Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Performance review 9M 2017

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Perfomance 9M 2017:

In the first 9 months of 2017, the blog portfolio gained +18,1% +18,5% (including dividends, no taxes) against 15,1% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%)). Since inception, the score is now +178,2% 179,1% vs. 95,1% for the benchmark. The full details (and graph) as always on the performance page. (adjustments for TGV Partners final 30.09. valuation)

In the third quarter, the portfolio underperformed the benchmark significantly (+1,8% vs. +5,33%). Several of my larger positions did not very well in this quarter.

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Venture Capital / Start ups: Why should you give a s*** as Value Investor ?

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Disclaimer: It might easily be that If I look back at this post in 10 years and that this marks the peak of the current Venture Capital boom but who knows ?

Let’s start with a quick reflection on how to distinguish Value Investing vs. Venture Capital:

What is Value Investing ?
There are many opinions on what Value Investing actually is. There is “Graham” or “Klarmann” style value investing where one tries to buy existing assets at a discount, or ” Buffett style” where one tries to buy great and “moaty” companies at a discount to future earnings. My personal interpretation is to buy good companies at decent prices (something like a GARP strategy) or misunderstood companies. What all those approaches have in common that one tries to protect the downside by getting a “discount” on some perceived value. With regard to portfolio management, full diversification is rather the exception. In its more extreme version, concentrated value investors concentrate on mostly making sure that they don’t have losers in their portfolio and transact very infrequently.

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Northgate Plc (NTG): Just another vehicle rental/leasing company ?

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northgate_logo

Business / Background:

Northgate is a UK based company that specialises in what they call “flexible rental” of smaller delivery vans to small businesses. My main interest in Northgate is not that I am so bullish on the UK and this sector, but that this company is somehow similar at least to the GoGetta part of Silverchef and I was looking for a peer company in order to be able to compare some metrics.

On a stand-alone basis, Northgate looks cheap:

Market cap: 570 mn GBP
P/E: 9,3
P/B: 1,1
EV/EBITDA 3,7
Div. Yield 4,1%

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Some links

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A deep dive into the strange new world of initial Coin Offerings

Wexboy with a great round up of all listed stocks that have some relationship with Cryptocurrencies

Why machine learning investment strategies fail (so far)

Don’t miss: Today is the last day to sign up for the free “Venture Deals” online course.

It seems that shareholder activism is slowly coming to Japan

A very interesting attempt to value Teva

The interesting case of Home Capital shareholders rejecting a (second) capital injection from Berkshire

 

Ashmore update – SELL

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A few days ago, Ashmore issued their 2016/2017 annual numbers and annual report. Ashmore was my first Emerging Market investment three and a half years ago and I think it makes sense to check and update the investment case.

Performance so far was not exciting. Including dividends, I earned around 21,6% over those 3,5 years in GBP, in EUR around 12,7%. Compared to my overall portfolio performance of ~+48% in the same time period, Ashmore was clearly a underperformer.

This is how I justified the potential investment case back then:

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Bitcoin for (Value Investing) Dummies like myself

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Background:
Some of my readers might have noticed that starting in the last year I have become more interested in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. Don’t worry, I will not invest gamble with them but I do think it is important to understand what is going on in this area as this could change many things especially within financial services. As this blog functions primarily as my own diary, I have decided to do a few posts about my own learnings so far.

Bitcoin explained (maybe wrongly) in 10 Points:

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Universal Insurance Holdings (UVE) – Just punched by “Irma” or potentially knocked out ?

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Universal Insurance is an US-based P&C Insurance company which has been on my extended watch list for some time now. Why ? Well, the company always traded cheap (single digit P/E), was very profitable (~31% ROE for the last 9 years on average) and growing strongly year by year (400% over 9 years). So from the outside this looked like a cheap but highly profitable growth stock.

The main reason why I didn’t analyze the stock further is that Universal is a specialized homeowner insurance company which almost exclusively operates in Florida.

The company has a market cap of currently ~620 mn USD.

Not surprisingly Universal now is in a tough spot as “Irma” is creating havoc on Florida as I write this post. The stock price has dropped by around -30% by Friday:

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Some links

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UK “guru” Neil Woodford tries to explain his currently bad performance (incl. Provident)

Some interesting thoughts on mining stocks

Ad agencies vs. platform companies 

“Big Money thinks small” looks like a really interesting investment book

Nacco Industries looks like a potentially very interesting spin-off candidate

Some interesting thoughts from Horizon Kinetics (FRMO, Murray Stahl) on “investing” in Cryptocurrency (and other stuff)

3D Printing: The “Disruption” which didn’t really disrupt

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It feels like decades ago but actually it is only 4 years ago when 3D printing was supposed to disrupt each and everyone.

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Googling around, it is quite easy to find articles like this one in Forbes from October 2013:

We are a few years away from a printed economy – an economy in which 3D printing will have a major role in manufacturing. Up to now, 3D printing has been most useful in creating prototypes. But from the automotive to the electronics and toy industries, 3D printers will increasingly produce critical parts and finished products. What are some industries 3D printing will disrupt? Here’s our list of seven.

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