Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

Wirecard follow Up – Open questions & some wild guesses

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Thanks to a week of vacation I was on “read only” mode since I posted my Wirecard story 11 days ago.

Since then a lot of things happened, such as EY suddenly doubting the existence of 1,9 bn in “cash”, Wirecard releasing a really strange 2 minute video Statement, the CEO resigning, the CEO being arrested and subsequently released on a 5 mn bail, the COO having disappeared somewhere between the Philippines and China and the company finally filing for insolvency.

As mentioned in the earlier post, the insolvency is not really a surprise, but to be honest, the speed of the unraveling was clearly surprising. Equally surprising was today’s share price movement of ~+130% at the time of writing, resulting in a market cap of 360 mn EUR.  With the senior bonds trading at only ~18,6% of notional and falling further, it is pretty clear that shareholder will end up with a zero, but the gamblers and day traders seem to have a lot of fun. Personally, I think even the unsecured borrowers (Hi Softbank !!) will end up with a nice “Donut” due to the weak creditor protection in Germany.

The Book/ The Movie

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Wirecard – the “German Enron” & a very personal history 2008-2020

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For those who just came back from a 15 year space mission: Wirecard is a German  company that according to its website is ” one of the world’s fastest-growing digital platforms for financial commerce”. It managed (briefly) to achieve a market cap of close to 25 bn EUR and is part of the German Blue Chip index DAX 30. The stock lost -62,71% today which is most likely a record for a DAX company for a single day.

Backstory / Personal history 2008

This is an article I wanted to write for a long time but I was actually afraid to do so for several reasons.

Wirecard is a company/stock that I have been following for a very long time. My first “encounter” with the company ended in a kind of “5 minutes of fame” situation with some very unpleasant side effects.

The story starts in May 2008 when a post appeared under the pseudonym memyselfandi007 on Wallstreet Online, the largest German stock community/forum. (fun fact: This Thread seems to have been read 17,8 million times, so a lot more than all my blog posts on V&O combined….).

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All German Shares Part 25 (Nr. 526-550)

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Another batch of 25 randomly selected German stocks. This time with some quite interesting or even strange underlying businesses. Five candidates are worth “watching”.

526. VTG AG

VTG is a 1.1 bn market cap company that is renting out/ leasing railway cars and was taken over by a Morgan Stanley infrastructure fund in 2018 at 53 EUR/share. The company has been de-listed and is trading only on the “Pink sheets”. Interestingly the stock price suffered after the crisis but has recovered in the past weeks as well:

VTG upd

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Nikola Motor Company (NKLA) – The SPAC is back (plus a magic money machine).

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Intro

Nikola is a company I haven’t heard of until a week ago or so. It is a pre-revenue, prototype-product company that according to their web site develops Hydrogen fueled and electric trucks.

The VC past

The company did a Series D funding round in September last year at a pre-money valuation of 3 bn USD which is quite remarkable for such an early stage company and they seem to have received ~500 mn USD from corporate partners CNH, Bosch and Hanwa. Although the valuation would raise some eyebrows, this would be still not considered super crazy by VC standards if they have a great team and great technology assets.

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Panic Journal 8 – “Easy dancing”

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It has been almost one month since my last panic journal post and a lot has happened in between. The stock market has roared back like crazy and everyone seems to ask themselves when they look at YTD charts and compare it with unemployment numbers and GDP “growth”: What the hell is going on ? Is this the next “Bubble” ? Are people crazy ?

Of course I can’t explain what is going on either but at least from my perspective three main topics stand out that I did not expect to such an extend and seem to be fundamentally positive surprises compared to a worst case scenario:

  1. Central banks and Governments have acted more quickly and more radical than anyone thought
  2. The “Dance” after the “Hammer” so far looks a lot easier that envisaged
  3. A vaccine might come earlier than initially expected

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Interactive Brokers (Sell), Sino AG (Buy), Tiffany & Co (Buy)

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Interactive Brokers:

As mentioned in the comments on the previous post, I sold my Interactive Broker stocks.  Why ? Mainly because of the following reasons:

  • although I still think that it is a very good company, I reconsidered some of my assumptions after reading the “Chuck” Schwab autobiography
  • Despite the fact that the  Covid-19 crisis seems to have driven an increase in new accounts and trading commissions, the long term effects of lower interest rates (and margins) will be significant as interest margins are the main driver of profitability in the mid- to long term. My current scenario is that interest rates will remain very low even in the US for a very long time.

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All German Shares Part 24 (Nr. 501-525)

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Another 25 randomly selected German stocks including four stocks this time who made it onto my “watch” list:

501. Fair Value REIT

Fair Value is a listed REIT with 104 mn EUR market cap. The portfolio includes a >50% share of retail objects which will be extremely challenged. The stock price has dropped a little but not much. “pass”.

502. Fortec Elektronik AG

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Agfa Gevaert (ISIN BE0003755692) -An Ugly Duck with some Golden Eggs in its nest ?

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

Intro

Agfa-Gevaert was on my research list for some time now. Fellow blogger Undervalued Shares than triggered my renewed interest with their post from a few days ago and one of my best “Special situations” ideas ever was a Belgian company (Sapec).

I’ll try to summarize the part of the post that deals with Agfa:

  • Active Ownership, a relatively new but successful German activist fund (Stada) has build up a position (~14%] and board membership (actually the Chairman) in Agfa Gevaert, the traditional German-Belgian film / imaging company
  • Despite having some interesting assets, Agfa didn’t create shareholder value over a long time
  • opaque reporting and a 1 bn EUR pension liability made it unattractive to stock market investors
  • In 2020, Agfa managed to sell part of its Healthcare IT segment for 975 mn EUR
  • Initially, the stock went up to ~5 EUR based on the first info on the sale but hasn’t fully recovered yet

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