we’ll give you the banking details and the banking details look the same as our local details but just foreign. You will then deposit, with your EasyEquities reference number into that account and when that money settles, it will automatically go into your EasyEquities account.

Now, the benefit of having an offshore bank account is that if you don’t have an offshore bank account when you withdraw money it has to come back to SA, so it has to come back to your SA domiciled account. The benefit of having an offshore bank account is that that money can exit our EasyEquities account in the future, if you want to access that cash, into a US bank account. People shouldn’t be terrified by the prospect of opening an offshore account. There is so much good FinTech happening in that space. You can open a foreign bank account very easily these days and at a very low cost. That shouldn’t be something that scares people but you don’t have to have one. You just have to have one if you go on holiday and you want to access your US Dollars then you’d rather have them in the US Dollar.

Just to close off with. We will be covering the BizNews SA portfolio on BizNews but to do that you’ve either got to be invested in them so, you’d be invested in this bundle, which was SA Champions with Easy or you have to be a member of BizNews Premium, and we’re running a special this month that you can actually go in and sign up. You get your first month for free. If you like it, you carry on. If you don’t like it, you don’t carry on. It’s at £4.99 per month and it’s the best investment you’re going to see.

There’s like 72 questions here and we’ll never get through them otherwise we’ll take you out of your work and you’re shareholders are going to be pretty peed off but Derek Lubner did say, “Where can we sell Arsene Wegner?”

As a West Ham United fan, I think you’re guys are sitting in heaven, compared with where we are right now. What we will do we will put this webinar online and accessible with the full tape and there are so many questions. What I’ll do is Charles, we’ll get the questions together, put them at the bottom of the webinar with the transcript and maybe you and your team can address them.

I was going to ask you to do that. We’re currently building our US FAQ’s, so it will help us as well in terms of discerning the repetitive questions that we need to answer. Thanks very much to the guys listening in and thank you so much for your questions. If there are any you have afterwards please ask them, publish some more questions. That is what we need to understand is what are the things you’re not comfortable with and we’ll deal with them quickly.

There’s one guy that couldn’t hear all the way through that he couldn’t hear all the way through. Sorry boet it must be your computer. Charles it’s a pleasure man. You see this behind me it’s called a radiator and in England you have them in every room. It just proves I am in London right now even though it’s quite nice and sunny outside. But instead of radiators, in Jo’burg you just need a jersey.

Alec thanks so much for having us on. We really appreciate the support. We’re really excited about this initiative and we’re looking forward to listing to your international bundle on the platform as well. I think that’s a great way for investors to start and joining your community and having these kinds of discussions every month – what better way to get started?

No, for sure and the disruption that you’re doing is world class. We see the rest of the world, from here, what you guys are doing at Easy in SA, nobody else is doing, so keep it up and keep waving the flag. The story you told us about Australia sounds awesome. Hopefully the markets nearby Australia you’re talking about will include Hong Kong and then we can go into Tencent directly, which is a very difficult share to buy into when you’re sitting in most parts of the world. Good for you Charles, lovely talking again and to everybody else, we will be putting all of those questions up as soon as Charles and the team have had a chance to answer them, together with a transcript of this on Biznews and on the Easy website as well. Until the next time, cheers man.