Some links

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Brooklyn Investor on Howard Marks, RenTech, Bubbles and other stuff

First year review of “Junto” (h/t searching4value)

Ghost kitchens meet celebrities: Innovation in the Restaurant sector

How Solar Power is “eating the energy world”

Great advice: Just buy stocks that go up and sell when it stops going up

Cathie Wood’s “Agressive growth” fund company Ark Investment is doing great

And some annual letters to investors:
TGV Partners
TGV Rubicon
TGV Truffle
Giverny Capital
Massif Capital

Installux Post Mortem

Posted on by 6 comments

Intro:

As part of an improved investment process, I will try to write better “post mortem” analysis after exiting an investment. I did this in the past especially for bad investments but I plan to do this now for every investment that I fully exit. Interestingly, very few fund mangers talk or write in detail why they have been selling. 

Installux post mortem:

As mentioned in the comments of the original post, I sold my Installux shares yesterday at around 390 EUR, netting a total gain of 206% or ~13,7% p.a. over ~ 8.5 years. 

Installux was my second longest standing position in the portfolio. I was able to buy the shares cheaply mostly on a “mechanical basis” in 2012. This was my summary back then:

We have a consistently growing and profitable business with very low volatility, attractive ROE and ROIC and a valuation of 2x EV/EBITDA and 5x P/E adjusted for cash (7.8 unadjusted) which produces a large amount of free cashflow despite growing nicely over the years.

So what happened since then ? This is how the stock price looks like for the last 10 years:

Read more

Some links

Posted on by 4 comments

Great long read on Jack Ma and Alibaba

“The friendly Bear” thinks Lemonade is a “ESG Pump and Dump”

Rob Vinall with a great post on Conspiracy theories 

Absolutely must read: Howard Marks on the useless divide between “value” and “growth” investing 

Great summary of Nick Sleep’s (Nomad) investment wisdom

Some stock spin-off ideas for 2021

RenTechs “own money” Medaillion fund had another great year, its funds for outside investors however suffered big losses

Book Review: “Seven Mistakes Every Investor Makes (and how to avoid them)”

Posted on by One comment

51Pd7G9RJAL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_

Joachim Klement is a native German, London based investment professional who, among other things writes one of my favorite financial blogs named “KOI – Klement on Investing”.

Despite having a full time job and a high quality, frequent blog, he also managed to write a book. Being a German of course, he  doesn’t promise to make one rich quickly but it tries to identify and provide solutions for very common mistakes that indeed almost all investor make.

Although Klement is a more Macro oriented investor, his advice is great also for stock pickers or any other investment styles. He emphasizes a lot of points that I share 100%. The mistakes that he concentrates are:

Read more

Just EAT Takeaway.com – Just another roll-up or long term growth opportunity ?

Posted on by 40 comments

Health Warning: This is not investment advise. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!

Introduction

justeat

Just Eat Takeaway.com or “JET” is another of these stocks that popped up from different “high quality” sources. A few friends mentioned the stock, most recently Swen Lorenz featured JET (behind paywall). By coincidence I am also a relatively happy user of their service, especially since the lock downs started.

The company

A good starting point for an analysis is this write-up from a US based 2 bn USD hedgefund called “Catrock” which has invested ~30% of its NAV into JET and not surprisingly is very bullish. therefore I will only describe here what I find important.

Read more

Some links

Posted on by 12 comments

Must read (as always): Rob Vinall’s 2020 letter to investors

FTAlphaville is very skeptical about the Hypgnosis (SONG) business model

A very deep and very skeptical look into Bill.com

Jeremy Grantham is calling the bubble (good summary of all bubble arguments even if I would suggest to ignore it)

What John Hempton (Bronte) learned in 2020 (Podcast)

Very interesting talk with Weijian Shan, an Asian PE investor and book author

Aggressive Buy: The next German Mega-Unicorn Pöny

Performance Review 2011-2020 – Lessons learned, Outlook 2030

Posted on by 23 comments

After the 2020 Performance review a few days ago, this time a more “in depth” look into the 10 year performance of the portfolio. For the record: The Performance page of the blog is now fully updated 😉

As this has become a very long post, these are the main sections:

  1. Numbers & Stats for the Portfolio (plus Benchmark discussion)
  2. Flop 15 & Top 15 positions
  3. 2011-2020 Macro events
  4. Style /Process /System
  5. Main lessons learned
  6. Outlook 2021-2030

1. Numbers & Statistics

The hard numbers: Over the 10 years from 12/31/2010 to 12/31/2020, the portfolio gained +270,3% against +122,7% against the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50(25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends).. In CAGR numbers this translates into 14,0% p.a. for the portfolio vs. 8,3% p.a. for the Benchmark. As a graph this looks as follows:

Read more

Performance review 2020 – “Freak Accident”

Posted on by 5 comments

As this is the 10 year mark of the portfolio, there will be a two part performance review. This is part 1 for 2020, part 2 for the 10 year period will follow in short time.

In 2020, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  +27.6% (including dividends, no taxes) against +4,5% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50(25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends).

Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog. Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2020:

Partners Fund TGV: +28,2% (15.12.) 
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +9.54% (30.12.)
Squad European Convictions (30.12.) +20,4%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos (30.12.) -10.9% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen (30.12.) +0.83%
Evermore Global Value (30.12.) -7,0% (USD)
Greiff Special Situation (30.12.) +0.2%
Squad Aguja Special Situation (30.12.) +34,8%
Paladin One (30.12.) +30,1%

Read more

Some links

Posted on by 2 comments

Fred Wilson with some great thoughts on what happened in 2020 and what he thinks will happen in 2021

Swen Lorenz on potential UK take over targets

Good article on Claude Shannon, the “father of information theory”

Long Read: How Substack tries to become the platform for Email Newsletters

A few interesting 2021 predictions from Yetanothervalueblog

More 2021 predictions from Scott Galloway

It is 2020 year end review time for many fellow stock picker blogs such as:

Alpha Vulture blog 2020 performance
Valueinvesting France (French)
Bull, Bear & Value
Global Stock Picking
Preis und Wert Aktienblog (German)
Maynard Peyton
Clark Street Value
searching 4 value

Panic Journal Season 2 – Year End edition: “This time was different”

Posted on by 5 comments

While I am writing this, the first vaccine shots have been being provided in Germany already yesterday. Despite a relatively strict lock down including a curfew from 9pm in my home town Munich, in general the mood seems to a certain extent upbeat compared to a few weeks/months ago. Time to do a “2020 Covid-19 recap” with another installment of the “Panic Journal”. 

Recap: This time was different

At first, like many “Westerners”, I thought that Covid-19 was not our problem. Like SARS in 2002/2003, MERS in 2012, Ebola 2014-2016, Zika 2015 or the Avian Influenza , this again looked like a “Third World problem”, where the Third World includes China. The first documented cases in Germany at car supplier Webasto seemed to have confirmed this: The infected persons were identified quickly, isolated and all recovered pretty fast. Webasto actually issued a press release in early March that all infected employees were healthy and eager to go  back to work. So “Business as usual” with this “Exotic virus scare”.

Read more

« Older Entries