Monthly Archives: August 2016

Greenlight Re & E.On/Uniper update

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Greenlight Re update:

As some readers might remember, I bought shares of Greenlight Re, the Bermuda Reinsurer with investment advise from David Einhorn back in December 2015, but then sold them one month later, triggered by the insight that I don’t really understand his investment criteria. Looking back, the decision to sell doesn’t look very smart, as the stock priced since then increased by around 18% in USD (or 14% in EUR). YTD the stock is up 14,8% in USD.

In early August, Greenlight Re filed their 6M report. Interestingly the NAV per share declined by -4% from 22.20 USD to 21,32 USD per share.

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Some links

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Forget accelerators. Slowing down makes you more creative (TED talk)

Emerging Market bonds are back again and a profile of EM bond guru Michael Hasenstab

Interesting observations on Coach and its brand strategy

Some interesting facts about the Swedish stock market

A few weeks old but still interesting: Bronte Capital on UK banking (and RBS)

Be carefull when peer-to-peer lenders report “returns”

 

 

Metro Bank Plc – “The Apple of Banking” or “One-trick Pony” ?

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Readers of my blog know that I do like “outsider” like financial companies and that I do like UK banking (Handelsbanken Lloyds).

pf-metro_1684191c

Therefore it was highly interesting to read about Metro Bank, a recently listed “UK Challenger bank” in a letter of an investor I greatly respect. I had a look at “online only” UK challenger Bank Aldermore but didn’t like it too much, but as Metro Bank runs a “Branch strategy”, I decided to look into them.

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Short cuts: Installux, Kuka, Aixtron

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Installux:

Installux is surprisingly one of my best performing stocks this year, including dividends the stock is more than 30% and is at an all time high.

installux

I did not fully understand why until I read the 6 month report.

Sales are up ~7% yoy, 6M earnings per share are 17,16 EUR vs. 14,37 EUR, an increase of almost 20%. Profit improvements happened across most of their sectors, so it doesn’t look like single special effects or so. Despite the recent run-up, the stock remains exceptionally cheap.

Kuka & MDAX exit

For those who did follow my comments on the original Kuka post, they might have noticed that I sold the stocks 2 days ago and bought them back yesterday slightly cheaper.

The reason was that in the meantime, the tendered shares were kicked out of the MDAX, the popular German MID Cap index.

As I was not sure how the shares would react I decided to manage the risk by staying out.

At the end of the day not much happened:

mdax kuka

Nevertheless I was able to cheapen my purchase price from ~107,5 to 106 EUR. As the deal now is more attractive, I invested a total of 4% of the portfolio.

 

Aixtron – another special situation (with a Chinese buyer)

Aixtron, a former TECDAX star has fallen on hard times. However a few weeks ago, a Chinese buyer showed up and finally made an offer for the company at 6 EUR per share.

With a share price at currently 5,53 EUR, the discount is similar to Kuka at around 8,5%.

The situation differs slightly from Kuka:

  • the buyer is a financial buyer, not a strategic one (more opportunistic ?)
  • The purchase price is “optically” not as rich as the one for Kuka (below book)
  • they require at least 60% acceptance as closing condition (vs. 30% for Kuka)
  • within the offer they have a “put” if the index (DAX or TEcDax) goes down more than 30%

On the plus side, there is little risk that anyone complains about the deal as Aixtron was not doing well anyway and they are not deemed “strategically important”. The time horizon here should be shorter than for the Kuka deal.

The offer runs until October 7th. So far, the acceptance is low, as of today, only 1,64% of the shares have been tendered.

I think the risk is slightly higher than in the Kuka case as they might not reach their threshold, on the other hand there might be a chance for a better offer.

Although the situation is less clear for me as in the Kuka case, I start here with a 1% position at 5,53 EUR and will monitor it closely.

 

 

 

SportsDirect (SPD) – Bad PR but maybe good Capital Allocation ?

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Already some days ago, I linked to an interesting write up from Wertart on UK retailer SportsDirect.

sportsdirect-com_logo

In general, I liked a lot of things at SportsDirect from a share holder perspective:

+ It is kind of “Owner operated” with an experienced management
+ Aldi/Lidl like business model (Some brands, own brands, “hard discount”)
+ good growth track record since IPO
+ very good profitability
+ looks cheap based on past performance

Of course there are a couple of issues as well:

  • it is retail after all
  • Brexit / GBP issues (higher import prices, potential issues with consumer confidence)
  • Bad PR (low wages, zero hour contracts, incidents)
  • some governance issues (related party dealings etc.)

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Book review: “Shoe Dog – A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE” – Phil Knight

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“Shoe Dog” is the memoir of Phil Knight’s early years as founder and CEO of NIKE.

As a University track runner, he got the idea to import sport shoes from Japan. Without much preparation he flew to Japan and actually managed to get the importer contract for the Japanese Tiger brand.

The first shoes he sold on track & field competitions literally out of the trunk of his car. For the first years, he worked as a CPA at day and financed the shoe business with his salary. The creation of the NIKE brand was more or less a “forced coincidence” when the Japanese company tried to kick them out of their deal.

As the company was founded with very little equity, (only 1000 USD, with his former coach as 49% partner), the company was for many years always on the brink of bankruptcy and was saved once by the parents of an employee and another time by a Japanese trading company.

I was very surprised how well the book is written. I am not sure but I think most of the memoir is written by Phil Knight himself. The book reads much more like a Thriller than like a (somewhat boring) “How I did it” memoir. For the first 200 pages or so I couldn’t put the book down. Although the end of the story is well know it is nevertheless fascinating to read how the first 10 years or so they limped from one near death experience to the other.

What I also find interesting is that Phil Knight mostly describes the mistakes he made. If you read the book you get the impression “What the hell did he actually do ?” for NIKE to become so succesful. In his descriptions it is almost always his employees or his former partner who came up with the best ideas. His leadership style seemed to be very team oriented and “Hands off”, a nice contrast to the “maniac detail obsessed” guys like Bezos and Jobs. My interpretation is that he basically was responsible for the general direction and strategy and let his employees do whatever they thought was the right thing to do.

My learnings from the book:

  • Those days were great days for banks. They were the kings and start-ups like Nike the ones begging for money. Raising money back then was really difficult, capital was scarce.
  • A value investor woul dhave never invested in this company as it was debt only, free cash flow negative and with little observable competitive advantages for the first 10-15 years.
  • Nike was actually saved by a Japanese trading company which funded the expansion after the bank refused to finance a strongly growing but cashflow negative company
  • The brand “Nike” and the “swoosh” were much more coincidence than strategic planning
  • Nike and Knight were at the right place at the right time. When people started to wear sneakers as everyday shoe, Nike was just there. They didn’t foresee it and didn’t plan for it.
  • Phil Knight’s leadership style seems to have been very “hands-off”, much less detail obsessed than for instance Jobs or Bezos. A good example that a founder doesn’t need to be an egomaniac asshole to be succesful.
  • Amazon these days is able to charge more for the Kindle copy than for the paperback. Remarkable.
  • From a personality point of view the founders and initial team seem to have been “outsiders”. A guy in a wheelchair, an obese guy and a more or less autistic running freak were the first employees and later also the top management. Not your typical Fortune 500 top management.

 

Overall I can only recommend this book. I think it makes a perfect and surprisingly “thrilling” read especially for the summer holidays.