Category Archives: Uncategorized

All Belgian Shares part 3 – Nr. 41-60

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Another month, another 20 randomly selected Belgian shares. This time, I found 3 stocks worth watching. The Expert Market so far is quite disappointing, but let’s see if there is maybe a gem or two among all the other stuff.

41. BPost

BPost with a market cap of 700 mn EUR seems to be the former state monopoly mail and parcel company in Belgium which is still majority owned by the Belgian Government. The stock looks cheap, but looking at the share price it seems to be more like a melting ice cube. Operating margins have been declining from 18% in 2013 to 5% in 2023.

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Some links 07/2024

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Wintergems Blog with another interesting Japanese Small cap write-up (Takeuchi)

Mat Roiss with a list of potentially interesting HK stocks

Some interesting takeaways from Fundsmith’s anual investors meeting

According to Stratechery, Google is at an existential crossroad

Great portfolio review from Carsten at Augustusville

A very interesting story on why Women in South Korea don’t want to have children anymore

Ted Giola on the “Dopamine Culture” promoted by the Big Tech companies

Performance review Q3 2023 – Comment: “How tall should your hurdle be ?”

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In the first 9 months of 2023, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  +6,5% (including dividends, no taxes) against a gain of +8,3% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), EuroStoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all TR indices).

Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog. Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in the first 9M 2023:

Partners Fund TGV: -0,9% (as of Sep 15th)
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +12,9%
Squad European Convictions 5,7%
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen +4,9%
Squad Aguja Special Situation +2,4%
Paladin One -4,7%
Alphastars Europe +4,9%

Performance review:

Within a quarter, the YTD performance jumped from close to the bottom of the peer group to second position. Looking at the monthly returns, it is not difficult to see that especially August and September were in relative terms very good:

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Mikron Group AG – Super Cheap (EV/EBIT ~4) and +33% EBIt 6M 2023- what is not to like ?

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

Spoiler: If you are short on time: I did not buy a position here. No need to read everything.

Mikron is a company that I had on my (passive) radar since my “All Swiss shares” series some years ago (since I passed on it, it made around +100%, so keep this in mind for the rest of the post). It is a Swiss based machinery manufacturer with a market cap of 200 mn CHF and has some connection to SFS (SFS is a client, same Chairman in the past).

These were the main items that motivated me to looks deeper into Mikron this time:

+ currently very (very !!) cheap (P/E 7,5, EV/EBIT 3,5)
+ currently VERY good business momentum (6M 2023: Sales +22%, EBIT +33%)
+ better customer/product mix than in the past
+ Rock solid balance sheet (100 mn CHF cash vs 200 mn CHF market cap)
+ good share price momentum

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Some links

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Verdad thinks that systematically shorting one day options could generate Alpha

Chemical companies are facing big fines for PFaS/ Forever Chemicals in the US (Hello Bayer !!!)

Already a few weeks old, but Prof. Damodarans post on what makes banks risky and the sequel on how to value bank stocks ar both worth reading

Clarke Square Capital thinks that now is the time for Lastminute.com to shine

Marc Andreesen (not surprisingly) thinks that AI will save the world

Ben Thompson is a big fan of the new Apple Vision Pro

And all you need to know about Farmland investing

Lopgistec Update – “Strategic review” consideratios

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With a small delay, a few thoughts on the “strategic review process” at Logistec, a stock I had written up and added to my portfolio two months ago.

Govro has already published an excellent post about the situation in his Wintergem Blog here. He estimates that a sale at ~9xEV EBITDA could result in an offer of CAD 76 per share. However, he points out that this is just the start of a process and it could well be that there will be no sale at the end, especially as due to the high interest rates, the infrastructure sector is not super hot at the moment.

The Logistec share price has increased from around 43 CAD per share before the announcement to around 60 CAD at the time of writing. Funnily enough, this is almost exactly half way between the “undisturbed price” and Govro’s sale price estimate.

Correcting a mistake: Extra Asset

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Some links

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A great selection of stock write-ups collected by the Capital Employed substack

Credit Suisse might be a really bad bank but they do a very good year book on long term returns

Some highlights from Berkshire’s fresh 2022 annual letter to shareholders

For those who found the Berkshire letter too short, the Semper Augustus (Chris Bloomstrain) 2022 letter is (as aways) epic.

Benedict Evans’ annual technology outlook is worth spending some time on

Great long read on Energy prizes and the lack of Tomatoes in the UK

A good review if and to what extent the Small cap premium still exists (US data)

Some links

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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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