Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

Banking stocks part 2 – Handelsbanken, Lloyds, Van Lanschot, Pfandbriefbank, Citizen (and yes Deutsche again)

Posted on by 28 comments

This is the follow-up post to the one from last week about banking stocks in general and Deutsche Bank in particular.

Damodaran on Deutsche Bank

Before moving on to my own stocks, again Deutsche Bank. Prof. Damodaran did value Deutsche Bank last week and came to the following conclusion:

At the current stock price of $13.33 (at close of trading on October 4), the stock looks undervalued by about 36%, given my estimated value, and I did buy the stock at the start of trading yesterday.

What he basically does is that he assumes an ROE of around 9,44% after ten years and capital costs around the same number,wich at the end of the day is assuming some kind of mean reversion and a Price to book value of ~1 in year 10.

Read more

Book review: “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money”

Posted on by 14 comments

517dyyikwjl-_sx315_bo1204203200_

Knowing more about Bitcoin was one of the points on my personal “to do list” for this year. By chance I found this book on Amazon which looked like it would be a good starting point.

This book is written by a “real” journalist, so the style of writing and the pace of the narrative is very good.

It covers the story of Bitcoin from the very beginning, when a guy calling himself Sathoshi Nakamoto uploaded the original white paper on Bitcoin in 2008 and was met initially with very little feedback.

Read more

Bayer vs. Monsanto: Who is the “patsy” at the Poker table ?

Posted on by 34 comments

One of the highest profile merger cases at the moment is the Bayer / Monsanto case.

A quick recap:

In may 2016, Bayer made a proposal to buy Monsanto. The first offer was 122 USD per share which was rejected. Bayer increased the offer 2 times, first to 125 USD and currently to 127,5 USD.

The big question is: Why is Monsanto only trading at 107 USD (at the time of writing)? Compared for instance to the initial ChemChina/Syngenta deal spread, the Bayer case looks a lot more solid:

Read more

“Luxury update” – 4 years later (Prada, Boss)

Posted on by 8 comments

Almost exactly 4 years ago I pondered shorting luxury stocks in 2 posts.

Part 1 – Idea Generation

Part 2- follow up

The only stock I actually shorted was Prada and I gave up 1 year later as the stock strongly went against me.

Back then, I divided (totally arbitrary) a “peer group” of luxury stocks into 2 sub groups, “tier 1” and “tier 2” brands. Let’s look how those stocks performed over the past 4 years:

Read more

Coface SA (ISIN FR0010667147) : Ultimate death spiral or contrarian opportunity in an attractive industry ?

Posted on by 39 comments

Executive summary:

Coface SA  is a relatively simple contrarian “mean reversion” case:

  • the company at the moment has some specific issues which in my opinion can be solved
  • the industry as such is attractive (within the generally problematic insurance space) with significant barriers to entry and little exposure to interest rates
  • Even in a bad case, the downside at current depressed levels is small. A conservative “mean reversion case” would indicate ~75% upside without assuming any growth
  • no hard “catalyst” and fundamentally it could get worse before it gets better
  • For exposure management reasons, NN Group will be sold and replaced by Coface
  • As always the reminder DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVISE !!!!

The company:

Coface SA is a French “Trade Credit Insurance” company and one of the Big 3 players of this industry which together have 80% market share.

Read more

Greenlight Re & E.On/Uniper update

Posted on by 24 comments

Greenlight Re update:

As some readers might remember, I bought shares of Greenlight Re, the Bermuda Reinsurer with investment advise from David Einhorn back in December 2015, but then sold them one month later, triggered by the insight that I don’t really understand his investment criteria. Looking back, the decision to sell doesn’t look very smart, as the stock priced since then increased by around 18% in USD (or 14% in EUR). YTD the stock is up 14,8% in USD.

In early August, Greenlight Re filed their 6M report. Interestingly the NAV per share declined by -4% from 22.20 USD to 21,32 USD per share.

Read more

Metro Bank Plc – “The Apple of Banking” or “One-trick Pony” ?

Posted on by 12 comments

Readers of my blog know that I do like “outsider” like financial companies and that I do like UK banking (Handelsbanken Lloyds).

pf-metro_1684191c

Therefore it was highly interesting to read about Metro Bank, a recently listed “UK Challenger bank” in a letter of an investor I greatly respect. I had a look at “online only” UK challenger Bank Aldermore but didn’t like it too much, but as Metro Bank runs a “Branch strategy”, I decided to look into them.

Read more

Short cuts: Installux, Kuka, Aixtron

Posted on by 30 comments

Installux:

Installux is surprisingly one of my best performing stocks this year, including dividends the stock is more than 30% and is at an all time high.

installux

I did not fully understand why until I read the 6 month report.

Sales are up ~7% yoy, 6M earnings per share are 17,16 EUR vs. 14,37 EUR, an increase of almost 20%. Profit improvements happened across most of their sectors, so it doesn’t look like single special effects or so. Despite the recent run-up, the stock remains exceptionally cheap.

Kuka & MDAX exit

For those who did follow my comments on the original Kuka post, they might have noticed that I sold the stocks 2 days ago and bought them back yesterday slightly cheaper.

The reason was that in the meantime, the tendered shares were kicked out of the MDAX, the popular German MID Cap index.

As I was not sure how the shares would react I decided to manage the risk by staying out.

At the end of the day not much happened:

mdax kuka

Nevertheless I was able to cheapen my purchase price from ~107,5 to 106 EUR. As the deal now is more attractive, I invested a total of 4% of the portfolio.

 

Aixtron – another special situation (with a Chinese buyer)

Aixtron, a former TECDAX star has fallen on hard times. However a few weeks ago, a Chinese buyer showed up and finally made an offer for the company at 6 EUR per share.

With a share price at currently 5,53 EUR, the discount is similar to Kuka at around 8,5%.

The situation differs slightly from Kuka:

  • the buyer is a financial buyer, not a strategic one (more opportunistic ?)
  • The purchase price is “optically” not as rich as the one for Kuka (below book)
  • they require at least 60% acceptance as closing condition (vs. 30% for Kuka)
  • within the offer they have a “put” if the index (DAX or TEcDax) goes down more than 30%

On the plus side, there is little risk that anyone complains about the deal as Aixtron was not doing well anyway and they are not deemed “strategically important”. The time horizon here should be shorter than for the Kuka deal.

The offer runs until October 7th. So far, the acceptance is low, as of today, only 1,64% of the shares have been tendered.

I think the risk is slightly higher than in the Kuka case as they might not reach their threshold, on the other hand there might be a chance for a better offer.

Although the situation is less clear for me as in the Kuka case, I start here with a 1% position at 5,53 EUR and will monitor it closely.

 

 

 

Waddell & Reed (WDR): “mean reversion” opportunity or potential Value Trap ?

Posted on by 10 comments

The company:

Waddell & Reed is a Kansas based Asset Manager (mostly listed equity) & Financial Advisory firm. The company became somehow infamous during the 2010 “flash crash” when they were initially blamed that one of their order had caused the crash. Later, the SEC blamed a guy in London for it.

W&R looks like an interesting “High quality mean reversion” type of value stock.:

Market Cap: 1,4 bn
P/E (2015): 6,9
EV/EBIT: 4,5
Div. Yield: 10,3%
10 year avg. ROE: 33,4%
10 Year avg. NI margin: 14,1%

So we have a high ROE/ROCE, high margin business with significant net cash that trades at a ridiculously cheap level (based on 2015 earnings). There is a relatively recent SeekingAlpha “long” pitch with the following summary:

Read more

DOM Security (FR0000052839)- A Hidden Champion with a “key to unlock” higher profits ?

Posted on by 11 comments

Executive Summary:

Dom Security is a small French company specializing in commercial lock systems. The business itself is attractive, the valuation relatively cheap, although the company is a small player. The “kicker” in my opinion is the fact that the largest subsidiary, DOM Sicherheitstechnik Germany, had significant R&D expenses over the last few years, which, if things normalize, could lead to a significant profit increase within the next 2-3 years to the extent of +40-45% which should translate into a similar upside for the stock price.

Additionally, the rebranding in 2015 could lead to better profitability in other units and in turn to potentially higher multiples, which at the moment are only a fraction of the listed larger competitors.

WARNING: This is not investment advice. Do your own research. The presented stock is very illiquid, so be extra careful.

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »