I think you're going to see a total transformation of this part of the world. And it's being overlooked by by the vast majority of people, which is what makes it exciting.

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Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast. The goal of this podcast is to offer investors and entrepreneurs insights and practical advice to dramatically improve the kinds of deals you invest in and the returns you get. My name is James Evenson. I'm one of the partners at Crown Private, and our investor syndicate Obris. Obris is about exceptional people, unique experiences, and bespoke investments. Our membership and community are built up of like-minded yet unique and adventurous individuals, as well as family offices. We invest in a spectrum of deals from established companies to startups. We do so with a proven formula of due diligence, structuring, and management. Obris had it's start in frontier markets. Our first investor event was in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, nine years ago. Our person on the ground at that time was Scott Osheroff. After completing university in the United States, Scott quickly found his way to Asia, where as of this date, he has lived in six countries including Mongolia, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and most recently, Uzbekistan. Scott is the fund manager and Chief Information Officer of Asia Frontier Capital's Uzbekistan fund. He resides in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. We are interviewing Scott today with two goals in mind. The first is to provide a spotlight on frontier markets, and in particular, the emerging economy of Uzbekistan. And second, with nine years under his belt, Scott understands a great deal about frontier markets, and he offers significant insights to those who are less familiar with Central Asia in frontier investing. Yes, Scott, welcome. Where do we find you today?

Hi, James. I'm in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Perfect, perfect. Well, for context, we met about four years ago, probably right about now, four years ago, in Vietnam. We were in Ho Chi Min, for a joint conference that As a Frontier Capital and Obris wer hosting. And we've also spen time in Myanmar together a fe years a few years ago, that wa a while ago as well. Well, shared a brief bio of you wit our viewers, but I know tha you're about much more tha that. So why don't you give us few highlights that that yo think are relevant for people t know about you as we enter int this interview

Sure, well, I guess the quick background, the the the one minute sort of background would be I grew up in Los Angeles, I went to Northeastern University in Boston, studied finance or, business with a concentration in finance and realized during my summer internships that I didn't necessarily want to stay in the United States. So I did what any rational 20 or 21 year old would do and said, I don't have a job, I'm not going to look for a job. I'll buy a one way plane ticket to Asia, and I'll figure it out. So I ended up working with the founders of Capitalist Exploits on some things in private equity. And I created a partnership with them, about two weeks before I came to Asia. But that saw me moved to Mongolia for my first six months in Asia after snaking my way throughout Southeast Asia. And then over the past nine and a half years, I've lived between Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore, and most recently was Pakistan. And then in 2014, I joined Asia Frontier Capital, which is a listed equities investment manager based in Hong Kong focused on Asian frontier markets. So we have four funds. An Iraq fund, a Vietnam fund, a pan frontier Asian fund. And our most recently launched Uzbekistan Fund, which celebrated its two year anniversary just this past month, of which I'm the Chief Investment Officer of.

Perfect, perfect, and we're going to delve into that here shortly as well. Let's talk a bit about Uzbekistan. You've been there for a little more than a year, weathering the weathering the pandemic quite well. I remember two years ago, excuse me, when a little more than two years ago when you were touring Central Asia, you were in you spent some time in my one of my homelands, Kazakhstan, and what was the appeal for Uzbekistan back then? Actually, let's even go back further. What made it appealing? What in its recent history has made it appealing for outside investment?

Sure. So Uzbekistan was sort of considered a second North Korea until 2016. You had capital controls, you had a secret police, you had, you know, you're harassed at the airport. I had friends that were kind of here for tourism, and you're asked at the airport, why are you coming here. It was not a very welcoming place to come as a tourist or do business. And there were there was also massive child labor and forced labor in the cotton industry, which Uzbekistan is the sixth largest producer of cotton. So all of this change when the former president president Karimov passed away in 2016. And his successor, the Prime Minister, became President. Shavkat Mirziyoyev. And everyone expected things to remain the same. But he initiated a rabid sets of reforms, he created a sort of a five tier initial campaign to privatize the state assets, to liberalize the economy get rid of capital controls, and that's what set things in motion. So in 2017, I believe, they had floated the Uzbek Som, because it had been pegged at about 4000 Uzbeks Sums to the dollar, but the bazaar or the black market rate was about 8000. So no one wanted, it didn't make rational sense for someone to come and invest here and immediately lose 50% of capital. So they liberalized the currency by floating it, or by by readjusting the peg. They hadn't yet floated it. They floated it in in March of 2019, where we then launched our Uzbekistan fund afterwards. So these reforms made it interesting, but actually, it was sort of by accident. I was in the region in 2018, to go to a investment tour in Kazakhstan. A country you're very familiar with. And from illicit equity standpoint, there wasn't a whole lot there. But since I was in the region, I ended up visiting, I spent two days in Kyrgyzstan, and then I spent a week in Uzbekistan. And there was no one here. It was very, very quiet. And I kept scratching my head as I met a slew of business people- bankers, brokers, public companies, some people in a hotel and real estate industry - and asking, Are these reforms real? And I was thinking, everyone is saying they're real,things are changing. But I couldn't understand why in 2018, no one had caught on to this. I remember I was sitting with our now broker at dinner at a Georgian restaurant. And he pulled up a spreadsheet of some of the listed companies, some of the banks, some of the cement companies, and was looking at the price to earnings ratios. And they were growing at 400 or 500%. They were trading at PE ease of one or two times, and some of them had dividend yields, I'm not joking, of 50 percent. And I'm thinking this isn't supposed to exist in the year 2018. So that caused me to get much more excited about the country and continue to follow it. And that's when we started investing here through our through our umbrella Asia frontier fund.

Who are the investors back then? You said that you didn't see anyone...Who was putting their money into the these private entities?

I don't think there was a whole lot... This... This is when the country had really just begun to open up. And there wasn't a whole lot of money, let alone interest here. Only the summer during the summer of 2018 did you really start to see a lot of articles being written. Umm, for example, in before 2000, before, I think, March of 2018, it was illegal to go into the Tashkent metro system, and take photos. And it's one of the most beautiful metro systems in in the former Soviet Union. So with mosaics and whatnot, but it was illegal to do so. They only lifted that ban two months before I came here. So it had just begun to change. And that's when you started to see a lot of positive articles being written. There was no one here, or so it seemed. No one was talking about the stock market. No one was really talking about investment in the country. Everyone that I spoke with afterwards, when I got very excited about the opportunity said, yeah, we see what's going on, but we're waiting. But you look at if you looked at the reforms that were happening, you realize that the President was pushing so hard so quick, that it would be very difficult to reverse these reforms that were happening. And now we're at a point where we've just... it's a whole new country. So there wasn't a lot of interest. Now there's much more interest, it's changed completely. Now there's investment from state enterprises and infrastructure and development projects of the like, but you're also seeing a lot of private investment and interest in spinning mills for cotton, textile factories to a degree, significant investment in food processing. And just general farming, hotels, etc, etc. But back then it's still appeared to be very early days.

Well from what you described. I you know, and knowing my own history, I think that people were probably in shock. And locals were probably even more skeptical than foreigners, on whether the reforms would stick. Would they be screwed over if they embrace something? They'd had enough of that in the past.

Certainly, it's the curse of recency bias, where, for example, the the three years that we've been investing in Uzbekistan, I've been speaking with local friends and saying, you know... They want to buy Apple and Google and Microsoft and Tesla, and I say, you understand that you have companies here that are growing well over 100% per year, that have stupendous dividend yields. And they're saying, Yeah, well this inflation the Uzbek Som always depreciates. And historically, that was the case where before 2016, the currency was depreciating somewhere around 20 or 30% per year. There was rampant inflation. But the central bank now has an inflation targeting regime. And their goal is by next year to get inflation to 10%. I think now it's about 11, or 12%. But when we came here, right before we came here, it was around 19%. So it's come down significantly. The policy rate from the central bank until last year was 16%. Now it's at 14%. As interest rates are coming down, you're seeing the currency begin to stabilize. And actually, for the past few months, the currency has been appreciating versus the US dollar. I think that the curse of recency bias is actually going to cause people to miss out on what could potentially be a great opportunity, which is actually taking your US dollars, because as you know, in this part of the world, everyone likes to take their locally owned currency and convert into USD because that's historic value. I think we're on the verge of seeing a shift here, where as you see more money come into the country, as you see inflation fall below 10%, as the policy rate from the central bank falls on, you're going to see an increase in desire for people to hold Uzbek Som. And that shift appears to beginning to change but as a result I think people are going to... locals are going to realize if I can buy a listed company that has a dividend of 10,15, 20% it might be better than just buying US dollars and keeping them under my mattress.

Absolutely, absolutely. What isn't working? You've described things that sounds like a unicorn to me. What what where do you see the... it sounds like wonderful progress. But we all know that there are hiccups along the way and other things that hold hold a country back.

I will say I've lived in frontier markets for the past nine and a half years. And as rosy as some of the The government's quite easily one of the things. but we're potential opportunities are, there are always speed bumps. And all of these governments tend to, you know, trip. But luckily, this one keeps tripping and getting up and moving forward. You know, just as when I lived in Myanmar, and Vietnam there, there were always issues for one reason or another. So this country has, or let's say this country needs to drastically increase its capacity, intellectual capacity in in government. You have a lot of people that still have the old way of thinking, there's massive inefficiency and a massive bureaucracy. They're beginning to actually digitize some of the processes, whether it's opening accounts or applying for certain licenses. But they have a long way to go. You're starting from the ground floor. So it can only technically move up or go sideways, of course. I think it'll continue to move up. But it's going to be a long grind, because there are some instances where the government will pass a piece of legislation without, I guess you could say, having done enough thought of the potential ramifications of it, and then having to potentially potentially go back and revise it. They had this issue with their value added tax a few years ago, where the value added tax, I think was 20%. And they realized that this was only going to drive people into the gray market economy. So they lowered it, I believe to 15%. But but it caused havoc. So one of the big challenges is just capacity and governments. Streamlining processes, eliminating the huge amounts of bureaucracy. There's paperwork for everything, as you know, in this part of the world. Oh, my... One of my favorite indicators, though, was that, you know, this would work notarios or notariots. When you're in Kazakhstan, there are notaries everywhere. Here, there are a lot of notaries but I've never seen more notaries in my life than in Kazakhstan. So it gives me hope that in due course, you'll see fewer and fewer of them here and things being able to be done online. So that's one of the big challenges.. going back five years. How are they... where are they looking for external ideas to shape this emerging country? From the major consulting firms. BCG, McKinsey. So they're actively involved in helping the government, especially along the lines of privatization. But all across, they're trying to help to restructure the economy.

Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, I remember a couple of years ago, when you guys set up the AFC fund, there was a lot of foreign attention given to Uzbekistan. Let's talk a bit about more, talk a bit more about what... how are foreign entities and individuals actively involved and is that growing? Is it stable? How is that perceived by the local government as well as local business?

When we first came here, it was very early days, and we were sort of the only big buyer in the markets. So you had people here that had owned shares for a long time, there was not much liquidity in the market, we came in, and they probably thought that they were, they probably thought that we were the sucker. We were buying companies that had dividend yields of again, up to 50%. And we were very happy with that. If they could sell us more, we would have bought more. So we were the, I think the first big foreign money to come into the stock market. And, you know, writing about it, building a track record here. Certainly, there's been a lot more investment into the into the stock market here from foreign investors, but also local. Whether it's family offices or retail. It's definitely coming in. So the market capitalization, I think, has gone up about 21% since we started investing here, the market capitalization now is 6 billion US dollars. There are about 135 companies on the exchange. And over the past few years, the government set up a sort of a Securities and Exchange Commission equivalent, which was focused on regulating financial institutions, regulating public companies, making sure that minorities were protected and their rights were were protected and they did a phenomenal job. So that's been encouraging. The government definitely wants to develop the capital markets, partially because they need to use it use it as a mechanism to privatized a huge swath of the economy, a lot of which they'll probably do here. Some of the bigger companies they'll plan to to IPO or do a list in I would imagine London. For example you have Navoi Metallurgical Mining Company, which owns the the Muruntau mine, which used to be owned by Newmont Mining. It's the largest open pit gold mine in the world. So you have them, you have Uzmetkombinat which is the largest steel company, I believe, in Central Asia. So some behemoth companies. I mean, the Navoi, which the acronym is NMMC, it's on par with a Newmont or a Barrick.

I remember a couple of years ago, seemed like everybody and their dog were traveling through Uzbekistan, looking at the investment prospects there. We're now a couple years beyond that. What stuck for people? Who, what is foreign direct investment look like in Uzbekistan?

Sure. So you have in the construction sector, you have a lot of Kazakh and Turkish money. In the textile sector or in textiles slash agriculture - so the cotton production and whatnot - you have American investments, um... Korean, Turkish Chinese, because the government has incentivized companies or incentivized investors to build spinning mills. For example, starting in 2020, it was illegal to export raw cotton. This country used to export the majority of its cotton to places like China, Bangladesh, where it was then spun into yarn and the value was captured there. As of 2020, it now needs to be processed. So you had a handful of spinning mills that popped up throughout the country. And over the next few years, you're going to see the...an export tariff, put on yarn, which is intended to incentivize factories to move here. So yeah, in agriculture and cotton, you're seeing Turkish, Korean, Chinese investments. Infrastructure, you're seeing a lot of Chinese, mainly EPCs, some of its loans and whatnot. But But you have to remember that, when it comes to a lot of this stuff, this country is very rich. It has about $34 billion of foreign exchange reserves, about 21-22 billion of which is gold. It's a$52 odd billion economy. So a lot of the investment that you're seeing around town, a lot of the real estate, a lot of infrastructure that's being built, a lot of...there's some very big agro industrial processing groups here. A lot of its local money. So a that's actually really good that the money is being invested back into the country. But but no doubt you're seeing, as I mentioned, a large amount of foreign investment from these countries.You're also seeing German and Italian investment in manufacturing. So there's a there's a gypsum board company. It's been here for a handful of years. It's near I believe, Bukhara. And I believe it's German owned. So you know, a handful of things. This country has the largest population in Central Asia, 34 and a half million. So no doubt there's, there's more of that to come.

Well, let's talk about the AFC Uzbekistan fund. You guys have figured out how to make things work in that region. I follow your I read your monthly report, but then also the general AFC reports for various parts of the world. And you are definitely typically at the top of the performance. Tell us about your criteria for investment, what it was two years ago when you started and how that's developed to to today.

So we we started investing here through our Asia frontier umbrella fund. Um, and then, when capital controls were lifted in March of 2019, we set up the dedicated Uzbekistan fund with about $2 million. And now it was as of March 2021, we're$11 million. The the fund is up 64 and a half percent since we started, and it's up 22...22.7% year to date. So it's done quite well, partially because wAand a lot of foreigners but also a lot of locals caught on to the reality that we were sort of cornering the market, back when it was exceptionally cheap. So, yeah, we have 20 odd companies in the portfolio, largely, materials companies. So cement, steel, vegetable oil processors. Mainly because the vast majority of the companies that are listed are either partially state owned enterprises or formerly state owned enterprises. So it's the typical sort of post Soviet story of, you know, the entire economy is listed. And it tends to be more manufacturing and industry based based companies. So we built a portfolio skewed around...Well, I guess also, there are some financial services companies. All of the banks are listed and, and one of our largest positions is the the local commodities exchange, which is sort of the equivalent of the New York Mercantile, The London metals exchange, and the COMEX rolled into one, which has done very well for us. So the idea of building our portfolio was to construct it around companies that have leveraged growth to to the economy. So as the economy picks up, as consumption picks up there's going to be more demand for real estate. Because this country has about 14 square meters of residential real estate per capita. One of the lowest in the world. They need to build hundreds of thousands of houses, which is going to result in the need for offices, roads, everything else. So steel and cement are no brainers at the early cycle, early stage of where the economy is and as consumption rises or as incomes rise, consumption will rise. So people will consume more vegetable oil whether it's in plov or if it's in processed foods. Another big company that we own is the largest food conglomerate in the country. So Tashkentvino, they have dried fruits, frozen vegetables that they export, they have a slew of soft drinks, water, wine, vodka, beer. So things like this, these are the types of companies that we've looked to invest into, that have leveraged to the future growth of the country. But that also foreigners are going to say, it's easy to understand, these are the blue chips that we're going to want to buy. So we centered around these unofficial blue chips. And for example, with this, this Uzbekistan commodities exchange, we started buying it at a price of 2000 Uzbek Som. As of the end of March, it was trading 12,000 Uzbek Som. And if you look at the dividends for 2018, 2019, 2020, the dividend yield for us, based on the price that we've paid for our first few shares, is 124%. So we've recouped our initial investment, plus some, just on the dividend alone. And the way that I'm looking at the the development of the capital markets here is first you have to have the the existing listed companies see a re-rating, because the problem here is, a lot of people want to raise capital, but locals don't want to list on the stock exchange, because they're going to get a very low multiple. They'd much rather get private equity at a higher multiple. Usually, it's the opposite, of course, where listed companies have traded traded a premium to private equity. Here's the opposite. So I think to see a normalization in the capital markets here, you need to see the steep discount of listed companies relative to private companies decrease. And if that happens, you'll see, I think more government privatizations at realistic prices. And that's when I think you start to see a potential IPO boom, where private companies say we need to raise capital, there's a more developed, more liquid market, they're more local and foreign participants here, but I'll also be able to get a good valuation for for our company, when we sell x percentage of it. So I think that's the natural progression of the capital markets here. So it's still very early days, and the vast majority of our portfolio, it's still experiencing really good quality growth. And paying, in a handful of cases, double digit dividends.

Do you see yourselves moving more over to private equity as well? You've...so far you've described that a lot of what you've invested in is semi privatized or privatized government entities, but what about newer businesses that are being start fresh?

No, our fund will only invest in companies listed on the on the stock exchange.

Okay, why, why that? What's the reasoning in that?

Partially due to transparency, the the fact that you know, Asia Frontier Capital is only a listed equities investment manager. That's, that's a big part of it. But if you were to delve into, you know, if an independent investor was to come to Uzbekistan and said, I can invest in the stock market, or I can invest in private equity. The benefit of the stock market is that you can always push the sell button. There's very good transparency in this country, relative to other countries. Every company has to report online, quarterly financials, annual report, dividend information, pretty much everything. So there's a large degree of transparency in that regard. Where, of course, in private equity, there isn't. But the more important thing is that the listed companies are cheaper than any private equity deals I've seen in the country. So when when that reverses, maybe it makes sense to look elsewhere. But I think that we'll have a long time before that happens. So the listed equities plays or listed equities in the stock market, which I think is just the place to be.

Very good, very good. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk a little more about the macro region. You definitely, you do very well in the micro, but I'm most interested in what you've what you've developed in terms of what you've observed and what you know of this region today. Let's look beyond Uzbekistan. What's going on in the region that has shaped your thinking for the future for the region?

I think this part of the world, if you look at Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia has been a booming growth story. Vietnam is China number two. This part of the world, as you know having done business here for for a few decades, is largely overlooked by investors. Partially because of it being former Soviet Union and partially because it's landlocked or in Uzbekistan's case double landlocked. So it's not going to be a massive manufacturing center. But But if you look at what's happening in China and with the belt and road initiative, and you're starting to see, I think, a bifurcation of the world between sort of East and West. And no doubt Russia and China are allies. You look at this part of the world and think, is the West really going to invest heavily in here and have significant influence? They'll try, of course, they are trying. But I think at the end of the day, this part of the world is going to be brought into sort of a, you know, socio economic, you know, Sino-Russo economic region. You know, sort of new and burgeoning Eurasia, if you will. And I think it's going to span from Central Asia, all the way down to Iran, probably at some point encompass Turkey, but we'll see what happens being that they're a member of NATO. But But I think that this part of the world is going to receive huge amounts of investments. Because Russia and China don't want the West between them. And this kind of this part of the world has a large amount of resources. And it just makes sense for them to create, again, this Sino-Russo socio economic, you know, region, if you will. And if you look at what's been happening, it last month, China finally inked a 25 year deal worth 400 billion US dollars, which I'm sure in due course will be more to invest into the country. And they're going to be investing in infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, technology transfer, upgrading some of their ports. In exchange, of course, for being able to buy Iranian crude or Iranian crude at a discount to Brent. But But nonetheless, Iran is a fascinating economy. It's large, I think it's 60 70 million people, if I'm not mistaken, very highly educated. And it's very diversified. The hydrocarbon industry only represents about 10% of their GDP. They have an auto industry, massive mining industry, consumer goods industry, a lot of consumer goods end up in this part of the world. You can buy Iranian dates and other Iranian agricultural products in Uzbekistan. So I think as a result of the opportunity that they that exists in this part of the world, you're going to see significant investment in rail infrastructure and highways and airports. And it's going to totally transform this part of the world. As part of that in 2022, I don't think the date has been announced yet. But there's going to be the Shanghai Cooperation summit in Samarkand. Because Samarkand is the natural logistics hub for Uzbekistan, being able to connect Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, going up to Kazakhstan. So it's going to be very interesting to see what happens in this country from this entire region, really, from the standpoint of Chinese investment after the summit. Um, I remember, living in Cambodia, and I think it was 2014 or 2015. And there was an Asian summit. And, you know, Prime Minister Hun Sen vetoed discussion about trying to build artificial islands in the South China Sea. And obviously, it's different, but the billions and billions of dollars that poured into Cambodia since, I don't know if you've been in the past few years, but it's totally transformed the country. I don't think it will be the same here. But it won't take a huge amount of money to do a lot in this in this part of the world. But due to it being geopolitically sensitive, especially all the way down to Iran, the abundance of resources, agricultural hydrocarbons, gold, uranium, etc, I think you're going to see a total transformation of this part of the world. And it's being overlooked by the vast majority of people, which is what makes it exciting. And that's the reason one of the reasons that you can still buy real estate in Uzbekistan, that yields you know, 10 or 20% in US dollars. And it's the reason I think that the equities market is still cheap, but I don't think that these assets here will stay cheap forever.

Sure, sure. From what you've described of Uzbekistan, I think that they are in a...they have a good footing, good foundation that they've built up over the last three years, last several years to not lose their soul in the midst of the economic development of the region. They can be an active participant rather than just the recipient of external influences. Sounds quite promising for that region. I think before we wrap up, I'd like to ask one more question ofyou Scott, and that is for Western investors, non frontier market natives, what advice would you give with regard to how, where, when, what to invest in the region?

Touch real quick on what you mentioned before asking that question in terms of Uzbekistan playing a greater role in the region. I think that Uzbekistan, if they play their cards, right will be the most influential country in all of Central Asia. And the reason is because of the population, the wealth, diversification of the economy. But you're already seeing it where Uzbekistan has been hosting peace talks between Western powers and the Taliban. So Uzbekistan is going to become a major trading partner and investor at least in the northern half of Afghanistan. They're building a... The plan is to build the railroad throughout northern Afghanistan over to Pakistan to get access to to the port at Gwadar. They've done land swaps with I believe, Kyrgyzstan in disputed areas. The the President a few weeks ago was talking with the government in Kyrgyzstan and for years, they've been talking about building a rail corridor through Kyrgyzstan, but the Kyrgyz don't have the money. The Chinese have already lent billions of dollars to Kyrgyzstan. So there are there's talk that Uzbekistan might be willing to actually finance the section of the rail that runs through Kyrgyzstan to get it built, which means that you'll be able to run rail from China through Kyrgyzstan, through Uzbekistan, in due course, through Turkmenistan, to the Caspian Sea down to Iran, and Uzbekistan is at the center of all of this. And more importantly, Uzbekistan is a way for China to access Europe without going through Russia. So I certainly think that this country is going to be able to flex its, its its muscle when it comes to being involved in the region. So to answer your question, sorry. What to invest in? I guess it depends on what one is looking to invest in. You know, I am biased, of course, and will say the equities market. You don't have to come here to open a brokerage account, you can do it online, or you can do it through email via your broker, you have to mail physical documents here. It's a bit bureaucratic. But everything I think is an opportunity in this part of the world. Real Estate's very cheap. And real estate, agriculture, trading, processing, growing, textile manufacturing is going to be big business in this part of the world. I think that Uzbekistan will probably become a regional Vietnam of sorts, where there'll be significant industry here. And there'll be a big exporter to Central Asia, but also to the greater region, such as Russia and Belarus and whatnot. So yeah, I don't have anything specific to say in terms of what someone should be looking to invest into...

A word about cautions as well, because it's not some it's not really for the...Frontier markets are not for the naive and the faint faint of heart. But there are avenues for those that are less experienced to get involved in the region.

True, I I'd say that beyond investing maybe in the stock market or through a fund like us, I think, I think probably the first step that someone should take is come to the region. Learn about the culture, see how, you know, the people are, look at the opportunity for themselves. That's one of the biggest realizations that I had years ago is that whatever you read in the news, it's not necessarily wrong. It's not necessarily biased, but it doesn't necessarily tell the whole picture. And you will also get a much better feel for everything on the ground. So I guess probably the best answer is to say, come to the region on vacation and enjoy yourself and look around and see what opportunities exist.

You in your most recent monthly report, you give a link to an article written by a travel writer, I can't remember who it was, but I love that you can now take express trains between Tashkent and Samarkand. I have yet to go down to Samarkand or to Bukhara and a lot easier travel than than the last time I was was there.

Yeah, the the Express goes actually all the way to Bukhara and they're expanding it to Khiva. And it's it's Spanish trains financed wholly by the Uzbek government. Which is unique relative to other say frontier markets where they might get a loan from the AIIB or whatnot. But yeah, the infrastructure here is is improving. For someone coming in from say, America or Singapore, the infrastructure here is not great. But having lived in Vietnam years ago, it's improved since, but Cambodia, Myanmar, Mongolia, I was blown away at the infrastructure in this country, and it's only going to get better. So certainly, it's it's not, it's not roughing it. have never ridden a camel i this part of the world

You know what? I haven't either. I've been involved since 1990 in that region. I think 1992... 1991 I was in Tashkent. And I've seen a few camels but never never ridden one. Consumed their milk... Oh, hey, Scott, this is great. I think this is the you know, Obris has its roots in the frontier markets. That was their focus when I first got involved. This was before your time of being the on the ground person for Obris in, in Mongolia. But it's definitely...frontierist markets are true to my heart and I love introducing people to the frontier markets and helping them shape their own views so that they can be competent and confident in investing in the regions in various regions. As you've demonstrated, there's a lot happening and there are a lot of long term opportunities there. Thanks very much for joining us for this interview. And I look forward to being kept up to date on what you're what you're involved with. And who knows we may very well find or find our way to Uzbekisan hopefully while you're still there. I we haven't we don't have any events scheduled in that region. But I take a handful of people with me when I when I travel and I would love to introduce some some folks to to you and to AFC as well as to Uzbekistan. So thank you, sir.

Thanks, James. Yeah, we'll have to go out for plov.

Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks for joining us for the Global Investor Podcast. If you like what you've heard, we have much more to offer you. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel or to the podcast itself. Obris an investor syndicate. We are defined by people, places, and deals. Our members and guests are an amazing group of self made and accomplished investors and entrepreneurs. We come from 15 different countries and a wide variety of professions. We share the common pursuits of surrounding ourselves with great people in great places, while gaining significant returns in investing. Please head over to our website, ObrisInvest.com, where you can learn more about Obris, our members, investing with us, and our world class events. That's O-B-R-I-S-I-N-V-E-S-T.com. We also invite you to sign up for our free Global Investor newsletter. You'll have access to our weekly insights as well as deep dives into specific industries and global markets. And be sure to come to an Obris event. There is no better way to get to know us than through our events. We are currently working on our next live in person event. Check out our website for details. My partners and I created Obris to facilitate freedom, wealth, adventure and connection. With Obris you will experience a whole new world of investing.