Category Archives: Opportunities

Draeger Genußscheine (ISIN DE0005550719) Update

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No real news but a very interesting developement at my largest portfolio position, Draeger Genußscheine.

As a refresher: The “Genußscheine” include the right to receive 10 times the dividend of the pref shares (DRW3, ISIN DE0005550636). I started the position as a long Genußschein / Short pref shares “carry trade”. I decided to cover the short when Drager issued a EUR 210 offer and keep the Genußscheine as this put a floor under the price.

Now, in the last view days one can see something interesting happening: The Pref shares trade lower while the Genußscheine jumped.

If we look at the 10 year history of price of the Genußscheine divided by price of the prefs , we can see that the relation has increased significantly to a 10 year high at currently around 3.7 times.

I didn’t find any real news, however in some internet boards there is a speculation that either Draeger might increase the dividend or even come out with a higher offer. I am not sure about that if they will really do something.

Back then I wrote the following:

For the patient investor, I think the Genußscheine will be still an intersting medium term investment. For the portfolio I will hold them unless I find something better, there is no need to sell.

I think this is the same lesson as from the AIRE KGaA example as well as with the Bertelsmann Genußschein: If someone really wants to have a company or a certain share class / security , it usually pays off to wait and not jump on the first offer.

In the past, I often used to sell at the first offer, being happy to make a nice gain quickly. But as those two example show (so far), the risk /return relationship of just doing nothing and wait further seems to be quite good.

The only “problem” now is that the position is currently 10.2% of the portfolio. a ~10% is kind of the maximum I can stand for a single position, I will have to decide to sell if the Genußschein moves further.

Portfolio updates: AIRE KGaA, April SA, Cranswick, Dart, Installux

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AIRE KGaA:

For AIRE KGaA, I decided to accept the tender offer at 18.25 EUR per share. There is not a lot of upside left and I guess the stock will be really illiquid after the offer.

Installux

Whereas the built up of Poujoulat goes really really slow, For some reasons, last Friday almost 2.500 Shares have been traded. That’s almost 1% of the market cap. Interstingly, in Bloomber a new fund called “Agicam” showed up at the end of April with a 0.99% position. Due to those sales, I could now already built up a stake of 1.8% of the portfolio in Installux shares, a lot faster than I thought.

DJE Real Estate

The sell down of this position is quite cumbersome. Up to know, I could only sell half of the position so far. However prices are relatively stable.

Dart Group & Cranswick

Both shares were relatively active over the past few days, so I could establish 2.5% positions fopr both. Dart Group issued their “preliminary annual” statement as of MArch 31st, a very good write up can be found here at ExepctingValue.

For Dart I will wait for the final annual report in order to determine if I increase the position to the full amount (5%).

April SA

Since I ahve increased my buying limit for April to 11,50 EUR, I could establish a small position in the stock (0.6% of the portfolio). Of course I got punished and bought ~2% higher than today’s share price……

Cash is now down to around 16.5% of the portfolio, but taking into account the AIRE Tender Offer, Cash is around 21.5% of the portfolio. So plenty of room for 2-3 new ideas…..

Italian updates – Piquadro, Sol Spa, Emak

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Reporting season in Italy. Among my portfolio and watch list, several companies issued relevant material.

Piquadro:

Piquadro had a sort of “trading update” which for some reason cannot be found on the homepage but for instance here.

Although sales went up 4.3%, Profits declined from 9.1 mn to 7.8 mn (0.18 EUR per share to 0.156 EUR per share). And they are cutting the dividend from 0.10 EUR per share to 0.06 EUR.

Based on my initial valuation, Piquadro is still within the base case (20% EBITDA margin). So for the time being no action, but a reminder to check the annual report how non-Italien sales and own shops performed against the other segment.

Sol Spa

Watchlist stock Sol Spa has issued two interesting pieces of information. First of all, they were able to place a 12 year private placement bond at 4.75% in USD. With 12 year USD swap rates at around 2%, this represents a credit spread of around 2.75%. This is around 1.5% lower than Italy has to pay for the same duration. So we clearly see that a well managed Italian corporate can finance cheaper than the Italian Government !!!

Secondly, they have issued an investor presentation which shows that for some unkown reasons they are also investing in Hydro Power in Slovenia and Macedonia. I am not sure how this fits into the corporate strAtegy, but it explains part of the increase in Capex.

Q1 results are a mixed bag. Increasing sales but a reduction in margins. Capex still high as the aggressively move into Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Albania).

Difficult stock. Still on watch.

EMAK

Emak had issued Q1 numbers already a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly again the acquired companies dare doing relatively well. Based on the first quarter, Emac could earn around 0.08 EUR per share which would result in a 2012 P/E of around 6.

CS Euroreal closed as well

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Already yesterday’s news but here ist the link (German).

So not really a surprise, the price chart showed already clearly the outcome:

In the wake of this process, also the other funds lost further, which kind of makes sense as now even more real estate is hitting the market:

For instance the Axa fund lost even more:

As I have mentioned before, I think at some point in time, the funds could become interesting again, but there is no need to hurry now.

Edit: According to this article, business for the remaining open funds seems to be really good. So at some point in time we might see some selling activity from the closed funds.

AIRE KGaA – Increase of Tender offer to 18,25 EUR per share, Q1 report and Uncle Sam

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What a day again for the AIRE KGaA stock.

As reader AS has commented already, AIG has increased the tender offer again up to 18.25 EUR per share.

To make the situation even more interesting, the Swiss fund Alpine Select filed that they have increased their share holding to close to 17%.

In parallel, AIRE published today the Q1 report 2012 which did not contain any news. Money is still coming back. Interestingly they showed on page 8 that 55% of the portfolio is residential real estate, I assume most of this in the US. Current NAV is around 20 EUR.

One funny aspect of the current situation:

I was quite confused that the US Treasury Department was disclosing a stake in AIRE KGaA, ut the i read this sentence:

These voting rights are to be attributed pursuant to sec. 22 para. 1 sentence 1 no. 1 WpHG via American International Group, Inc., United States of America.

As the US Treasury is still holding the majority in AIG, effectively one can sell now the AIRE shares to Uncle Sam.

I think I will soon start selling the shares as the upside seems to be now relatively limited. at the current price it will e the first real “Double”.

Update DJE Real Estate, SEB and CS Euroreal

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DJE Real Estate

Thanks to a friend a received the link to the recording including the slides.

Most important points:

– cash payment of ~17-20% of NAV in Juli (1.30-1.50 EUR)
– however overall cash flow to fund holders much slower than initially thought

In the original post I wrote the following

A) around 2/3 of the fund’s investments (based on NAV) are relatively liquid. It should be no big problem for DJE to return 5 EUR or more within the next 12 months or so. This would mean that at current prices, the investment itself should flow back pretty soon and the discount to intrinsic value could decrease equally soon

This seems to be have been overly optimistic. As far as I understood, a couple of funds have extension options from the side of the fund and some of the still open funds need at least 12 months notice to get the money.

According to management, the secondary market for those funds seem to be very illiquid with large discounts.

So for the portfolio, I will start selling the fund from today on, as my investment case which implied signifcant cash flows in the next 12 months does not really hold.

SEB & CS Euroreal

As now already widely known, the SEB has closed for good beginning of last week.

The CS Eurreal is trying its luck now with Monday, May 21st as the last day where investors can ask for redemptions.

Current price action and price to NAV for the CS indicates a very low propability of reopening:

So potential real estate buyers will see a large pipeline of real estate offers from all those funds with sometimes quite similar objects.

One thing which is interesting is that as far as I know, the funds do not really have to sell all obejcts within the communicated timeframe (i.e. SEB 5 years, AXA 3 years). If they don’t manage to sell, the deposit bank has to take over.

As the deposit banks most likely will not want to be involved in those cases (there will be a wall of law suits along the way) they most likely will directly auction off the properties.

So the end could be quite ugly in the worst case. On the other hand, if prices fall further, the run off funds could become interesting again.

Catching up: Green Mountain, AS Creation and AIRE KGaA Tender offer at 17 EUR

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What a week for the portfolio ….

Green Mountain

Green Mountain imploded (again) last week after they lowered their guidance.

Green Mountain had many attributes making it a “perfect short”:

+ shady accounting as revealed early by Sam Antar at WhiteCollarFraud
+ massive insider sales
+ negative free cashflows
+ pumped up growth through expensive acquisitions
+ expiring patents in 2012

David Einhorn, now credited for “revealing” the over-valuation was actually relatively late in the game. However one has to admire his timing capabilities. I was relatively early and hat to swallow a intermediate -40% loss on the position before I got into the money.

The question is now, how low can the stock go ? If GMCR is a “real business”, then the current valuation seems to be fair. If they are a real fraud, the stock could go down much further. Also one should remember that momentum always goes in both directions. Nevertheless, as the easy money on the short seems to have been made, I will exit (cover) the short on Monday.

AS Creation

AS Creation reported surprisingly good Q1 numbers which show that at least with a certain time lag, the company does have some pricing power in its core business. The outlook is mixed as they expect losses when they ramp up the Russian JV.

Nevertheless, I think the first quarter gives credibility to the managment as they always told investors that on an annual basis they are able to pass cost increases onto clients.

AIRE KGaA Tender offer EUR 17 per share

After I was already happy that my special situation investment AIRE KgAA offered to buy back 10% of the shares at 14 EUR, suddenly AIG real estate issues an offer for 17 EUR per share for the whole company.

Luckily, I only sold relatively small amounts of AIRE at around 14 EUR. As someone said before: Sometimes it better to be lucky than smart.

What I find interesting about the offer are two things:

– first, they seem to have already 31.8% of shares under their control, so from their existing 7.85% the have bought 24% through option contracts

– second, based on the official NAV of around 21 EUR, the 17 EUR offer in theory does not leave a lot of upside for AIG. However one has to remember, that AIRE KGaA owns a lot of highly leveraged equity positions in US developements which were pretty aggresively written down to zero over the last few years. So there is lot of positive optionality in the legacy portfolio. If some of those projects are “coming back”, the NAV could be significantly higher. AIG Real estate as the previous manager should know those projects pretty well.

If I remember correctly, they were active in residential, multi tennant developements. Maybe this has to do with AIG’s decission from early April to go back into real estate investments on a larger scale. I had actually read this but didn’t really make the connection.

For the time being, I will wait for the final offering documents to decide what to do, however I will continue to sell down to 5% of portfolio weight.

As Green Mountain was the ideal short, AIRE KGaA was the ideal special situation:

+ unusual vehicle (listed, closed real investment fund, US and Asian real estate, only German listing)
+ difficult to analyse (lot of debt, but non-recourse)
+ bad name / scandal, however no direct exposure (AIG)
+ early entry of “activist” investors (Grevenkamp, Swiss guy)

From a timing perspective, I was very lucky in the portfolio, getting in at a very low point in January 2011. The chart shows that with such investments, one usually has time to analyse and invest. It doesn’t reallypay out to invest driectly after the drop:

After the big drop in 2008/2009, the stock was “sleeping” now for almost 3 years before something happened.

That is something to keep in mind for investing in such situations. I t takes some time until the value will be (hopefully) realised by someone.

AIRE KGaA – annual report published

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AIRE KGaA published their annual report 2011 yesterday.

The NAV slightly increased from Q3 2011 to EUR 21.30 per share.

The most interesting news however is to be found on page 5: From the initial 65.6 mn EUR potential investment commitments, only 2.4 mn EUR seem to be now relevant, as most of the other commitments did expire or will expire soon.

At year end 2011, AIRE had almost 22 mn EUR in cash on hand, representing around 5,20 EUR per share. The buyback announced this week, will use only up to 5 mn EUR, so we can expect some further buy backs soon.

So for the time being, despite the insider issues discussed, I think the value of the shares should be strongly protected to the downside.

For the portfolio, I will continue to sell down until a 5% weight is achieved (from ~7%). However, due to the low volume this might take a while.

Real estate investment funds – SEB Immoinvest and DJE real estate

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Interesting developement with regard to the last two remaining closed real estate funds, CS Euroreal and SEB Immoinvest:

SEB wants to save itself by opening just for one single day on May 7th.

The price of the fund already jumped this morning:

EDIT: The SEB Immoinvest is not in the DJE Real estate fund

It will be interesting to see how this works out on May 7th. To a certain extend I find it relatively unfair, as this move punishes traditional fund savers, which might not know about this or have not enough time to react.

I am not sure, if the SEB Immoinvest itself would be a good special situation right now. According to the details of the “offer” , they will collect all orders from now on.

If the orders are less or equal existing liquidity (30% of the fund), they will pay out all orders, otherwise they will not pay out anything. So no “odd lot” tendering for the small guys, it is just “all or nothing”.

For me it is extremely difficult to assess how many people will redeem, my assumption is that all institutional ones more or less have to submit orders.

At current prices of 40 EUR, the upside would be some 30% whereas the donside would be the old price of around 34-35 EUR. So one has to assume at least a 50% chance of reopening to make this a positive exected value investment.

DJE Real Estate:

As Perlenfischer pointed out in the comments, there is a con call on MAy 7th with regard to further proceedings from DJE. This should be interesting.

AIRE KgAA – 10% Buy back tender offer at EUR 14

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As one of the readers commented yesterday, one of my special situation investment, real estate investment company AIRE KgAA issued a 10% buy back tender offer yesterday after close.

This is of course good news in general, as this was one of the catalyst events I was looking for.

Based on my initial investment thesis from Decemeber 2010, we are currently at the “mid case” scenario.

However I have some isues with this tender offer:

1) Why was it launches just before the publication of the annual report ? Normally, the annual report came out always on the last day of April. Do they want to fix the price now because there is unexpected good news (e.g. a written off project came back to life) ?

2) In my opinion, there was some serious INSIDER TRADING going on. This is the only explanation for the strange rise of the stock against the general market) in the last few days:

The insider aspect really worries me, as this could also go into the other direction. So my current reaction is to start to exit the position from today, even if this is what AIRE KgAA or its major shareholders are trying to achieve.

The tender offer itself is an “Odd lot” type of offer, with the “odd lot” being 100 shares which will be accepted 100%, above 100% there will be only a partial repurchase based on the total amount tendered.

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