A very critical article on DaVita Healthcare
How Warren Buffett runs the pension plans of his companies
Whitney Tilson is closing his fund (because of “sustained underperformance”)
The UK Value investor explains why stocks high dividend yields can be dangerous (Stagecoach, Inmarsat)
Ben from Wertart likes DFS furniture
Long and detailed Reuters piece on the “Wild Wild West” nature of Bitcoin exchanges
Business / Background:
Northgate is a UK based company that specialises in what they call “flexible rental” of smaller delivery vans to small businesses. My main interest in Northgate is not that I am so bullish on the UK and this sector, but that this company is somehow similar at least to the GoGetta part of Silverchef and I was looking for a peer company in order to be able to compare some metrics.
On a stand-alone basis, Northgate looks cheap:
Market cap: 570 mn GBP
P/E: 9,3
P/B: 1,1
EV/EBITDA 3,7
Div. Yield 4,1%
A deep dive into the strange new world of initial Coin Offerings
Wexboy with a great round up of all listed stocks that have some relationship with Cryptocurrencies
Why machine learning investment strategies fail (so far)
Don’t miss: Today is the last day to sign up for the free “Venture Deals” online course.
It seems that shareholder activism is slowly coming to Japan
A very interesting attempt to value Teva
The interesting case of Home Capital shareholders rejecting a (second) capital injection from Berkshire
A few days ago, Ashmore issued their 2016/2017 annual numbers and annual report. Ashmore was my first Emerging Market investment three and a half years ago and I think it makes sense to check and update the investment case.
Performance so far was not exciting. Including dividends, I earned around 21,6% over those 3,5 years in GBP, in EUR around 12,7%. Compared to my overall portfolio performance of ~+48% in the same time period, Ashmore was clearly a underperformer.
This is how I justified the potential investment case back then:
Background:
Some of my readers might have noticed that starting in the last year I have become more interested in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. Don’t worry, I will not invest gamble with them but I do think it is important to understand what is going on in this area as this could change many things especially within financial services. As this blog functions primarily as my own diary, I have decided to do a few posts about my own learnings so far.
Bitcoin explained (maybe wrongly) in 10 Points:
Universal Insurance is an US-based P&C Insurance company which has been on my extended watch list for some time now. Why ? Well, the company always traded cheap (single digit P/E), was very profitable (~31% ROE for the last 9 years on average) and growing strongly year by year (400% over 9 years). So from the outside this looked like a cheap but highly profitable growth stock.
The main reason why I didn’t analyze the stock further is that Universal is a specialized homeowner insurance company which almost exclusively operates in Florida.
The company has a market cap of currently ~620 mn USD.
Not surprisingly Universal now is in a tough spot as “Irma” is creating havoc on Florida as I write this post. The stock price has dropped by around -30% by Friday:
UK “guru” Neil Woodford tries to explain his currently bad performance (incl. Provident)
Some interesting thoughts on mining stocks
Ad agencies vs. platform companies
“Big Money thinks small” looks like a really interesting investment book
Nacco Industries looks like a potentially very interesting spin-off candidate
Some interesting thoughts from Horizon Kinetics (FRMO, Murray Stahl) on “investing” in Cryptocurrency (and other stuff)
It feels like decades ago but actually it is only 4 years ago when 3D printing was supposed to disrupt each and everyone.
Googling around, it is quite easy to find articles like this one in Forbes from October 2013:
We are a few years away from a printed economy – an economy in which 3D printing will have a major role in manufacturing. Up to now, 3D printing has been most useful in creating prototypes. But from the automotive to the electronics and toy industries, 3D printers will increasingly produce critical parts and finished products. What are some industries 3D printing will disrupt? Here’s our list of seven.
Almost a year ago, I reviewed the excellent book “Digital Gold” which covered the story of Bitcoin from its beginnings.
Back then I said the following:
I have absolutely no clue what a fair price of a Bitcoin might be. But I believe that in order to have value it has to be widely used and not just to speculate on an increase in value. Personally I would never “invest” in Bitcoin as for me, an investment needs to produce cashflows.
Well, this was (so far) one of my weaker calls. Back then in September 2016, Bitcoin traded slightly below 600 USD, at the time of writing, the price has went up almost 8 fold to 4500 USD per Bitcoin (at the time of writing).
Book review: Attack of the 50 foot Blockchain
A realistic view on self driving cars
How Whole Foods (and grocery stores in general) will look after having been taken over by Amazon
Good write-up on a company called Quest Resources
A primer on the video gaming sector (h/t valueinvestingworld)
Geoff Gannon thinks that Cheesecake Factory, Howden Joinery and Omnicon are still good value
Value Investing favourite Gilead made a large acqusition
value and opportunity 