Monthly Archives: January 2024

Some links 04/2024

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Highly recommended: Portfolio review from the Wintergem Substack (Dollarama, Mercado Libre, Thermador)

GlobalStockPicking has summarized 12 years expierence of stockpicking in Hongkong

The Aquired podcast about Novo Nordisk is fantastic

Interesting guest post on Emerging Value about a Japanese amsuement park operator

David Einhorn had a pretty decent 2023 with Greenlight

Prof. Damodaran with some interesting data series and observations on interest rates

Walmart is a great example that logistics really matter

Some links 3/2024

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French Cognac exports are struggling even without Chinese sanctions (Search result)

Good write-up on UK stock Andrew Sykes from Wes Chambers

The fascinating world of undersea data cables that connect the world

Sam Altman says that AI needs much more power than expected

Flyover Stocks with a teaser for US insulation player Installed Building Products

For Berkshire/Buffett Super Nerds: Capital Allocation: The Financials of a New England Textile Mill (1955-1985) is available for free download

An interesting look into the home insurance problems in the “hard to insure” areas in the US

All Belgian Shares Part 1 – Nr. 1-20

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Hello Belgium, here I am !!!
As in my previous series, a random number generator will determine in which order I will look at the roughly 210+ shares.

One initial remark on the “Expert Market” Segment: This is a very illiquid segment of stocks that are traded only once a week (Tuesdays) in an Auction. Some stocks haven’t traded for years. Sometimes very little or no information is available for these companies. In this series, I will only take a closer look at those Expert market stocks that have been trading at least once in 2023. The others I will only mention briefly. As the Expert market is almost 50% of the universe, there will be a lot of very short reviews.

Let’s go !!!

  1. TPF Contracting (Expert Market)

TPF Contracting SA provides design, management and supervision, and asset management services for public and private clients in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. It offers its services for transport and mobility, buildings and cities, and environment and water sectors.

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Some links 2/2024

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More year end letters:
– East 72 Dynasty Trust (E-L Financial, PSH)
– UK Dividend Investor

Carsten from Augustusville with a great write-up on Delek, a US Energy downstream player

The One-foot Bars substack has a very nice write-up on Champagne house Laurent Perrier

I can’t repeat it often enough: Prof. Damodaran is offering the upcoming Valuation class at Columbia for free. There is no better deal in financial education, guaranteed.

Twitter Thread from Dalius with 10 recommended investment blogs

12 pretty good lessons from the stock market in 2023

PE Fund investors really do want their money back

A very quick Champagne Peer Group Check (Laurent Perrier, Vranken-Pommery, Lanson BCC)

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For the new year, one of my todos was to check the other two listed Champagne Houses in France, Vranken-Pommery and Lanson BCC.

As I mentioned in the original post, my main motivation to buy Laurent Perrier was that it’s name always showed up when I looked up Gerard Perrier.

Using TIKR as a quick comparison tool, one can see, that the two other players; Vranken-Pommery and Lanson-BCC trade at even lower PEs than Laurent Perrier:

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Some links 1/2024

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Some good year end reviews:
– Bruce Packard with a 2023 revew, some UK ideas and a stock write-up all in one
– Another, UK small cap focused year end review from Maynard Payton
– Very reflected Year end review from the Treasure Hunting substack
– Altay Capital with a year end review of its Japanese stock basket

Ian Cassel with an article that I also wanted to write but now don’t have to: The virtue of Active Patience

Undervalued Shares with a great post on Hilton

52 irrelevant but highly interesting things Kent Hendricks learned in 2023

Veteran VC Fred Wilson with a very positive outlook on 2024 (AI, Web3, Climate)

Interesting deep dive into US Steel, which once was the largest company of the world

The annual presentation of Ben Evans is always worth reading – “AI and everything else”

Performance review 2023

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2023 overview
2023 was a in absolute terms quite good, in relative terms however below benchmark. The Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  14,3 % (including dividends, no taxes, AOC fund as of 30.09.2023) against +16,2% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends). Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.

Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2023:

Partners Fund TGV: 19,6%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +23,2%
Squad European Convictions +9,9%
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen +7,4%
Squad Aguja Special Situation +4,4%
Paladin One -5,2%
Alphastars Europe +13,7%

The performance of the peers reflects to a large extent the weakness esp. in European/German small caps, especially those outside indices. If you missed out on the few bright spots, you underperformed significantly.

Over the 13 years from 12/31/2010 to 12/31/2023, the portfolio gained +398% against +120% for the Benchmark (before taxes). In CAGR numbers this translates into 13,2% p.a. for the portfolio vs. 6,2% p.a. for the Benchmark. The portfolio ended 2023 also with a new All-time-high.  As a graph this looks as follows:

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All Norwegian Stocks Part 19 – The “Grand Final” and the next Target

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With a delay of a few calendar days against the original 2023 year end target, I am very happy to conclude the “All Norwegian Stocks” series with the final “Top 20” Watchlist.

Overall, I was somehow a little bit underwhelmed by the Norwegian stock market, at least it doesn’t offer that much of what I am interested in.

From the 270+ stocks, there is a large share of what I would call “listed early stage VC companies” that have been IPOed in the last 3 years. These companies have normally little sales and little cash left but high losses. If you pick the right one, one could make a bundle, but most of them will disappear into bankruptcy sooner or later. This is not my game. Then there are something like 40 different Sparebanken, many Shipping companies and Fish farmers that have business models where I am not 100% comfortable either.

I still managed to collect 20 stocks that I find worth watching going forward, In contrast to for instance the “All Swiss” series I didn’t find any company that I felt the urge to directly invest into (besides my portfolio holding Bouvet).

Final Top 20 Watch list

Without further intro, here are the 20 stocks that I decided are worth watching going forward (on top of my portfolio holding Bouvet ASA):

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