Book review: “Am I being too subtle ?” – Sam Zell
To be honest, I knew about Sam Zell and his real estate empire to some extent but I didn’t consider him as a great general (value) investor so far. This clearly changed after reading his “Memoirs”.
memyselfandi007
Some links
Notes from the Daily Journal annual shareholder meeting (Charlie Munger)
Driverless cars might not be a safe as their main promoters often claim
A great and comprehensive list of essential readings to understand Crypto & Blockchain
Highly recommended: The 2017 Broyhilll Book club list
Some deep thoughts about what to do in a stock market correction (Spoiler: Nothing)
The UK value investor has a good post on how and when to let winning stocks run
Two of my favorite writers having a conversation: Matt Levine and Tyler Cowen
Boiron SA (ISIN FR0000061129) – Boring enough to invest ?
It’s no secret that I like French family run companies. TFF Group, G. Perrier, Installux, Dom Security are just the main examples of these kind of companies.
Boiron SA is a French company which Bloomberg lists as “Specialty Pharmaceutical” company. Although “Specialty Pharma” is not exactly what they do. in fact, Boiron SA ist the only listed company that I know that exclusively produces and sells Homeopathic “pharmaceutical” products. The call themselves “World leader” of this field.
A few words on Homeopathy
From Wikipedia:
Some links
Low risk banks seem to be relatively better investments than their risky peers
Is chip maker AMD a potential “Proxy short” for Crypto currencies (Ethereum) ?
Polleit & Riechert 2017 letter
Bronte doesn’t like potential short selling disclosure rules (for good reason)
Ben from WertArt invested into Geospace Technologies
Very interesting htought: Could Expedia & Priceline become Hotel brands ?
The UK Value Investor explores if Interserve and 4GS could be the “next Carillion”
Softbank & Swiss Re – is Masa Son just losing it ?
As I have covered Softbank just recently (part 1, part 2 ) and as I consider Insurance companies to be somehow in my circle of competence, the news that Softbank wants to acquire 30% of Swiss Re for 10 bn USD of course sparked my interest.
The big question of course is: Why on earth would Masa Son do that ?
Looking at his vision statements, his vision is a connected world via the internet of things, lots of robots, smart AIs and a lot of computing power. So he is buying chip makers (ARM; Nvidia), data companies like Uber, mobile phone companies, robotic companies etc. So far so good, somehow this could fit together.
But a Reinsurance company ? WTF is that ?
Book review: “Machine, Platform, Crowd – Harnessing our Digital Future”
“Machine, Platform Crowd” tries to summarize what in the author’s view are the currently most important changes that will impact both, individuals and companies going forward:They call it the “Triple Revolution” consisting of:
- The emergence of machines (Robots, AI)
- The evolution from Products to Platforms
- The increasing importance of the Crowd vs. the “core”
Some links
The 2017 annual letter of the TGV Truffle fund (Tripadvisor, India)
a16z podcast on the state of self driving cars
Ben Thompson on the Amazon / Berkshire / JPM Healthcare Healthcare announcement
Why predicting the future is really really hard
The Winter issue of Graham & Doddsville
“Alpha Male” Hedge Fund managers on average seem to underperform
Pershing Square (Bill Ackman) investor presentation
Landis & Gyr (ISIN CH0371153492): Potentially interesting “Forced IPO” Special Situation ?
Background
Landis & Gyr, the Swiss based company was on my research “to do” list for some time. Why ? Because it looked very much like a “forced IPO” special situation when in Summer 2017 then almost bankrupt Japanese Conglomerate Toshiba decided to sell Landis & Gyr which was deemed to be one of their crown jewels.
Toshiba itself had bought Landis & Gyr in 2011 for around 2 bn USD from a Private Equity Seller (Bayard) who in turn had bought Landis & Gyr from KKR (via DEMAG), another PE shop in 2004. Back then, Landis & GYr had around 390 mn EUR in sales and it was rumoured that the purchase price was quite low at around 100 mn EUR (those were the days…..).
Some links
2017 Letter to shareholders for the TGV Partners Fund
2017 Letter to shareholders from Rob Vinall (RV Capital)
2017 Letter to shareholders from TGV Rubicon Stockpicker
Oaktree’s Howard Marks with his latest memo
John Kingham (UK Value Investor) with his leesons learned in 2017
The 5 levels of investor evolution
And a Jack Ma (Alibaba) interview from the World economic Forum
Softbank Part 2: Sum-of-parts Valuation and don’t forget the Taxman
A couple of days ago, I looked at Softbank more from a strategic point of view. This time I want to focus more on the actual assets and a sum-of-parts valuation
What is Softbank ?
Essentially the company at its core is a Telco company in Japan and US plus a lot of “extra assets” like the Alibaba stake, Yahoo Japan and then all the other stuff including the vision fund. The initial Software distribution business (this is where the name Softbank comes from) doesn’t play a big role anymore.
I will now try to walk through the major Softbank Assets in more detail:
- The Alibaba stake
Let’s start with the largest position first, the now so famous Alibaba stake. From a technical perspective, Softbank doesn’t own the listed shares but this:
value and opportunity 