Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

Travel Series: AIrBnB – “Baller IPO” or Desperate Hail Mary (including a 3.5 bn USD accounting time bomb) ?

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Intro

Long term readers know that I have covered the (online) travel industry intensively and that I actually have build up a “post pandemic travel basket” recently. Therefore, I was really excited to look at AirBnB’s S-1 going public filing.

Airbnb is one of the most prominent Unicorns of the last decade. The company was founded in 2007 and has since then become one of the really big names in online travel. It describes itself as having established a new category of travel called “home sharing” and that all the hosts on the platform as well as the clients are a big “community” that make travel “Human”.

However the big “elephant in the room” is the question: Why do they go public now after 13 years ? Why didn’t they go public earlier or wait a few more months once the travel recovery really kicks in ?

There was already a lot of press coverage already for Airbnb in the past weeks. I think in general one could distinguish between the Bull Case and the Bear Case:

The Bull case :

  • It’s a “positive” global brand with strong growth potential and a huge TAM (all travel lodging globally ) 
  • People will rent apartments first if travel rebounds 
  • Restrictions maybe less a problem in cities after Covid-19

One of the biggest cheerleaders of the Bull case is clearly Prof. Scott Galloway who wrote a big post some days ago, putting the value of AirBnB at 120 bn USD with the following statement:

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Short cuts: Hello (again) Magnus And Forced German Stock Delistings (Centrotec)

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Disclaimer: this is not investment research. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!

Play Magnus Group – Again

I really hesitated if I should keep this private but then decided against it. Believe it or not, I have again bought shares in Play Magnus. After initially buying the stock at around 16,90 NOK per share, I sold the shares at a loss at 14 NOK per share. Buying now again a 2% position at 17 NOK per share looks extremely stupid, but these are the reasons why I still did it:

  • when I bought the shares initially, I knew very little about them and I underestimated the volatility of Norwegian small caps which can easily move+-10% on a single day
  • With the stock falling so quickly and with no news, I was afraid that some people might know more about the Q3 numbers which would be the first quarterly earnings after the IPO

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Siemens Energy AG Spin-OFF – ANother Interesting Member of the “Ugly duckling Spin-off Family” ?

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

At first a big “health warning”: My track record with Spin-offs is awful although I dedicated significant efforts into this area. Over the last years, I missed out on several good ones (Uniper, Trisura, Osram) and I unfortunately invested in a few bad ones (Cars.com, Metro). My best spin-off investment so far was Italgas.

Siemens Spin-off history

Siemens itself is an interesting case, as under (soon to be former) CEO Joe Kaeser, and even before, they are one of the few German companies that use spin-offs more or less frequently. Over the years, Siemens has spun off for instance Quimonda (bankrupt), Infineon (has recovered quite well), Osram (taken over by AMS) and Siemens-Gamesa (very volatile but strong performance lately). Overall I would say that on average the Siemens Spin-offs did very well despite being mostly “ugly ducks” at the time of spinning off. Siemens Healthineers in comparison was not an ugly duck (despite the stupid name) and that’s why they actually IPOed it.

Siemens Energy AG Spin-off

This is the latest spin-off from Siemens, spun-off on September 28th with a first price of around 22 EUR, a lot lower than initially expected. As we can see in the chart, the shares dropped at first but now recovered to the initial level in line with Siemens AG and the DAX:

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Panic Journal Season 2 (3) – “There’s a Light”

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Just a few days ago we had a total different situation when I wrote my last panic journal entry:

Covid-19 infections went parabolic again, lock downs had already started, the US election was still in front of us, there was really bad weather and markets were in a suddenly very depressive mood.

Just 8 or 9 days later, things look different:  Joe Biden has won and The German-American Duo Pfizer-Biontech released very promising (early) results of its Phase III Study.

As I am not a vaccine/Virus expert, I’ll link to a post on how to interpret the results and try to summarize them:

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All German Shares PArt 34 – Nr. 751-775

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At first some good (or bad) news: By going through the German stock markets once again, I detected that my initial list was already outdated and that I missed quite some new IPOs and listings, so there will be (at least) one more post with German shares after this one before I then can wrap up the series into a condensed watch list.

This time, the 25 (to a certain extent) randomly selected (and US election free) stocks resulted in seven stocks that might be in principal worth watching and/or follow up.

751. L-KONZEPT Holding AG

L-Konzept is a 2.7 mn EUR market cap real estate company that has little business and small but consistent losses. “pass”.

752. Krones AG

Krones, a 1.7 bn market cap company is often considered one of the typical “hidden champions”, being the world leader in manufacturing bottling machinery for the beverage industry. With Covid-19, the whole beverage industry is clearly negatively effected which in turn might make business more difficult for Krones. However if we look at the stock chart, we can see that the stock already peaked in 2018:

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Panic Journal Season 2 – The Dancing is getting Much Harder

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Back in lock down mode

Four weeks after my first post of “season 2” it is pretty clear: Wave 2 of Covid-19 is definitely here and growing.

In contrast to my assumption and the general feeling 4 weeks ago, Europe is now back in lock down mode. Certain areas in the UK, Spain, France, Italy and Belgium went into different forms of lock down already a few days ago. Here in Germany I think many Germans got the message, when the German Health Minister Jens Spahn had to announce that he got infected a few days ago. 

A “lock down light” will come into force in Germany on Monday with restrictions on contacts and closure of Restaurants and Bars. Austria just announced a harder version which for instance disallows any private visits after 8 pm which in effect is a 8pm curfew under another name.

What’s different this time compared to the first lock down ?

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All German Shares part 33 – Nr. 726-750

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And another 25 (almost) randomly selected stocks. This time 5 stocks were in my opinion worth “watching”. As it looks now, there will be only one more post in this series.

726. Smart Equity AG

A 1.7 mn EUR market cap company that calls itself “Experts on Crypto currencies”. “Pass”.

727. InnoTec TSS AG

Innotec is an 88 mn EUR market cap supplier to the construction industry. The company had a nice run up, increasing more than 10x from its low in 2009 until early 2017 as we can see in the chart:

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Some links

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Two different approaches: Bireme Capital sticks to Value Investing whereas Forager has joined the SPAC party

A great three part holistic series from Prof. Damodaran on Value Investing: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Interesting deep dive into the often overlooked Geothermal Energy 

Morningstar on some lasting changes in consumer behavior from the pandemic

In-depth look into US vs. Google from Stratechery

An interesting portrait of Cliff Asness and his blog from UndervaluedShares

Crazy times: How Just mentioning Green Hydrogen by Management can push any (LNG) stock into the stratosphere 

“Trading Corner” Part 1 – The rules, German Basket Cleansing & neW Trade: Play Magnus Group (ISIN NO0010890726)

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

Follow up

A big thank you top all readers who either commented on my open question  if and how to include “Trading positions” into the blog. Overall I concluded that I can allow myself the luxury of a small allocation to “trades” as long as I do it consistently and with good risk management. One of the luxuries of a private investor is indeed that one can allow oneself some fun without needing to explain it to third parties and having fun is important to stay motivated.

Following some additional deliberations, my approach (for the time being) will be the following:

  • I will allow myself up to max 10% and up to max 7 trading positions at any given time going forward
  • In order to track them I will write short summaries with a clear “game plan” for the position
  • Close ot in case of a pre defined loss is a must
  • The maximum time allowed will be set at 12 months and either they go out or get upgraded to my other “buckets” in order to avoid a lot of “Trade goes wrong and becomes investment” positions
  • However, the “German Basket” will be “sacrificed”, as this honestly is already some kind of “trading portfolio”

German Basket “cleansing”:

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