Profiling UK Public Leaders: Interview with Nicholas Clark (AIM:BUC)

Profiling UK Public Leaders, Episode 2

Nick Clarke is CEO of Built Cybernetics, an AIM-quoted smart buildings group formed when the company he founded as a student was acquired in 2023. He says he has wanted to run a public company his whole adult life, and that it happened at close to the worst possible moment to be running a small-cap.

Asked for the worst advice he has received since listing, he points to something that came from an experienced and well intentioned source: don't worry about the share price, focus on making the business great, and trust the market to put the price where it should be.

"It sounds right," he says. "At the bottom end of AIM, that is not how life is. The market is not Field of Dreams. You can't build it and they will come." He adds that he looks forward to reaching the size where that advice does hold true.

Where he is finding demand

Built Cybernetics is too small for most institutional money, so Clarke has focused on private investors. What surprised him is where they turn out to be.

• Real-world investor shows and meetups are still active, which he attributes partly to many private investors being retired and still valuing meeting management in person
• He describes online reach and in-person presence as complementary rather than alternatives
• In his view, for a growth company the decision to buy, sell or hold is partly emotional, and there is no substitute for investors meeting management face to face

Employees as shareholders

Built Cybernetics launched a share incentive plan at the end of 2023, letting staff save monthly from gross pay with company matching. Around 40% of the workforce signed up. Above associate level, managers commit a percentage of salary to buying shares in the market.

Clarke describes the liquidity effect as a byproduct rather than the objective. Because a fixed amount of cash goes in each period, staff buy more shares when the price is lower, which he says helps limit the impact of indiscriminate selling.

He contrasts this with a share buyback, which he argues makes less sense for a smaller company given the relatively high fixed costs of being listed. His preference is for a mechanism that adds long-term holders who can choose to sell later, at a time of their choosing, to a buyer who wants the stock.

On not taking it personally

The best advice Clarke says he has received is that nobody is the bad guy in the story of their own life, and that people rarely set out to be difficult.

He applies it to investors. A long-standing shareholder sold down last year, and he initially took it as a verdict on his own efforts. When he asked, it turned out to be an algorithm rebalancing after cash outflows, with no view on the company at all. Had he not asked, he says, he would never have known.