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Must read: Prof. Damodaran on Free Cash Flow calculation (Spoiler: Don’t underestimate P/E and EV/EBIT measures)

Matt Levine with his epic “article” on all things Crypto

A good collection of recent and coming spin-offs

Twitter is a “disaster clown car company” with Elon Musk in charge.

Klement on Infrastructure investments and inflation protection

Ben Thompson (Stratechery) with a deep dive on the chip industry and American sanctions

Jim Chanos is always worth watching and listening to

Exmar – Update Q3 numbers: “Thank you for the Tango” & SELL

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Exmar was a special situation that I entered in August, following a surprising significant asset sale (a LNG liquification platform called “Tango”)

Yesterday evening, Exmar reported Q3 numbers including the final numbers on the ENI transaction. A few points that I found important:

  • Cash proceeds for the ENI transaction were slightly higher (+13 mn) compared to my base case
  • Net cash at company level however was -23 mn lower than I had calculated
  • Interestingly, Exmar only reported net cash at Group level, not gross cash at Holding level
  • The remaining core LPG business seems to do quite well, with sales up ~6% and EBIT up ~50%
  • They didn’t provide explicit number on how much they earn with the remaining regasification unit that is operating since August. The earnings of the “infrastructure” segment are really hard to read
  • Next week, there will be an extraordinary shareholder meeting declaring a 0,95 EUR dividend per share

The share price has done quite well. At the time of writing, Exmar traded at 10,20 EUR per share, an increase of almost exactly 1/3 vs. when I entered the position and even better in relative terms:

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All Danish Shares part 13 – Nr. 121-130

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Slowly we are reaching the end of my Journey through Denmark. Another 10 randomly selected stocks, this time yielding two “watch” candidates. Only 48 now outstanding. Enjoy !!!

121. Strategic Investments A/S

Strategic Investments is a 52 mn EUR market cap investment vehicle that invests into securities, private equity and real estate. Investor relations is in Danish only. Looking at the share price, there doesn’t seem to happen a lot of value creation here. “Pass”.

122. Copyright Agent

Copyright Agent is a 2 mn EUR market company that “is a legal-tech company that helps professional content creators to ensure their original work against misuse by other companies.”  This 2021 IPO is actually growing quite fast, but losses are growing faster with an EBIT margin of -50%. Cash at June 30th at the current burn rate only lasts until year end 2022, so capital increase will be coming soon (or bankruptcy). “Pass”.

123. Gyldendal

Gyldendal is a 125 mn EUR market cap book publisher and operator of book stores. After doing nothing for 20 years, the Stock saw some interesting price action in 2021 which has now mostly reversed:

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Molten Ventures is another beaten up listed VC stock

A critical look into the Mega Buyout (and mega leverage) of Citrix

Although it’s from McKinsey, this interview with VC legend Bill Gurley is really good

Extremely interesting analysis of the accuracy of analyst forecasts

Ben Thompson (Startechery) sees Microsoft as the “real VR” company

Interesting deep dive into the current state of Softbank

Very nice write-up on Hypoport from Verus (German language)

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Maynard Peyton with a very extensive deep dive into System1 Plc

There seems to be some correlation between “best places to work” and stock performance

Narcissistic fund managers are bad for fund performance

Marc Rubinstein with an interesting piece on UK Insurance regulation (Solvency II & Infrastructure investments)

“Railroader” seems to be a very interesting book

A nice case study on a Liquidation special Situation (Concorde Camera, 2008)

Another attempt at analyzing skill vs luck for portfolio managers

 

 

 

Book review: “The Alchemy of Air” – Thomas Hager

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Alchemy 2

The subtitle of this book summarizes the content quite nicely: “A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler”.

Synthetic fertilizer is one of these inventions that profoundly changed the path of humanity, but is being rarely talked about. Before synthetic fertilizer, farmers fertilized the” old way”, using animal manure,crop rotation etc. The problem with this approach is that the land can only yield so much net of what these animals need to eat themselves. The main issue is that plants need Nitrogen in a form that naturally is not so easy to come by and is used up if agriculture is intensified. Although Nitrogen is the most abundant element on Earth (78% of the Atmosphere), plants need Nitrogen in a different form and only a few of them (peas, Soy) can produce it themselves.

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Some really good advice on how and for what to use Twitter

Morgan Housel with a big post on 17 “common mental models”

Value Situations with a write up on Spin-off Wickes Group Plc

Interesting Twitter thread on how much wheat could actually be missing from world markets due to the Ukraine War (Spoiler: very little). From the same author some facts on fertilizer as well.

Despite the “tech crash”, private Ultra Fast delivery start-up Getir is able to raise money at a record valuation

Some thoughts on what might have triggered Buffett’s interest in Alleghany

The low beta premium seems to be mostly an illiquidity premium

Panic Journal – Russia / Ukraine edition Part 1

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Roughly two years after the beginning of the Pandemic, a lot of people thought that we would now get slowly back to our “normal lives” and chill out. Until Mr. Putin decided that he needs to protect himself by invading Ukraine.

As in the original Panic Journal series, these posts are more “self therapy” than anything else, so please excuse me any irrelevant ramblings.

Maybe one upfront remark: I am an investor, not a political expert. So I don’t know what will happen and speculating about it will not add any value. However one thing is clear: War is always a catastrophe, not justified by anything and in the end, everyone is a loser (or dead). Everyone will pay a price, someway or another.

For good measure, I will add some general remarks about Putin and Ukraine at the end.

Russian stocks: No, no and again no

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An interesting deep dive into the upcoming “no revenue” IPO Rivian

Great insights how the guy behind “stock spin-off investing” achieved more then 100K in annual revenue from his newsletter

Is this the real reason why Eon Musk wants to sell Tesla shares ?

A great (German Language) post from Verus on long term stock ownership (Hypoport, Pandora, SNP)

Good long read on famous investor Bill Miller

The recent blunder at Zillow shows that AI can do many things but not trading houses (yet)

Hayden Capital’s massive write-up on Coinbase

All Swiss Shares Part 15 – Nr. 141-150

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Moving forward with another 10 almost randomly selected Swiss stocks. This time, only one stock looked interesting but in that case so interesting that I initiated a 1% starter position.

141. ASMALLWORLD AG

ASMALLWORLD is a 36.4 mn CHF market cap company that was IPOed in 2018 at 9,75 CHF per share, climbed to over 20 CHF and then dropped big time even pre Covid. According to their web site their are some sort of travel community, whatever that means. Life is too short and there is a big world full of more interesting stocks. “Pass”.

142. Schaffner AG

Schaffner is a 176 mn CHF small cap that seems to be active as a specialist automobile supplier and produces components for electrical systems. A third division active in “Power Magnetics” was just sold to Swedish AQ Group, a company that I covered several years ago.

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