Interesting anual report from the “Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust” which, despite its name is a successful tech/growth fund (from page 11, h/t Monevator)
A wide ranging update from yetanothervalueblog
Blackrock is creating a “forever” PE fund
The number of job postings seems to be a short term leading indicator for the performance of Tech IPO stocks
A great collection of spin-off related links
Farnam Street blog on Jeff Bezos
Expedia
I invested into Expedia in February 2018 after the stock had become cheap enough. The idea was that a stock in a secular growth sector (online travel) should do well in the long run. After pretty decent fulll year 2018 numbers, with double digit increases in both, top and bottom, line, the first quarter 2019 showed a clear slowdown. Topline growth slowed to ~4%. Excluding Trivago which is still shrinking, topline sales would have grown +6%. Underlying profitability has improved although the first quarter is always the weakest one.
What I found interesting is the fact that Expedia performed better than Booking com. Here is a stock price comparison (including Tripadvisor and Trivago):
Good article how German Aldi is “disrupting” American grocery retail
Why “technical analysis” in stock prices makes no sense at all
A great analysis of Zillow’s new business model
The UK Value Investor with an in depth look at Cranswick
Portfolio updates from the GlobalStockPicking blog
Is Coca Cola Bottling an easy short ?
And finally the Graham and Doddsville Spring 2019 edition (including an interview with John Hempton, Bronte)
Whitney Tilson now has his own website / blog.
According to Andrew Left (Citron), the recent IPO “The Amazon of Africa” Jumia is a complete fraud
Very Expensive stocks have outperformed now for some time
On Gazprom and why some Value Investments need catalysts
A16Z with a great post on why just having lots of data doesn’t create a defensible moat
Interesting perepctive: What Long term investors can learn from traders
Google is tracking a lot of stuff. For instance all your puchase receipts in Gmail, but free mobile games seem to be a lot worse
Deutsche Familenversicherung AG (DFV) IPOed end of last year and claims to be the first stock listed “Insuretech” in Europe. The IPO was only successful at the second attempt but still they made it. In their investor presentation they even call themselves “Europe’s leading Insurtech” which is a pretty bold claim.
Excursion: What does Insurtech /Fintech mean ? And what does digital mean ?
There is clearly not general valid definition of Fintech /insurtech, but looking at the Fintech space, one would characterize these companies as technology driven companies that use technology to do things faster, cheaper and better than thier “ordinary” competitors.
An interesting article on how Private Investigators are used by Hedge Fund investors
Some deep research on the planned Genworth Financial take over by China Oceanwide
Ricegrowers Ltd from Australia could be interestng for investors into agricultural companies
The always brilliant Ben Thompson on Microsoft, Slack, Zoom & SaaS businesses
yetanothervalue blog with a range of thoughts and ideas
A good summary on what’s going on in the “spin-off” area
Fantastic story on a guy who invented algorithmic horse betting
Kinnevik
Kinenvik was an investement I first looked at in December 2017 and then decided to invest in late 2018 however only up to a 1,5% allocation.
As mentioned in the comments by a reader. since then a few things happened. From the market side, first their Zalando stock cratered and then recovered. What worries me more is the flurry of personal changes including Christina Stenbeck, the heir of the major founding family completely leaving the board. Personally; i also didn’t find their main new investment, online Grocer MatHem, very convincing. Overall, I am slightly underwhelmed from the strategic perspective. I don’t know enough about the Nordic Telecom market and if I really like Zalando, I could buy them outright. The non-listed part at Kinnevik is just to small to make a difference and the changes in the Board are hard to understand.
Background:
The guys from Paladin AM have outlined the Innogy case very nicely on their blog (in German): Intro & Update
I’ll try to summarize it in my own words:
Innogy, the renewable energy spin-off of RWE is in the process of being taken over by competitor E.ON. E.ON in 2018 had announced to purchase the 77% stake of RWE and has offered on a voluntary basis 36.74 EUR per share which, plus the upcoming dividend adds up to a total consideration of 38,14 EUR per share before tax. The closing of the transaction is subject to a relatively complex regulatory approval process which is already facing some delays. Most experts however think that the transaction will be ultimately approved.
A couple of Slide Decks from a Ben Graham Value Conference
John Hempton (Bronte) is short Mattel
Ben Thompson on the Future of (American) Television
A good summary on the major Fintech trends
The E-Scooter market is doing pretty well in year 2
sProf. Damodaran on how to value Uber
The fascinating story on how a 1000 USD painting became a 450 mn painting within a few years
Background:
Having this blog is nice because I can look back at what my original ssumptions were. I bought Van Lanschot in 2013, almost 5 1/2 years ago.
This was how I “valued” Van Lanschot back then:
Valuation:
A simple, “Berkowitz style” valuation would be: Book value
With ~0.51 times book value, Van Lanschot is one of the cheapest banks in Europe. Even Greek Banks like Piraeus Bank trade higher. The current valuation is on a level with „quality banks“ like Unicredit, Espirito Santo and Credito Bergamesco.
Interestingly, the P/B multiple for listed Private banks is a lot higher. Swiss competitors Julius Baer, EFG and Banq Privee de Rothschild for instance trade on multiples between 1.1-2.0 times book, a clear premium to „normal“ banks.
So with a “normal” result, one could argue for a valuation somewhere at 1.5 x book value. Clearly, this will be a long way, one should not expect exploding profits in the next quarters. But in a time period of 3-5 years, I could imagine that the stock can triple if the turn-around is succesful. Also, when people finally realize that not every Dutch homeowner will go broke, there might be a re-rating of Dutch financial stocks in general. But this might also take time.
It would be easy to come up with a much more complicated valuation method, but I like to keep it simple. If there are no big holes in the balance sheet and costs are kept under control, equity is at a safe level, then book value should be achievable for any bank.
value and opportunity 