Good writers seem to be better (Hedge-) fund managers
The Valuesque Blog with a great deep dive on the GE/Baker Hughes accounting and the Markopolis Report
Another new Langfrist fund with its initial report: Compound Interest
Yetanothervalue blog with its August roundup post (dieting, short selleng etc.)
A good collection of Stock spin-off links
Broyhill half year letter to investors
A nice investment check list from the UK value Investor
John Hempton on Bank margins – Part 1 and Part 2
Ben Evens explains why Tesla and Netflix are NOT Tech companies
The Long Term Value blog likes “cigar butt” Gamestop
A good reminder on the potential threat from the “passive” boom in stock investing
Must Read: The Network effect manual
An honest analysis why a small cap investment has gone wrong
The funniest take down of WeWorks S-1 clearly comes from Scott Galloway
WeWork as the AWS of Commercial Real Estate
A lot has been written in the past few days about the upcoming WeWork IPO. I had linked to a few articles on Saturday and FTAlphaville has some pretty sarcastic but good coverage as well.
Yesterday then the always brilliant Stratechery came out with in interesting post. Ben Thompson thinks that WeWork could develop into something like AWS (for real estate) which now is repsonsible for most of Amazon’s profits. But he clearly acknowledges there are a lot of governance issues etc. etc. The “WeWork is like AWS” story is nothing new and is mostly pushed by WeWork itself and combined with what they think is the adressable market (hint: all commercial real estate globally) could justify almost any valuation.
WeWork’s actual product: Open Plan offices (for start-ups and wannabes)
What I have been missing in the whole discussion so far is a look at WeWork’s actual product which in my opinion is the following:
Very nice post: Investment lessons from 3 weeks of fatherhood
Should value investors look at money losing companies ?
Is Coporate Debt the weak link in a potential market downturn ?
Will the WeWork IPO maybe mark the peak of the current Unicorn mania ? Despite the valuation, there are many red flags in the S-1 prospectus.
Harry Markopolos, main Madoff critic, issued a 170 page attack on GE. John Hempton has a different view (part 1, part 2)
Interested in knowing more about Venture Capital ? Then the free Venture Deals online course the best opportunity
Must Read: Deep thoughts on the current Venture “Funding bubble” for loss making companies
As mentioned in the comments yesterday evening, I sold my Osram shares at 35,40 EUR yesterday. Why did I do this ? The “new” spread at around 8% is even more attractive than the original spread when I bought it.
The reason is quite simple: in my opinion we have now a very different different situation with the following new issues:
Litigation Finance company Burford Capital was “attacked” by Muddy Waters but tries to strike back
Italian based, AIm listed “bio plastic unicorn” Bio-on also was attacked by a short seller
Madison Square Garden Spin-off analysis
The Valuesque blog explains how companies can pump up Goodwill even after an acquisition
A detailed look into UK “quality stock” AG Barr
John Kingham (UK Value Investor) with an analysis of UK bus operator Stagecoach
Paul Singer /Elliott wants to split up Scout24. Their more detailed publication can be found here.
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH.
Ouch, another day, another problem. Yesterday, one of my Special situation stocks Osram lost around -7%.
What happened: The largest shareholder Allianz Global Investors (AGI) announced that they do not support the offer as they consider the price of 35 EUR per share as too low.
A few observations from my side:
Another headline for this post could have been “The good, the (not so) bad and the (very) ugly…
Let’s start with “the ugly” right away: Cars.com
Yesterday was a pretty bad day anyway but Cars.com decided that it is a good day to tell investors that a potential sale of the company will not materialize. The whole bidding process has been described in details by the company. In summary, 29 parties looked at the company but no “actionable” bid could be obtained. This alone might not have triggered the -36% share price reaction taht happened yesterday,
Great post from A16Z on “Hidden network” business models
Interesting analysis on the application and limits of Benford’s law in order to detect accounting fraud (example Steinhoff)
Q2 report from TGV Intrinsic, a new addition to the Langfrist family
Nice writup on the Juventus Turin turn-around by Greenwood
“Let my people go surfing” (Patagonia story) sounds like a must read book
“Activist” hedge funds are under increasing pressure themselves these days
The GlobalStockPicking blog has discovered an interesting Polish SaaS company called LiveChat
value and opportunity 