Hemscott has evolved from Hemmington Scott, a publishing company established in 1985, which produced the Hambro Company Guide, later to become The Hemscott Company Guide, and Really Essential Financial Statistics (REFS), a compendium of financial ratios and statistics for quoted companies devised by private investor stock market guru Jim Slater.
In December 1999 Hemmington Scott separated into a publishing company, HS Financial Publishing Ltd, and Hemscott.NET Group, the data provider. Hemscott was formed and it gained Hemmington Scott’s proprietary database, which at that time contained 15 years of data. HS Financial became its biggest data client. In 2000, Hemscott listed on the Alternative Investment Market (see Day 11) and, in 2001, it changed its name to Hemscott plc, a global group of which Hemscott.com is part. Hemscott plc does most of its work in a business-to-business environment, supplying raw data to stockbrokers such as TD Waterhouse, and providing white-level business solutions. It is also a leader in online investor relations.
Hemscott.com, known as Hemscott, has a consumer website and, unlike its competitors such as Digitallook (www.digitallook.com), it provides almost entirely its own data. Russell Clarke, head of marketing, says: ‘We have an in-house quality assurance process. We have teams of people who spend all day going through the annual reports, news feeds, regulatory news, releases and similar. They add up figures, check them, and input the information into our data bases, and then it’s checked all over again.’
Hemscott presents enough data free to enable site users interested in investing to ‘be informed so that they can make their investment decisions,’ according to Clarke. There are also Hemscott Premium and Hemscott Premium Plus subscription-level services, which, along with advertising, bring in revenue. The Premium Plus service offers subscribers up to eight years’ data and five or six useful tools.
The site provides live share prices, lists of advisers to quoted companies, which can be hard to obtain elsewhere, and a corporate calendar, which lists, for example, when Vodafone is holding its next AGM. There are news feeds from the London Stock Exchange and AFX. The personal finance coverage is built around sponsored promotions. It includes, for example, a list of top-ten mortgage providers.
The users of Hemscott include a high proportion of high net worth indi¬viduals aged 35 to 60, according to Clarke. ‘We treat our site users like a quality newspaper treats its readers. We have the highest quality material, but slip in some lighter stuff – our information exchange forums, Sudoku puzzles and a terrific wine guide.’ Hemscott provides Times Online with its business information and The Sunday Times with data for its Rich List. The site has 300,000 registered users and user feedback suggests that it is clean and easy to navigate.
