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)
In the first 9 months of 2022, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -15,8% (including dividends, no taxes) against a loss of -27,0% 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 2022:
Partners Fund TGV: -42,6%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -20,6%
Squad European Convictions -20,4%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos ––6,6% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -12,2%
Greiff Special Situation -5,0%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -21,2%
Paladin One -21,4%
Performance review:
Overall, the portfolio was again more or less in the middle of my peer group. Looking at the monthly returns, it clearly shows that the rebound in July until Mid August was short lived and that August and September turned out to be big down months again, after the disastrous June:
And on we go with our journey through the danish share universe. This time we have one very strong candidate that already made it into the V&O portfolio recently. Enjoy !!!
111. Boozt AB
Boozt AB is a “Nordic technology company selling fashion, apparel, and beauty online”, currently valued at 342 mn EUR. The chart shows that,as other E-Commerce players, times are tough for E-Commerce:
Background:
Hypoport has been one of the sore points in my investing history. I have been looking at this company several times, quite intensively in 2013 but never “pulled the trigger”. Hypoport has been a “FinTech” before this expression has been used. The business is not so easy to explain and comprises 4 different segments with several companies within these segments.
Recently, the share price of the company has been hammered after they gave a profit warning, despite having decreased already -75% from their peak before that profit warning. Time to look at Hypoport again.
Business:
This is clearly the flagship product of Hypoport although it doesn’t seem to be well understood or known. Europace is a B2B market place that gathers different mortgage offerings and combines these offerings combined with other useful tools to professional advisers who then actually make the deal with retail customers.
In volatile times like these, I actually enjoy from time to time to take a “stoic” brake and work through a list of companies. In order to reach my target of finishing Denmark this year, I also need to hurry up a little bit (still more than 70 stocks to go…). Please find another 10 randomly selected Danish stock with one new candidate to “watch”.
101. EAC Invest
EAC Invest is actually a stock I had looked at almost exactly 9 years ago when the company was called “East Asiatic Company”. Back then, their main business was a meat business in Venezuela and a Autralian focused relocation company for miners. Looking at the share price development, it was a good decision to move on despite back then the stock looked ultra cheap:
Intro:
Knorr is a company I have been looking into now for some time. It is one of those “hidden Champions” that Germany is famous for. As I drive by their HQ on a regular basis, I decided to have a deeper look into them.
History:
Knorr Bremse has a very interesting history. The company was founded in 1905 in Berlin and for a few years, BMW (in its original form) was actually a subsidiary of Knorr. In 1985, Karl Herrmann Thiele, who initially joined the company in 1969, took over the majority from the Knorr family and developed the company into a Global Player. The company is now headquartered in Munich and only went public for 80 EUR/share in October 2018.
Karl-Herrmann Thiele
Thiele died quite surprisingly in early 2021, the heirs still own around 59% of the shares via a foundation.
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
Maboussin with a deep dive on market share
Reading texts on paper seems to be more efficient than reading on a device
Nice write-up on HongKong’s Swire Pacific from Michael Fritzell
Marc Rubinstein makes the case for UK Banks as potentially interesting investment
Interesting pitch for FEMSA from Patient Capital
Insider Ideas thinks that Ocado might be worth a deeper look
Mark Suster thinks private (VC) valuations will need to reset
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Never trust any anonymous dude on the internet. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!
Panic Update:
As to be expected, my last “panic post” marked more or less the (short term) peak in Natural Gas and Electricity prices in Europe. Since then, prices have gone down more than -50% from the peak. Nevertheless, prices are far from normal and sustainable. Governments have already proposed action in the form of intercepting the markets.
In the recent days, I have seen more and more “models” that seem to tell us that Germany/Europe is fine for this Winter and after that everything will be smooth sailing (LNG terminals, French deliveries etc.), despite the Russian completely halting NS1 deliveries last week and not reinstating them based on phony reasons.
I actually started to build a model myself but then decided to focus on the big picture instead. As I argued on Twitter, the one big variable that will determine how Europe is doing will be the temperature.
However, independent how this winter will be, Natural Gas will be a scarce resource in Europe for some years to come. Even in the (low probability) case that there will be a quick end of the Ukraine conflict, Europe will not and cannot go back into the Russian dependency. On the other hand, switching to LNG at acceptable prices will take a few years until enough liquification, gasification and transportation capacity is available.
This recent article in the FT quotes the boss of Shell:
“It may well be that we have a number of winters where we have to somehow find solutions through efficiency savings, through rationing and a very, very quick buildout of alternatives,” he said. “That this is going to be somehow easy, or over, I think is a fantasy that we should put aside.”
Another German language article quotes several Oil and Gas executives that it takes at least 3-4 years until Russian Gas can be fully replaced.
So my base case for the coming 3-5 years will be: There is not enough Natural Gas (ex Russia) available in Europe and Gas and electricity will remain very expensive in Europe.
The only real option: Decrease Demand
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Never trust any anonymous dudes on the internet. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!
Background:
Readers of my blog know that I like Special situations where a company, that has been flying under the radar, (unexpectedly) sells an asset that is worth potentially more than the market cap of the whole company. In these cases, it often takes some time until the market fully realizes what has happened.
Sapec was a good example, Exmar is a recent case that is still ongoing.
3U Holding – Weclapp
The current case is a small cap from Germany called 3U Holding. 3U was IPOed in the bubble days of the Dot.com boom in 1999. Other than many of its peers, its core communication business was quite solid. They sold their Communication business in 2007 and since then acted like mixture of Holding company and Family Office for the founders who own ~34% and effectively control the company.
value and opportunity 