Kiwi cricketer Ross Taylor is not known for missing a shot, but admits he missed an opportunity to make an early investment in Xero that would now be worth millions.
A family friend involved in the start-up asked Taylor to chip $500,000 into the company around the time he got his first Indian Premier League contract, Taylor said in a livestreamed investment seminar today.
He did not share any details of the offer, but in both 2007 and 2009 Xero was raising capital at roughly $1 per share.
The accounting software firm now trades above $130 Australian dollars on the ASX, which means the investment would be worth about $66 million today.
Not one to just accept a loss, the 36-year-old former Black Caps captain now keeps a close eye on equities markets.
Taylor still plays for the national team and hopes to play in the 2023 Cricket World Cup to close out his career. While he hasn’t given any explicit indication of what life after cricket will be, investing in capital markets has caught his interest.
When rain stops play
Appearing on a webinar with Castle Point Funds this morning, Taylor said he spends his spare time on tour researching listed companies.
“There is a lot of downtime, and I do enjoy golf but not as much as some of my teammates,” he said. “I’d rather take my laptop down to the hotel lobby and check on my stocks.”
When off-duty in New Zealand, Taylor has been working with Castle Point Funds after co-founder Stephen Bennie and senior executive Dyrol Lowe pitched their Ranger Fund to him at Eden Park.
He has helped the firm with client engagement and business development for the past two years on a part-time basis. Lowe said having the cricket superstar on side has been helpful for scoring client meetings.
“Once they realise he is not the guy who runs Fletcher Building, then they are quite keen to sit down for a coffee,” he quipped.
The joke is good-natured. Castle Point recently took a stake in Fletcher Building, a move which Bennie said raised some eyebrows but paid off as the cyclical stock rallied in the past two months.
Taylor isn’t the only high-profile cricket player to get involved in investments. Stephen Fleming and Brendon McCullum were among the founders of ill-fated technology company CricHQ, through their co-owned investment company Moneybaker Holdings.
Recently, Black Cap Lockie Ferguson teamed up with his software developer brother to launch MachineRoad, a smartphone app that can measure the speed of a bowler’s pitch.
