Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Underrated special situation – Deep-discounted rights issues

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In many books which deal more or less explicitly with “special situation” investing, for instance Joel Greenblatt’s “You can be a stock market genius” or seth Klarman’s “Margin of safety”, many so-called “Corporate actions” are mentioned as interesting value investing opportunities.
Some of the most well know corporate actions which might yield good investment opportunities are:

– Spin offs
– tender offers /Mergers
– distressed / bankruptcy 

However one type of corporate action which is rarely mentioned are rights issues and especially “deeply discounted” rights issues.

Let us quickly look at how a rights issue is defined according to Wikipedia:

A rights issue is an issue of rights to buy additional securities in a company made to the company’s existing security holders. When the rights are for equity securities, such as shares, in a public company, it is a way to raise capital under a seasoned equity offering. Rights issues are sometimes carried out as a shelf offering. With the issued rights, existing security-holders have the privilege to buy a specified number of new securities from the firm at a specified price within a specified time.[1] In a public company, a rights issue is a form of public offering (different from most other types of public offering, where shares are issued to the general public).

So we can break this down into 2 separate steps:

1. Existing shareholders get a “Right” to buy new shares at a specific price
2. However the shareholders do not have to subscribe the new shares. Instead they can simply choose to not subscribe or sell the subscription rights

Before we move on, Let’s look to the two alternative ways to raise equity without rights issues:

A) Direct Sale of new shares without rights issues
This is usually possible only up to a certain amount of the total equity. In Germany for instance a company can issue max. 10% of new equity without being forced to give rights to existing shareholders. In any case this has to be approved by the AGM.

B) (Deferred) Issuance of new shares via a Convertible bond
Many companies prefer convertible bonds to direct issues. I don’t know why but I guess it is less a stigma than new equity although new equity is only created when the share price is at or above the exercise price at maturity. So for the issuing company, it is more a cash raising exercise than an equity raising exercise. Usually, the same limits apply to convertible debt than for straight equity.

So if a company needs more new equity, the only other feasible alternative is a rights issue. But even within rights issues, one can usually distinguish between 3 different kinds of rights issues depending on the issue price:

1) “Normal” rights issue with a relatively small discount
Usually, a company will issue the new shares at a discount to the old shares in order to “Motivate” existing shareholders to take up the offer. If they do not participate, their ownership interest will be diluted. Usually “better” companies try to use smaller discounts, high discount would signal some sort of distress

2) Atypical rights issue with a premium
This is something one sees sometimes especially with distressed companies, where a strategic buyer is already lined up but wants to avoid paying a larger take over premium to existing shareholders

3) Finally the “deeply” discounted rights issue

Often, if a company does not have a majority shareholder, the amount of required capital is relatively high and there is some urgency, then companies offer the new shares at a very large discount to the previous share price.

But exactly why are “deeply discounted” rights issues an interesting special situation ?

After all this theory, lets move to an example I have already covered in the blog, the January 2012 rights issue of Unicredit In this case:

– Unicredit did not have a controlling shareholder. One of the major shareholders, the Lybian SWF even was not able to transact at that time
– the amount to be raised was huge (7.5 bn EUR)
– it was urgent as regulators made a lot of pressure

As discussed, in the case of Unicredit, before the actual issuance at the time of communication the stock price was around 6.50 EUR, the theoretical price of the subscription right was around 3.10 EUR. However even before the subscription right was issued, the stock fell by 50 %. At the worst day, one day before the subscription rights were actually split off, the share fell (including the right) almost down to the exercise price without any additional news on the first day of subscription right trading.

But why did this happen ? In my opinion there is an easy answer: Forced selling

Many of the initial Unicredit Investors did not want to participate or did not have the money to participate in the rights issue. As the subscription right was quite valuable, a simple “non-exercise” was not the answer. As history shows, selling the subscription right in the trading period always leads to a discount even against the underlying shares, in this case some investors thought it is more clever to sell the shares before, including the subscription rights. Sow what we saw is a big wave of unwilling or unable investors which wanted to avoid subscribing and paying for new shares which created an interesting “forced selling” special situation.

Summary: In my opinion, deeply discounted rights issues can create interesting “special situation” investment opportunities. Similar to Spin offs, not every discounted rights issue is a great investment, but some situations can indeed be interesting. On top of this, those situations often are not really correlated to market movements and play out in a relatively short time frame.

Weekly links

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Good analysis of the Bulgarian economy and stock market and an interesting Bulgarian company called Yuri Gagarin.

Some top hedge fund investment ideas form a recent investment congress in Chicago

Stephan at Simple Value analyzes an interesting French plantation company (only in German)

Wexboy like two German residential property stocks especially KWG kommunale Wohnen.

Since this week, short positions for German shares of large Hedgefunds can be accessed here. Most interesting: 15% in total of Aixtron are sold short….

Boss Score: Top 25 Scandinavia

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Next in my “top 25” series from the “Boss” database is now Scandinavia or the “Nordic” countries, namely Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Again, as the process is only semi-automated, I have currently “only” about 300 Nordic companies in my database.

Let’s start with the Top 25 according to the 10 Year score:

Followed by the ranking for the 5 Year score

Finally I want to introduce something a am also looking at: A “pure” quality score without actually looking at the current market price. As some readers might recall, the Boss model first calculates a theoretical fair multiple to book value and then divides this by the market price.

If we leave out the last step, we can sort by the achieved multiple. Based on empirical experience, I use a blend of the 5y and 10y value with a double weight for the 5 year score.

After sorting the list by this criteria, we get the best “quality” companies:

Again there seem to be some interesting companies in the Nordic countries. Let’s have a quick at some of the names which I find interesting at a first glance:

B&B Tools (Sweden)

They seem to have a quite interesting business model, a servicer and supplier (without own production) of tools and consumables to industrial companies. However they seem to have some problems at the moment. Strongly declining profits, new CEO etc.

Capman OY

Finish private equity vehicle. Maybe worth a look at some point in time.

Takoma OY

Finish engineering group. However Stock chart looks like free fall. According to one of their publications, they are currently in breach of loan covenants. So a “no go” here.

KABE

Very interesting. One of the leading caravan manufacturers. Also “high quality” in my model. Maybe

Fenix Outdoor

Both, designer of outdoor products as well as operating a retail chain. Relatively expensive but high profitability.

NIBE

Producer of heat pumps, boiler, freestanding fireplaces. Expensive but high quality.

Rapala

Finish specialist for fishing tackle. Main competitor for Shimano in this area.

Gronlandsbanken

This might be an interesting special banking stock. It seems to be the ONLY commercial bank in Greenland according to Wikipedia. The balance sheet is super solid and if the Greenland natural resources story would really play out, this would be the stock to have. So a “hidden” commodity play so to say.

Summary:All in all my feeling is that the Nordic capital markets are much more efficient than for instance France. Thos companies which score well do mostly have some issues or their overall scores are not very high compared to other countries. “Quality” companies seem to be priced accordingly.

Performance October 2012 & Comments

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Performance
October has been a “normal” month for the portfolio. The Benchmark (Eurostoxx 50%, Dax 30%, MDAX 20%) gained 2.5%, whereas the portfolio “only” gained 1.5%. Year to date, The portfolio now shows a gain of +30.6% against 21.1% for the Benchmark. Since inception(1.1.2011), the portfolio is up by 25.3% against 4.4% for the benchmark.

Main performance drivers in October have been Dart Group (+15.1%), AS Creation (+11.8%), HT1 (+7.5%). Main “detractors” were Cranswick (-5.1%), Vetropack (-4.9%), Bouygues (-2.2%) and Rhoen (-2.1%)

Just for fun, I calculated the Sharpe ratio based on the 22 available monthly returns, both for the portfolio and the benchmark. The sharp ratio for the Benchmark is 0.2, however for the portfolio it is an incredible 0.90. I don’t think that I will manage such Sharpe ratios over the long run but it is still interesting to see.

Portfolio as of 31.10.2012:

Name Weight Perf. Incl. Div
Hornbach Baumarkt 4.7% 5.1%
AS Creation Tapeten 4.3% 21.6%
BUZZI UNICEM SPA-RSP 5.1% 1.4%
WMF VZ 3.8% 49.4%
Tonnellerie Frere Paris 5.0% 25.4%
Vetropack 4.5% -7.6%
Total Produce 5.3% 26.8%
SIAS 6.0% 39.4%
Installux 3.0% -0.1%
Poujoulat 0.8% -4.6%
Dart Group 2.8% 28.2%
Cranswick 4.8% -6.4%
April SA 3.4% 20.9%
Bouygues 2.4% -4.5%
KAS Bank NV 5.1% 12.6%
     
Drägerwerk Genüsse D 10.1% 104.6%
IVG Wandler 3.5% 9.5%
DEPFA LT2 2015 3.0% 45.1%
HT1 Funding 4.6% 29.4%
EMAK SPA 5.0% 26.9%
Rhoen Klinikum 2.5% 0.5%
     
Short: Focus Media Group -1.0% 2.4%
Short: Prada -1.1% -6.1%
     
Short Lyxor Cac40 -1.3% -0.5%
Short Ishares FTSE MIB -2.2% -2.9%
     
Terminverkauf CHF EUR 0.2% 4.9%
     
Tagesgeldkonto 2% 15.9%  
     
     
     
Value 60.9%  
Opportunity 28.7%  
Short+ Hedges -5.4%  
Cash 15.9%  
  100.0%

Following the “autumn cleanup” post, I have already sold down all the “low conviction” positions, as the two last days of the month were “up days”. I increased only IVG and Rhoen so far.

In detail, the following positions were closed:

EVN, total return -4.87%
Mapfre +44.75%
Short Kabel Deutschland -52.87%
OMV -3.92%
Fortum -24.17%

Apart from the hedges, the portfolio has now 23 “single names” which is something I consider within the optimal range considering the amount of time I can spend on the portfolio.

The other announced position increases will be executed in November and as a general rule only on “down days”.

Comment & Outlook

One fascinating aspect of the current stock market is in my opinion the obsession of many money managers with the US Fed and the ECB and low interest rates in particular. Just as an example, one could read for instance the latest publication from Steve Romick (FPA) which argues quite strongly against the current policy of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The argument more or less goes as follows: The low interest rates inflate asset prices (Bonds, real estate, stocks) which distorts capital allocation and will in the medium to long run create even bigger problems than today’s problems.

I have to admit that I can only partly follow this logic. It is true, that interest rates are relatively low and maybe artificially so for certain segments. On the other hand we see a lot of deflationary developments for instance within the Euro zone.

However, I find it strange that many people relate the level of the stock market directly and exclusevily to the interest rate level. Interest rates are one of many factors in valuing stocks. Although many people make their living in trying to explain on CNBC or Bloomberg why the stock market has moved up or down, obviously no one knows the reasons, otherwise they all would be rich and counting their money from successfully predicting the market.

Many people seem to think that stocks should be cheaper because of “macro uncertainty”, although in my opnion this is wrong. There is always macro uncertainty, for me it seems that only the majority of commentators seems to forget about that sometimes.

Going back to Steve Romick: I guess his commentary might have something to do with the recent underperformance of his flagship fund which has missed out a significant part of the rally. Although I really like those guys, this comment sounds a little bit like a lame excuse to blame the “market bubble” for the underperformance.

So to make it short: In my opinion one should either ignore all those commentators which try to explain why the market is over- or undervalued based on macro factors or consider them as “entertainment”. Uncertainty and central bank intervention are part of the market since many many decades. For all those pundits who think that a “free” capital market without central banking is the answer, I would highly recommend to read some history books how markets and banks behaved BEFORE central banking had been established.

Weekly links

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Classic article from Charles D. Ellis against “Diworsification”

Good presentation from Katsenelson on investment process

Very interesting Tim McElvaine (Peter Cundill disciple) video interview about Japanese companies and investing (mental note: run screen as mentioned: Stock down 2/3, below tangible book and market cap > 1 bn )

Nate from Oddball is more into Japanese Net nets.

Does “catching the falling knife” maybe work on a sector level ?

David Einhorn is short Iron ore. Jim Chanos had this idea already 1 year ago.

Expecting Value about Severfield-Rowen, a stock on my Boss score UK top 25

Portfolio maintenance – autumn cleaning

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One of the things I tend to avoid is a regular review of all portfolio holdings. It is much more fun to look at new companies than to refresh the analysis on the existing companies. As I usually scale into a position slowly, I somtimes get distracted or disturbed by stock price movements or fundamental changes.

As a result, the number of position in the portfolio increases over time and in my opinion this makes it much harder to focus.

As November is a quite dull month anyway it might also be a good month to review the portfolio.

In a first step I will look “high level” at all positions and try to come up with a “conviction” level which has only three levels: HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW and a short descritpion why this is the case.

In a second step, I want to apply the following logic:

1. If I have “HIGH” conviction, then the position should be a “FULL” position or close to full (5%) unless there is a specific reason against this
2. IF I have “LOW” conviction, then I should sell or close the position
3. For “MEDIUM”, I will have to define at a later stage what will lead either to an upgrade or downgrade for the coming year

The following list is the result of this exercise:

I will therefore “upgrade” Installux, Dart Group and the IVG Convertible to “full” 5% positions. On the other hand I will sell Mapfre, Fortum, EVN and OMV and close the Kabel Deutschland Short.

For Rhoen, I will increase to 2.5%, as I am still in the “early” stage of the investment but so far it goes according to plan.

After this exercise, the portfolio will be around 90 net long, which is kind of the “Normal” allocation.

Maybe some additional comments to the “Energy sector” which I comletely exit after this exercise:

– my initieal “simple” investment case was the following: If energy prices rise, companies with large renewable/nuclear capacity will outomatically profit as well as Oil companies
– Finland and Austria are non-critical from a regulatory point of view

The first thesis obviously was not correct. Both, EVN’s and Fortum’s Earnings decreased from the 2010 level which was the basis of the analysis. Although their balance sheets are comparably stronger, stock prcie performance was only average against the non-PIIGS peers. In relative terms, the stocks are more expensive.

At the moment I just don’t really have an invetsment case for all three companies any more. They look kind of cheap but I do not have a clear view if they will earn their cost of capital going forward. The classical utiliyt business model has been somehow disrupted by alternative energy.

Maybe I invest into them at a later stage, but currently I just do not have any special insight why they should be superior investments.

Edit:

I already sold Fortum and OMV yesterday at October 30th prices as well as the increase in Rhoen Klinikum shares.

Hankook Tire Co. (ISIN KR7161390000) – Spin-off Gangnam style ?

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Hankook Tire is well known as a succesful Korean manufacurer of Tires worldwide. This year however, the company performed a spin-off which to a certain extend looks strange compared to other spin offs.

Basically, Hankook Tires spun off the operating tire business into a new entity. The old entity has been renamed Hankook Tire Worldwide and trades under the old ISIN KR7000240002. The spin-off entity is called Hankook Tire Co. and trades under the ISIN KR7161390000.

The spin off is strange to me at least for those “specialties”:

1. Before the spin-off, the stock was suspended from Trading for ~5 weeks, from August 30th to October 5th.
2. After the spin-off, the holding company will receive royalties from the operating company

There is a very interesting report from KDB Daewoo Securities about this “korean style” spin-offs in general and Hankook in particular.

Genrally, this seems to be the result of new rules in Korea which limits cross shareholdings as a mean to control companies.

If I understood the mechanics correctly, the process in general works the following way and intends to increase the stake in the HoldCo to the highest percentage possible:

A) The OldCo is split into a HoldCo and OpCo. So the “big shareholder” holds equal percentages in both compnaies
b) in a second step, the “big shareholder” will then execute both, a rights issue and a tender offer for the holding company

In the second step as far as I understood, the HoldCo will issue new shares. The “big shareholders” will tender their OpCo shares for new HoldCo shares. As not many investors are interested in in the new HoldCo shares. the price of the Holdco will suffer.

In order to maximise their final percentage in the HoldCo, the “big shareholder” has the following incentives:
– push down the value of the HoldCo shares before the offer
– push up the value of the OpCo shares before the offer

This leads, according to the research report to the following “investment opportunities”:

– buy the OpCo shares after spin off and sell before or at tender offer
– buy the HoldCo shares after the tender offer

If we look at the stock charts, at least the first step seems to work perfectly:

So the HoldCo already lost -25% since October 4th. However the second part, the increase in value of the OpCo shares didn’t really work out so well, especially after the OpCo lost ~5% market value today.

So this might be a good special opportunity to buy the OpCo shares now and maybe hedge them with a Kospi Short position.

The only practical problem with this is that Hankook shares are not listed outside Korea and it is currently not that easy to buy shares on the Korean stock exchange. Ii still did not try to open a brokerage account with a Korean broker, but maybe I Should at some point in time….

I am not sure if I should open a “paper trading” position for the portfolio. If I would really run a 10 mn fund, it would be reall making sense to open a Korean brokerage account.

To be continues…….

Boss Score Harvest: Accell Group (NL0009767532) – maybe another time

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Accell is by far the best Scoring stock in my Boss Score Top 25 Benelux. According to Bloomberg their business is focused on bicycles:

Accell Group NV designs and manufactures racing, children’s, hybrid, mountain, electric, and luxury bicycles. The Company manufactures its bikes under the brands Batavus, Hercules, Koga-Miyata, Lapierre, Mercier, Loekie, Sparta and Winora. Accell also makes bicycle accessories and fitness equipment. The Company markets its products in Northern and Central Europe.

Traditional metrics:

Market cap 299 mn EUR
P/E 8,1
P/B 1.19
P/S 0.39
EV/EBITDA ~ 12Div. Yield 7.4%

So the company looks cheap from a P/E perspective, but expensive from an EV/EBITDA point of view. Debt to Equity is ~56% or 5.12 EUR net debt per share.

Business model

Accell is producing and wholesale distributing bicycles, not retailing them. They have been constantly acquiring smaller competitors over the last years. Bicycles were good business over the last years. If we look at the currently listed manufacturers, we can see that valuations are generally quite high (just for fun I added Shimano to the peer group):

Name Mkt Cap P/B P/E EV/EBITDA T12M P/S PM LF ROE LF ROIC LF
                 
MIFA MITTELDEUTSCHE FAHRRADW 62.7 2.0 83.2   0.6 2.0 2.2  
MERIDA INDUSTRY CO LTD 894.6 4.7 17.6 17.0 1.6 6.7 29.6 13.8
SHIMANO INC 4664.3 2.5 17.1 8.3 2.0 12.3 15.2 14.2
GIANT MANUFACTURING 1510.0 4.1 18.9 12.7 1.1 5.7 22.7 12.4
ACCELL GROUP 300.6 1.2 8.1 12.3 0.4 4.6 15.0  
DERBY CYCLE AG 242.6 3.7 21.7 11.4 1.0 4.8 22.3 20.5

I guess this is mostly due to the fact that the bicycle producers have gained from two major tailwinds: high fuel prices and E-Bikes. One can also see that Accell looks relatively cheap on a P/E and P/B basis.

From a business model perspective, I see some positive and some negative aspects for bicycle producers:

+ there are no really dominant retailers for bicycles. So a large producer does have a better competitive advantage
+ the business is not very capital-intensive
+ there is a secular trend in many countries / cities to a more bicycle friendly environment (health and fuel cost, see for instance here)
+ The internet might not disrupt the sector as much as other area
+ the market is still divided between many smaller players, so further consolidation might be possible

Howver there are also some factors which I consider negative

– brand awareness: People might pay a little more for a branded bike but there is not so much brand loyalty like for instance cars
– the high tech part of bicycles are mostly outsourced to suppliers. Best example is Shimano which has basically a monopoly on gear shifts
– it is therefore quite easy for small competitors to start production, as welding a frame is not so difficult and you can buy the parts pretty easily
– the European market is protected by a heavy 48.5% tariff. According to the Bloomberg article, this has been extended 3 years until 2014. But if this falls, the European producers would be in big difficulties soon. A good general source for market data, news etc. is this website.

So to sum up the industry:
The industry has/had some secular tailwinds, however the overall competitive landscape is average. Combined with the really expensive overall valuation, the listed companies look vulnerable to a certain extent. The success of the European producers might also be a result of the massive tariffs for Chinese manufacturers, so there is also some kind of “regulatory” risk.

Company valuation:

The company scores so well in my model because they have shown phenomenal ROE and ROICs in the last years and steadily increasing net margins:

ROE Ni Margin EPS EBITDA/share
31.12.2002 17.02% 2.6% 0.41 1.01
31.12.2003 20.34% 3.2% 0.55 1.23
31.12.2004 24.23% 3.9% 0.77 1.59
30.12.2005 22.51% 4.2% 0.88 1.70
29.12.2006 21.72% 4.3% 1.00 1.91
31.12.2007 19.91% 4.2% 1.30 2.17
31.12.2008 23.89% 5.3% 1.48 2.86
31.12.2009 23.07% 5.7% 1.65 2.88
31.12.2010 21.91% 6.3% 1.79 2.64
30.12.2011 20.39% 6.4% 1.93 2.13

However I also showed EPS and EBITDA per share over this period. The strange thing is that EBITDA per share and earnings per share more or less “converged” whereas in earlier years, the relationship EBITDA to EPS was on average 2:1.

So let’s quickly compare the 2003 P&L (from the 2003 annual report) against 2011:

2003 % 2011 %
Sales 289   628.5  
Material cost -184.5 -63.8% -420.2 -66.9%
Personel -45.1 -15.6% -82.9 -13.2%
Depr. -3.8 -1.3% -7.4 -1.2%
other oper. -39 -13.5% -83 -13.2%
Financial /part -2.5 -0.9% 8.6 1.4%
Tax -4.9 -1.7% -3.1 -0.5%
Net 9.2 3.2% 40.5 6.4%

So we can clearly see that there is a big “special” effect in 2011’s results. If we look into the P&L, we can see the following note:

This is the result realized with the sale of the in 2011 acquired 22% investment in Derby Cycle AG. The result consists of the capital gain less corresponding expenses.

So this was a nice but one-time gain during the (short) fight for Derby cycle, the German listed bicycle manufacturer where Accell lost out against Dutch competitor Pon.

So let’s look at 2010 instead to see if this was a “normal” year:

2003 % 2010 % Delta
Sales 289   577.2    
Material cost -184.5 -63.8% -373.9 -64.8% -0.9%
Personel -45.1 -15.6% -76.6 -13.3% 2.3%
Depr. -3.8 -1.3% -7.5 -1.3% 0.0%
other oper. -39 -13.5% -73.3 -12.7% 0.8%
Financial /part -2.5 -0.9% -4.1 -0.7% 0.2%
Tax -4.9 -1.7% -5.8 -1.0% 0.7%
Net 9.2 3.2% 36.0 6.2% 3.1%

One can see that also in 20110, there must have been some special effects, for instance the tax rate looks low. Again the notes give the following explanation:

The effective tax rate is the tax burden relating to the book year divided by profit before tax. The effective tax burden amounts to 20.6% (2009: 27.5%). Accell Group and the Dutch tax authorities agreed on the applicability of the so-called patent/innovation box. For the years 2007 – 2009 part of the Dutch taxable profit is taxed against a tax rate of 10% (instead of 25,5%), resulting in a refund of b 1.7 milion. In 2010 part of the Dutch taxable profit is taxed against a tax rate of 5% (instead of 25,5%) resulting in a tax saving of approx. b 1.0 milion. In accordance with IAS 12 a tax receivable is recorded as tax receivable for an amount of b 2.7 milion.

So just based on those 2 examples, I would already state that “earnings quality” at least in 2010 and 2011 is somehow mixed. Especially the 2011 result would look a lot worse than reported if they wouldn’t have the gain.

Other considerations:

So let’s have a quick overview on some other check list items:

+ Good growth over the last 10 years
+ Consistent payout of around 509% of net income
+ good underlying “story”: E-Bikes, roll up opportunity
+ only covered through 7 local analysts, bad ratings (which i see as a positive)

– many acquisitions
– increasing share count (increase by 50% over the last 10 years)
– accounting “special effects”, operating results more volatile than they appear
– free cashflow generated only ~ 20% of stated earnings over the last 14 years
– insiders are/were constantly selling according to company info
– deteriorating Business in 6M 2012 despite large acquisition, again suspiciously low taxes
– balance sheet now much weaker after Raleigh acquisition (more debt, more goodwill)
– according to the shareholder information on the company web site, there seems to be some kind of take over poison pill in place which limits any take over /control premium catalyst
The stock price seems to be clearly reflecting those issues:

On a 2 year basis we can clearly see that the stock looks vulnerable:

Longer term, the cahrt looks relatively OK, the stock had an incredible run over the last 10 years or so:

So let’s stop here and summarize:

– the reported earnings, especially in 2011 do not show fully the underlying results
– Accell made a rather large acquisition into a difficult market
– going forward, it is pretty clear we will see lower earnings and lower profitability
– if things deteriorate, there is not a lot of margin of safety in the balance sheet (high debt load, Goodwill)
– the business doesn’t look a lot like a moat either
– insiders are constantly selling, any take over seems to be unlikely
– despite the low P/E, valuation is rather expensive on an EV/EBITDA basis and cash flow generation to earnings is weak

So in short, despite the fantastic score, the company at the moment does not look attractive to me. Past profitability seems to be clearly above the historical achievable mean. As I don’t by in principle into “stories” like E-bikes, I will not invest in the stock.

Allow me a small excursion at the end:

Accell might still be a good investment going forward, but in my opinion it is not a good “value” investment. Why ? For a value investment it is not enough to look cheap. You have to have a margin of safety. This comes in two forms

– either a margin of safety based on the balance sheet (Graham style)
– or a margin of safety in the business model (moat, Buffet style).

Accell in my opinion has neither. Maybe they will make a ton of money with E-Bikes or not. I don’t know. But if things get worse, there is not real downside protection for the stock. As a value investor one should not speculate on stories or secular trend, because they can change more quickly as one might think (see Solar).

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