Monthly Archives: May 2020

Some links

The Undervalued Shares blog has started an interesting “Behind the scenes” series

A good summary from A16Z on how moats develop

Ben Thompson with some deep thoughts on platform business models (Shopify)

A good summary of the crazy things in the capital markets that happened in the last few months

An interesting in depth story on the Luckin Coffee fraud (WSJ, paywall)

Deep Dive on stock based compensation

Alternative data use for predicting asset prices is booming

 

All German Shares Part 24 (Nr. 501-525)

Another 25 randomly selected German stocks including four stocks this time who made it onto my “watch” list:

501. Fair Value REIT

Fair Value is a listed REIT with 104 mn EUR market cap. The portfolio includes a >50% share of retail objects which will be extremely challenged. The stock price has dropped a little but not much. “pass”.

502. Fortec Elektronik AG

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Some links

The Brooklyn Investor on Buffett, Markel, Airlines, Banks, Insurance companies and more

A deep look into Netflix accounting practices

An interesting piece on the dire situation in Brazil

Great application of a 1940s stock book (Where are the customers’ yachts ?) on today’s markets 

Bill Gates’summer book list

Video interview with 3G mastermind Jorge Paolo Lemann (scroll to 00:58 hours for the most interesting part)

An interesting article on private company Epic Games which seems to become a dominating digital player

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agfa Gevaert (ISIN BE0003755692) -An Ugly Duck with some Golden Eggs in its nest ?

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!

Intro

Agfa-Gevaert was on my research list for some time now. Fellow blogger Undervalued Shares than triggered my renewed interest with their post from a few days ago and one of my best “Special situations” ideas ever was a Belgian company (Sapec).

I’ll try to summarize the part of the post that deals with Agfa:

  • Active Ownership, a relatively new but successful German activist fund (Stada) has build up a position (~14%] and board membership (actually the Chairman) in Agfa Gevaert, the traditional German-Belgian film / imaging company
  • Despite having some interesting assets, Agfa didn’t create shareholder value over a long time
  • opaque reporting and a 1 bn EUR pension liability made it unattractive to stock market investors
  • In 2020, Agfa managed to sell part of its Healthcare IT segment for 975 mn EUR
  • Initially, the stock went up to ~5 EUR based on the first info on the sale but hasn’t fully recovered yet

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Some links

John Hempton is frustrated that he didn’t outperform more in March

A sobering look at the future of the restaurant industry (US)

Mark Cuban funded at Covid-19 compliance test of reopened restaurants in Dallas. The results are not good.

Some interesting thoughts from Prof. Galloway on “unusual” business strategies and their long term impacts (Apple, Amazon, Walmart etc.)

Disney will be the bellwether to see if and when things in tourism go back to normal

The Graham & Doddsville Spring 2020 issue is out

According to Glassdoor, the companies with the best Glassdoor employer ratings outperform indices significantly over time

All German Shares part 22 (Nr. 451-475)

Another batch of 25 randomly selected German stocks. This time I identified 5 candidates for my watch list amongst them.

451. Biofrontera AG

BioFrontera is a 151 mn EUR market cap specialty pharma company in the field of dermatology (skin cancer). The company actually has a product in the market and shows decent grows, especially in Germany and the US. The company is still loss making in the first 9M 2019, but the loss narrowed significantly. The “Corona Crash” pushed the stock price back to before sales went up:

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Panik Journal 7 – “Where is my bailout” and Behavioral Change

My last “panic Journal” post is now 3 weeks old. What has changed ? If I look at my learnings, not much. We still don’t really know how many people have been infected, how it transmits, what is the actual cause of the deaths, if there are treatments and when we will have a vaccine. The only major difference is that toilet paper now is available in my local drug store every day and and stocks are even higher than back then.

It took me so long to write this, because every time I start to write something, I discover that someone else has already written about it, so I try to focus on stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Where is my bailout (Leoni, Adidas, Start ups, Car purchase incentives)

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