Author Archives: memyselfandi007

The Social Chain Cash Flow Shenanigan- Could that one have been spotted ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, just a tiny little bit of “forensic analysis”.

The Social Chain, an initially hot, but now busted “Social Media DTC” company was recently subject to an intervention from German regulator BAFIN, claiming the 2021 accounts contained a material error in the Cashflow statement.

In essence, BAFIN said that The Social Chain’s Operating Cashflow did contain ~60 mn EUR of non-operating cashflow items that should have classified either as Financing and Investing Cashflow.

Why is that important ? Many investors (myself included) consider “Free Cashflow” as a very important metric. Free cashflow consists of Operating Cashflow minus Capex and is generally considered to be less easily manipulated than accounting numbers (“Adjusted EBITDA before costs to build the product”).

Looking at the headline numbers from the 2021 annual report, we can see that despite the “adjusted pro-forma” numbers, the +22 mn Operating cashflow compares to -23mn EUR in EBITDA and -82 mn EUR Net income and seems to generate the impression that the underlying business is cash generating, as the investment cashflow was mostly M&A:

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The return of the “Freedom Energy basket”: ABO Wind vs Energiekontor (BUY)

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

Background:

Some of my readers might remember, that I bought into a “Freedom energy” basket in March 2022 in order to “hedge” against potentially catastrophic effects from the Russia/Ukraine war. After a first nice run, I sold 3 out of the initial 4 (7C Solar, PNE, Energiekontor and ABO Wind) and only kept ABO Wind because I considered it the most undervalued stock.

Looking at the chart we can see that for some of the stocks of that basket, not so much happened, only PNE is still significant above the level of March 2022 (ABO Wind is the solid Yellow chart):

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All Norwegian Stocks Part 11 – Nr. 151-165

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And on we go with yet another 15 randomly selected Norwegian share. Despite many uninteresting or crappy companies, again 2 made it onto the preliminary watchlist. Have fun !!

151. Sogn Sparebank

With around 8 mn EUR market cap, Sogn Sparebank seems to be the smallest Sparebank so far. Maybe interesting for people who live in Årdalstangen, where it is loctated, but not for me. “Pass”.

152. Aqua Bio Technology

From the name alone, I assumed that this 5 mn EUR market cap company would be a crappy 2021/2022 IPO and ….I was wrong. Rather it seems to be a crappy company that has been around for a little bit longer. The company has little income but consistent losses. “Pass”.

153. Norsk Solar

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Performance review 6m 2023 – “AI has saved the day”

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In the first 6 months of 2023, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  +5,0% (including dividends, no taxes) against a gain of +12,8% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), EuroStoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all TR indices).

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 the first 6M 2023:

Partners Fund TGV: 3,6%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: 16,6%
Squad European Convictions +7,6%
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen 6,9%
Squad Aguja Special Situation +5,3%
Paladin One -0,8%
Alphastars Europe + 11,4%

Performance review:

Overall, the portfolio performance was in the lower third of my peer group. As the peer group is mostly Small cap focused, the overall relative low returns correspond with the returns of European small cap indices and are mosly well below Large cap indices. Looking at the monthly returns, it is not difficult to see that especially January and June were in relative terms very disappointing.

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Some links

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The usual ecclectic list of stock write-ups from Capital Employed

If you are a CFO and you want to raise money through a share placement, you better pay attention to the weather

A fantastic “Tour de Force” ride from Prof Damodaran across Chip companies and AI

The seven page memo, that resulted in a 105 mn seed funding round for Mistral.ai (without a product)

6M Portolio Update from the Augustusville blog

A short write-up on Fox Factory, a suspension specialist from Royce

R.i.P. Harry Markovitz, the “Father of Portfolio theory”.

All Norwegian Stocks part 10 – Nr. 136-150

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And on we go. With this post, I have passed the 50% threshold, so I am very optimistic to finish this before year end. This time, two stocks qualified for the preliminary watch list. Let’s go:

136. Norbit

Norbit is a 305 mn EUR market cap company has three distinct segment of which “Oceans delivers tailored technology to global maritime markets, Connectivity provides wireless solutions for identification, monitoring and tracking, while PIR offers R&D services, proprietary products and contract manufacturing.”

The company IPOed in 2019, and contrary to the 2020 IPO vintages, the share price has done quite well:

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Some links

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Verdad thinks that systematically shorting one day options could generate Alpha

Chemical companies are facing big fines for PFaS/ Forever Chemicals in the US (Hello Bayer !!!)

Already a few weeks old, but Prof. Damodarans post on what makes banks risky and the sequel on how to value bank stocks ar both worth reading

Clarke Square Capital thinks that now is the time for Lastminute.com to shine

Marc Andreesen (not surprisingly) thinks that AI will save the world

Ben Thompson is a big fan of the new Apple Vision Pro

And all you need to know about Farmland investing

Handelsbanken revisited – Learnings and what to do now ?

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This has become a quite long and somehow rambling post. If you look for “actionable investment advice”, then you don’t need to read this.

Background: Handelsbankon on the blog since 2015

One of the great things of an Investment Blog/Journal is that one can easily revisit everything that one has written years ago when I want to look at a stock again.

Handelsbanken is a stock that I have covered quite often since 2015. Initially, I compared Handelsbanken to Deutsche Bank in 2015, claiming that Handelsbanken is a much better run “quality bank” compared to Deutsche Bank and that Deutsche Bank, despite the much cheaper valuation, most likely the worse investment. This is how Handelsbanken has performed against Deutsch Bank and the European Banking index.

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Some links

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Great stock write up collection from Capital Employed

A new study seems to show that correctly identified sin stocks (Alcohol, Tobacco, Gambling) have positive alpha

Swen Lorenz shares some experiences from an investor trip to Turkey

An interesting deep dive into LSE after the Refinitiv take over from Marathoner

A good intro into the economics of “Big Gaming”

How will “Uncle Carl” Icahn’s endgame look like for IEP after the Hindenburg “attack” ?

Despite the “advice” of many financial pundits, writing covered calls is destroying value in the mid- and longterm

Lopgistec Update – “Strategic review” consideratios

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With a small delay, a few thoughts on the “strategic review process” at Logistec, a stock I had written up and added to my portfolio two months ago.

Govro has already published an excellent post about the situation in his Wintergem Blog here. He estimates that a sale at ~9xEV EBITDA could result in an offer of CAD 76 per share. However, he points out that this is just the start of a process and it could well be that there will be no sale at the end, especially as due to the high interest rates, the infrastructure sector is not super hot at the moment.

The Logistec share price has increased from around 43 CAD per share before the announcement to around 60 CAD at the time of writing. Funnily enough, this is almost exactly half way between the “undisturbed price” and Govro’s sale price estimate.

Correcting a mistake: Extra Asset

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