Performance Q1 2022 – Comment: “Podcasts & Inflation”

Posted on by 25 comments

In the first 3 months of 2021, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost  -6,6% (including dividends, no taxes) against a loss of -8.6% 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 3M 2022:

Partners Fund TGV: -20,09%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -3,67 %
Squad European Convictions -6,4%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos +0,42% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -4,29%
Greiff Special Situation -1,42%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -8,31%
Paladin One -6,59%

Performance review

Read more

Some links

Posted on by Leave a comment

Asian Century Stocks with a nice deep dive into Thai Beverage

Softbank’s Tech Hedge fund is being liquidated, with losses expected to reach up to USD 7 bn

Marc Rubinstein on the rise of fast payments (UK & Brazil)

Hybrid working V.1.0 doesn’t look very promising so far

Interesting notes from the book “10 1/2 lessons from Experience, Perspectives on Fund Management” written by Paul Marshall (Marshall Wace)

Maynard Payton with a great exercise: looking at the Energy consumption of all his portfolio companies

Annual letter to investors from Danish Fund manager Symmetry (23% CAGR since 2013)

Panic Journal Russia/Ukraine edition Part 3

Posted on by 8 comments

The war

The war is now going on for more than a month. Every other day there are rumors that progress has been made with regard to negotiations and the Russian army is failing or withdrawing, but the bombings are going on and more and more Ukrainians are fleeing (~4mn at the time of writing).

In contrast, the major stock market indices, in particular the US indices but also the DAX are at the same level or even higher now than before the invasion. BTFD has worked and again and these days “anything is good for stocks” seems to be the only motto.

One explanation that I have read is that Russia and Ukraine are only 2% of Global GDP, so a “loss” of these countries is no big deal. Personally, I do think that this is not a very useful number. Russian oil and gas is powering a significant amount of European (and Global) GDP. A supply disruption from Russian oil and gas would impact a much larger share of GDP globally and might make Covid-19 supply chain disruption like a toddler party. But the oil and gas is still flowing, so why worry ?

Just a few days ago, the CEO of BASF gave an interview warning against a full embargo against Russia, because it will “destroy the German economy”. He was stating the obvious, but especially BASF in my opinion shares a lot of responsibility for the dependency on Russian gas.

As for the endgame: As much as I hope for a quick, clean victory for Ukraine, I do think that this is the most unlikely scenario. Russia and Putin cannot afford to lose which is also the essence of an interview with one of Putin’s former advisors.

Tunnel vision

Read more

Protector Forsikring ASA – The Scandinavian “Baby Markel/Berkshire” ?

Posted on by 16 comments

The company:

Protector Forsikring ASA is a name that came up more often in my “stream”. It is a Norwegian “Challenger” Insurance company founded in 2007 (and IPOed in 2008) that has been growing nicely over the past years and doesn’t look expensive.

The stock price has been quite volatile but recently the stock has reached new highs and long time shareholders should be quite happy:

Protector

The high level financial indicators look very attractive: A relatively Ok valuation with an impressive ROE:

Read more

Some links

Posted on by One comment

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

Some links

Posted on by 3 comments

Let’s start with a Goodie: Pareto Securities is holding its annual TechIT conference on March 30th. It is a virtual event and also open for non-professional investors. And it is good value because it is free.

GlobalStockPicking with a very nice write-up on Swedish MedTech RaySearch

In depth interview on the “metaverse” with a 19 year Second Life veteran

Marc Rubinstein on the current Russia issues of Airplane Leasing companies (AerCap)

Good deep dive into the “premium alcohol” market from Lindsell Train

A comprehensive market update from Prof. Damodaran reflecting the impact from the war in UKraine

Heat pumps look like a no brainer these days

A couple of really helpful matrices to cluster investments

ALL DANISH STOCKS PART 4 – NR. 31-40

Posted on by 7 comments

One thing that I hadn’t managed to mention in my Panic series is that keeping up the normal routines instead of constantly staring at the screen for stock price action is also very important in order to “survive” volatile days as an investor.

With that in mind, I am more than happy to continue the all Danish Stocks series with 10 fresh randomly chosen stocks. This time four stocks made it on the “first round” watch list. Denmark seems to turn out as a quite promising hunting ground so far.

31. Columbus A/S

Columbus is an IT focused consultancy with a market cap of 160 mn EUR. Looking at their numbers, already 2019 was quite problematic and things didn’t improve much since then.

In January 2021, they sold a software subsidiary which resulted in a gain of around 2/3 of the current market value but they have distributed all the proceeds as a special dividend already.

Read more

Panic Journal RUSSIA / UKRAINE Edition PART 2

Posted on by 14 comments

Mental preparation

Another week and the war still goes on. My subjective feeling is that currently, a surprising large amount of investors still believe that this war will end relatively soon, one way or the other. However, if the war will last for a few years, we would be still far away from a turning point with a lot of escalation potential (stopping the oil and gas pipelines, “dirty weapons”, tens of millions of refugees etc). In the short term however, especially in European markets we could see some rallies if some good news is surfacing.

Consequences As mentioned already, I desperately hope (and still pray) for a quick end, but mentally, as an investor, I prepare for a much longer conflict. What does that “preparing mentally” mean ?

Read more

Gaztransport & Technigaz (GTT) – welcome back !!

Posted on by 18 comments

Background:

Gaztransport & Technigaz is a company that I had looked at in early 2016 and most of what I have written back then still applies:

Imagine you could invest into a company with the following characteristics:

– Global market leader with 70-90% market share (95% new built)
– Net margins after tax of 50% or more
– business protected by patents
– almost no capital requirement, negative working capital
– a potentially huge growth opportunity
– conservative balance sheet (no debt) and “OK” management

Back then, I found the stock initially too expensive at EUR 34 per share, however I invested then at around 22 EUR but sold after a quick gain at around 31 EUR.

What did happen since then ?

Looking at the chart, I was clearly underestimating the value of the stock by a wide margin as the stock more than tripled until early 2021:

Read more

Panic Journal – Russia / Ukraine edition Part 1

Posted on by 20 comments

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

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »