Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Camellia Plc (ISIN GB0001667087) -Exotic assets at a deep discount ?

Posted on by 6 comments

Background:

Camellia Plc is a pretty odd company for UK standards. It is a conglomerate with interest in plantations around the world, as well as some engineering businesses, a UK cold storage business, a fish trader in the Netherlands and a private bank plus an art collection, a stock portfolio and other stuff.

Some UK blogs have covered Camellia like Richard Beddard and Expecting Value.

Camellia seems to be a favourite among deep value or “assets at a discount” investors and as I do like strange companies (and conglomerates) , I decided to take a deeper look at it. Also as it is in the same sector as ACOMO makes it easier to get “into it”.

Read more

Some links

Posted on by 8 comments

Investing is science AND art

Very interesting article on Costco and its strong company culture

Google seems to become a more “normal” company with financial discipline (Good bye “moon shots” ?)

There is a lot of change in the pipeline for the troubled shipping industry

The Farnam Street blog has a great collection of book lists

Interesting write up on Amazon from Brazil

Barry Ritholz reviews the new Michael Lewis Book “The Undoing Project”

Trump, Brexit, Renzi – The result of evil big data geniuses or just Confirmation Bias at work ?

Posted on by 8 comments

This is a somewhat “off-topic” post but at the end there will be a turn to investing, I promise !!!

Background:

A Swiss magazine published an article on the Weekend, where a “Data scientist” claimed that a method that he developed had made Donald Trump President.

This method, which claims to identify (and of course influence) people by 5 basic character traits was used by a company called “Cambridge Analytica” in order to secure Trump’s victory. And by the way, they were responsible for Brexit too. The article seems to be quite popular, I received the link 5 times over the weekend from very different sources

There are a couple of Youtube videos about Cambridge Analytica, for instance here. But there is a longer one which is more interesting

In the video from September, they are claiming that they managed to make Senator Cruz popular from scratch. They also claim that they can segment down to very small groups and deliver them the right message in a way that will more or less “guarantee” results. As an example they showed how they targeted very small sub groups in Iowa with targeted ads about guns to make them vote for Cruz in the caucus.

Read more

12 Ways how the “Ideal Company” should be run

Posted on by 41 comments

ideal02

Introduction:

Some years ago I introduced a 27 point  “beta version” of an investment check list. This check list contained a lot of quantitative aspects, such as P/E, P/B or other multiples as well as some qualitative aspects. I used this as a rough guideline for analyzing potential long-term holdings but I found out that the quantitative aspects in a check list are not very helpful, because it leads to discarding really well run companies at a very early stage.

On the qualitative side however some things were missing, especially how a company is run for me became more and more important over the past years.

I think this aspect is not well covered by many other investors as most concentrate (only) on the “what”:

  • What moat does a company have ?
  • What industry  are they in ?
  • What ROE/ROIC/EBIT Margin does the company generate ?
  • At what EPS/EBIT/Book multiples does the stock trade ?
  • What is the “Magic Formula” that generates Alpha without actually looking into the companies I invest

For me the “what” in many cases is actually only a secondary result of the “how”. Moats for instance are not created out of thin air.

Read more

Provident Financial (PFG): A very profitable subprime lending company run by a “Crook” ?

Posted on by 37 comments

logo-tint

Provident Financial is a UK-based “financial service provider”. What makes Provident “special” is that the company is extremely profitable:

Market Cap 4,2 bn GBP
P/E 16,1
P/B 5,7
ROE 47%

Among its shareholders there are many “famous” investors for instance Marathon AM, Neil Woodford and  Tweedy Brown.Stock analysts are quite bullish, according to Bloomberg 9 out of 12 have the company as “buy”, although the target price at 31,00 is only a few percent higher than the current price.

The stock has done pretty well over the last years, “the great financial crisis” had almost no impact on the share price:

Read more

Some links

Posted on by One comment

The Pixar / Steve Jobs story

Bloomberg story about the “uber quant” hedge fund Renaissance Technologies

Hilton Hotel is going to split into 3 companies

Stock Buybacks in Europe seem to have lost their magic 

Wexboy celebrates 5 years of blogging as well as Alpha Vulture. Keep it up guys !

“How I built this” podcast – Herb Kelleher & Southwest Airlines (via Valueinvestingworld)

A very interesting piece on Mark Zuckerberg and how he runs Facebook

Italgas SpA (ISIN IT0005211237) – Spin-off special situation meets contrarian opportunity

Posted on by 22 comments

Management Summary

As this turned into a pretty long post again, quickly the highlights. I do think that Italgas SpA, the recent Spin-off from SNAM SpA represents a potentially interesting special situation investment because:

  • overall sentiment towards Italy is really bad (“Renzi referendum”)
  • the Spin-off was not timed well just a day before the US election
  • the current uncertainties within Italian regulation changes further deters potential investors
  • all this is reflected in asset multiples at the very low-end for comparable regulated assets

For those reasons I initiated a 2,7% position for my portfolio for my “Special Situation” bucket.

DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. Please do your own research !!!!

ml_colore

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »