Monthly Archives: May 2019

Online Travel Updates (Expedia, Booking, Tripadvisor, Trivago & AirBNB / Google)

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Expedia 

I invested into Expedia in February 2018 after the stock had become cheap enough. The idea was that a stock in a secular growth sector (online travel) should do well in the long run. After pretty decent fulll year 2018 numbers, with double digit increases in both, top and bottom, line, the first quarter 2019 showed a clear slowdown. Topline growth slowed to ~4%. Excluding Trivago which is still shrinking, topline sales would have grown +6%. Underlying profitability has improved although the first quarter is always the weakest one.

What I found interesting is the fact that Expedia performed better than Booking com. Here is a stock price comparison (including Tripadvisor  and Trivago):

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Some links

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Good article how German Aldi is “disrupting” American grocery retail

Why “technical analysis” in stock prices makes no sense at all

A great analysis of Zillow’s new business model

The UK Value Investor with an in depth look at Cranswick

Portfolio updates from the GlobalStockPicking blog

Is Coca Cola Bottling an easy short ?

And finally the Graham and Doddsville Spring 2019 edition (including an interview with John Hempton, Bronte)

 

 

Some links

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Whitney Tilson now has his own website / blog.

According to Andrew Left (Citron), the  recent IPO “The Amazon of Africa” Jumia is a complete fraud

Very Expensive stocks have outperformed now for some time

On Gazprom and why some Value Investments need catalysts

A16Z with a great post on why just having lots of data doesn’t create a defensible moat

Interesting perepctive: What Long term investors can learn from traders

Google is tracking a lot of stuff. For instance all your puchase receipts in Gmail, but free mobile games seem to be a lot worse

 

Deutsche Familienversicherung AG: Europe’s leading Insurtech or “Lipstick” on an ordinary Insurance company ?

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Deutsche Familenversicherung AG (DFV) IPOed end of last year and claims to be the first stock listed “Insuretech” in Europe. The IPO was only successful at the second attempt but still they made it. In their investor presentation they even call themselves “Europe’s leading Insurtech” which is a pretty bold claim.

Excursion: What does Insurtech /Fintech mean ? And what does digital mean ?

There is clearly not general valid definition of Fintech /insurtech, but looking at the Fintech space, one would characterize these companies as technology driven companies that use technology to do things faster, cheaper and better than thier “ordinary” competitors.

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Some links

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An interesting article on how Private Investigators are used by Hedge Fund investors

Some deep research on the planned Genworth Financial take over by China Oceanwide 

Ricegrowers Ltd from Australia could be interestng for investors into agricultural companies

The always brilliant Ben Thompson on Microsoft, Slack, Zoom & SaaS businesses

yetanothervalue blog with a range of thoughts and ideas

A good summary on what’s going on in the “spin-off” area

Fantastic story on a guy who invented algorithmic horse betting