Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

Special Situation: 3U Holding – Sale of WeClapp Subsidiary with Net cash proceeds > market cap

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Never trust any anonymous dudes on the internet. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!

Background:

Readers of my blog know that I like Special situations where a company,  that has been flying under the radar,  (unexpectedly) sells an asset that is worth potentially more than the market cap of the whole company. In these cases, it often takes some time until the market fully realizes what has happened.

Sapec was a good example, Exmar is a recent case that is still ongoing.

3U Holding – Weclapp

3U logo

The current case is a small cap from Germany called 3U Holding. 3U was IPOed in the bubble days of the Dot.com boom in 1999. Other than many of its peers, its core communication business was quite solid. They sold their Communication business in 2007 and since then acted like  mixture of Holding company and Family Office for the founders who own ~34% and effectively control the company.

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Panic Journal – Ukraine/Russia edition part 4: Power & Gas prices, Merit Order and other Ramblings

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Background:

With European Gas and Electricity prices trading like “Meme stonks”, it is time for another “panic post”. As always, these posts are mostly for myself in order to better structure my thoughts and educate myself and should not be seen as any kind of advice.

Just to quickly revisit the last post from part 3. One of my predictions back then with regard to the economic impact (unfortunately) aged quite well:

One explanation that I have read is that Russia and Ukraine are only 2% of Global GDP, so a “loss” of these countries is no big deal. Personally, I do think that this is not a very useful number. Russian oil and gas is powering a significant amount of European (and Global) GDP. A supply disruption from Russian oil and gas would impact a much larger share of GDP globally and might make Covid-19 supply chain disruption like a toddler party.

Turmoil in European Gas and Electricity markets:

The fact that European Gas and electricity markets face absolute mayhem has now clearly reached the headlines. I have stolen two Charts from Twitter(@Schuldensuehner), one showing electricity prices until yesterday, and one natural gas:

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Play Magnus – Chess.com Take-over or take under ? –> Shout out for Experts on Norwegian Take over laws !!

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Background:

Play Magnus is a stock some of my readers my remember. I initially invested (speculated) in October 2020 at 16,5 NOK per share, but sold quickly after my initial timing was really bad with a loss of around -20%.

I then bought again in November 2020 at a higher price (~17 NOKs) . I then managed to sell around 1/3 of the position close to the high at 38 NOKs per share. This year, i sold the remainder of the position shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine to manage portfolio volatility. Overall, I made 0,5% on the whole trade (pre taxes, pre costs) which clearly shows that my trading skills are not very good.

I still followed the stock as I liked the business, the management team and thought that at some point in time this could be interesting. Actually I just talked this Monday with a friend that at prices below 10 NOK, the stock looks interesting.

The stock chart shows how volatile the ride from Play Magnus was since its IPO:

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All Danish Shares part 10 – Nr. 91-100

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And on we go after a short Summer Break with 10 more, randomly selected Danish stocks. This time, only one stock managed it onto the watch list. Only 79 more stocks to go to “finish off” Denmark from here. Enjoy !!

91. Erria 

Erria is a tiny, 9 mn EUR market cap offshore and shipping service company. They do have some business and made a very small profit in 2021. Nevertheless, this one seem to be too small to bother. “Pass”.

92. DSV A/S

DSV is a 38,3 bn EUR market cap ” transport and logistics company, offering transport services worldwide by road, air, sea, and train, with the bulk of its activities coming from its European trucking network and airfreight and sea freight forwarding businesses. ” One can actually see a lot of DSV trucks on German high- and freeways.

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Special Situation EXMAR NV (BE0003808251) – “Time to Tango ?”

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Disclaimer: This is not investment Advice. Never trust any anonymous dude on the internet. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Due to a formula error, I double counted the Net cash in the SOP calculation. Kindly check out the updated numbers ! Fair value is now ~14 EUR per share compared to 17 EUR. Still attractive but a little bit less then initially thought.

 

Background:

Due to time restrictions, I am not so active in special situations anymore, as the “return on time invested” is often not so great. However if a Special Situation basically “jumps at me”, I won’t say no. In this case some starts aligned: Two people I respect a lot (M. and C.) both independently mentioned this sitation.

In addition, I have a certain weakness for Belgian special situations since my SAPEC investment some years ago and at first sight, a lot of aspects “clicked” with what I am looking for in a special situation.

Just as a reminder for newer readers (and myself): A special situation in my definition is an investment where I am looking at shorter time horizons and where there are some kind of catalysts that could help to realize a significant undervaluation of a security. I have different requirements for special situations, for instance, the long term quality of the business or the management are less important.

The company:

Exmar Logo

Exmar NV is a Belgian holding company that comprises a couple of maritime activities. The major activities are LPG shipping, the operation of “maritime infrastructure” and other activities, among them interestingly a travel agency and a Yachting service.

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Admiral Plc – Deep Dive and Re-underwriting the Stock

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advise but some rather incoherent ramblings of an extremely incompetent former value investor. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND NEVER TRUST ANONYMOUS DUDES ON THE INTERNET!!

On “re-underwriting” an existing position

While writing part 1 of the UK Insurance update and even earlier, during the analysis of Naked Wines, I realized that my investment process has (among other issues) one serious gap: I have no systematic way to reassess or “re-underwrite” a position, especially for those who are in the portfolio for a longer time.

I do a short review every year in my “xx stocks for 20xx” series, but I do not seriously analyse my longer term holdings unless there is a problem.

In some cases that works well, but in other cases, I have been missing things or the case goes far away from the original case. Due to time constraints, doing this every year is not realistic, but going forward, I plan to do this on a 3 year rolling basis for each long term holding.

Review of my initial Admiral case

My original Admiral investment case was from 2014 and can be read here. The initial “underwritten business case” was as follows:

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Insurance vs. Inflation & Interest rates (Admiral, Sabre, DirectLine) – Part 1

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Spoiler: Readers only looking for “actionable investment advice” might skip this post as this is about the basics. The short summary is: Inflation is not good for P&C insurers.

Background: Inflation is back

Last week, especially UK insurance stocks were rattled by news from Sabre Insurance that inflation was hurting them both, through rising claims but also rising reinsurance costs.

Sabre lost -40% that day Admiral and DirectLine were down double digits. On Monday, DirectLine, another UK direct insurer issued a very cautious Trading Update which again led to further losses. The whole disaster can be seen in this chart:

admiral comps

Inflation and Insurance

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Performance review 6M 2022 – Comment “The Siren’s Song of Fallen Angels and (very) low P/E stocks”

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In the first 6 months of 2022, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost  -14,4% (including dividends, no taxes) against a loss of -20,2% 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 2022:

Partners Fund TGV: -33,5%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -18,1 %
Squad European Convictions -13,1%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos -2,5% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -14,1%
Greiff Special Situation -2,5%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -12,7%
Paladin One -17,0%

Performance review:

Overall, the portfolio was more or less in the middle of my peer group. Looking at the monthly returns, it is clear that June was one of the worst months in the 11 1/2 years of the blog in absolute terms:

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All Danish Shares part 9 – Nr. 81-90

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And on we go, another 10 randomly selected Danish stocks. In the current batch, there are some very interesting and unique business models, however only one made it onto the “watch list”. We are now at ~50% coverage of the universe. Once again a quick reminder: Thank you for any requests to look at a specific company, but the random generator determines in what order I look at companies.

81. Scandinavian Medical Solution A/S

Scandinavian Medical is a 17 mn EUR market cap company that seems to be active in trading second-hand medical equipment that was IPOed in late 2021. Not my area of expertise. “pass”.

82. ChemoMetec A/S

ChemoMetec is a 1,9 bn EUR market cap MedTech company that offers Equipment to count cells which, among others is used for  Advanced Cell Analysis, Counting of Mammalian Cells, Yeast Cells, and Sperm Cells.

The stock has performed very well over the last 5 years:

Chmeometec

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Naked Wines ($WINE) update – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

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Disclaimer: this s not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!

Naked Wines released their full earnings last week and the result was a full disaster with the share price down a whopping -43% despite the fact that the headline numbers were already known. It is a good reminder that even being down more than -60% from its top, a stock can still fall another -40% on one day. Although the stock was only a 2,9% position prior to that drop, it still warrants a deeper dive than usual.

The signs were already obvious

Before moving to the actual numbers and the report, I have to criticize myself for not acting on the stock despite the following issues that I had identified already some time ago:

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