Some links

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Rob Vinall (RV Capital) has released his 2018 letter with deep thoughts on subscription models. There will also be a Live Stream of his upcoming investor meeting

Marketfolly has good write ups on the London Sohn Conference

Interesting thoughts on the strength of different platform business models

GreenWood Investors explains its “12 month re-underwriting” process

Fellow blogger Wexboy with his 2018 review as does JohnKingham (UK Value Investor)

Strong versus weak technologies

Yet another value blog with write up on Radisson Hospitality and Telecom Italia

 

 

April SA – Potential buyout offer from CVC: Interesting Special Situation ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Please do your own research. 

April SA is an “Old friend” on this blog. I owned the stock in the past and last time I looked at them when a rumour came up that the company is for sale in late October.

This is what I said back then:

April had shown actually pretty decent growth in Q3 and I actually considered buying some shares but maybe this is not so sustainable and the founder wants to sell before it is getting worse again ? Who knows…

My fundamental assessment of April is that they have a strong core business (French Broker) but have over extended themselves internationally and the founder, Bruno Rousset, who stepped down in 2014, does not have the energy anymore to turn this around himself.

Well, things have progressed. There had been a “beauty contest” with PE bidders and it looks now that PE shop CVC is highly interested in buying the stake of the founder and majority owner. This is from a piece of news released by April SA and  CVC end of December:

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Some links

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Farnam Street on how not to be stupid plus its 2018 review

And ValueInvestingWorld with a fitting “final checklist” before making an investment decision

An interesting view on how “factors” like size, EV/EBIT etc. performed in 2018

Honeywell looks potentially interesting after the spin-off as well as ARLO

Good feature on Paul Singer (Elliott)

Four blogs with totally “off the beaten track” portfolios have posted 2018 reviews:
– GlobalStockPicking
– Alpha Vulture
– Value Investing France
– Clark Street Value

David Einhorn had a catastrophic year in 2018

2018 Performance review – Outlook 2019

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In 2018, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -11,3%* (including dividends, no taxes) against –15.4 % for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%)).

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 2018:

Partners Fund TGV: +1,74% *
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -8,27%
Squad European Convictions -9,75%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos +2,65% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -13,72%
Evermore Global Value  -20.92% (USD)
Greiff Special Situation -7,02%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -11,7%

*TGV Partners as of 15.12.2018, to be updated

Since inception (01.01.2011), this translates into +152,6% or +14,0% p.a. vs. 66,6% or 6,0% p.a. for the Benchmark.

Current portfolio / Portfolio transactions

The current portfolio can be seen as always on the portfolio page. I have already mentioned the 2018 transactions in the “My 22+1 stocks for 2019” post.

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Some links

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Eddie Elfenbein’s Buy list 2019 has been released last week

The Bull, Bear and Value blog with a 2018 portfolio recap

Some December Spin-off links

Nope, US Steel stocks did not benefit from the steel tarifs

Some notes from a Value Investing Conference in NYC (h/t Valueinvestingworld)

Cautious remarks from Fred Wilson on the cash burn of VC backed companies

An interesting book list from A16Z

Great advice from Ryan Holiday on how to create better habits

Bill Gates explains what he has learned in 2018

My 22 (+1) investments for 2019

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Edit: I actually forgot to include Expedia…..

This post has become now a small tradition at the end of December and is also very helpful for me to review my holdings.

The summaries of the previous years can be found here:

My 21 investments for 2018
My 27 investments for 2017
My 27 investments for 2016
My 28 investments for 2015
My 24 investments for 2014
My 22 investments for 2013

From the 21 stocks of last year, 4 have left the portfolio:

Silver Chef and Metro were clear mistakes from my side and I exited them as discussed with significant losses. IGE & XAO was a much more positive case. The company received a buy-out offer from Schneider SA and I exited at 138 EUR per share. DOM Security finally was merged into the main shareholder company SFPI. Luckily, I could sell 40% of my holdings at 75 EUR/ share.

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Don’t miss: Stratechery 2018 review

Some very insightful investing lessons from Morgan Housel 

GlobalStockPicking with a nice write-up on HK based Modern Dental Group

A quick look at the upcoming United Technologies Spin-off

Great collection of 50 reasons why most of “us” are not thinking long term enough

Farnam’s Street 2018 letter to its readers

A quick look at offshore drillers (Rowan, Diamond)

Plus a Christmas Bonus: Eric Clapton performing “White Christmas”;

 

Ahlsell (ISIN SE0009155005) – Interesting pre-Christmas Special Situation ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, only the personal opinion of an anonymous blogger. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH !!!!

Background:

Ahlsell is a Swedish company that distributes building / renovation related products mainly to craftsmen in the Nordic Region. In 2012, the company was taken private by private equity house CVC.

In 2016, Ahlsell was IPOed again by CVC at SEK 46 per share. They sold 1/3 of their shares in the IPO and then down to 25,1% just some weeks ago.

Then more or less out of the blue a few days ago, CVC offered again to take Ahlsell private at 55 SEk/share which translates into a valuation slightly north of 2 bn EUR for the equity.

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8 Years of Value & Opportunity: Staying alive..

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Once a year in mid-December I always realize quite suddenly that another year has passed and Value and Opportunity is now 8 years old since the first post in 2010.

As I mentioned earlier this year, for very positive reasons, both private and professional, activity in the blog did not reach the standards of the previous years.

Looking back, I still managed to look a these companies in more detail:

  1. Getinge / Arjo spin-off
  2. Softbank (part 1 and part 2
  3. Landis & Gyr
  4. Boiron SA
  5. Expedia
  6. Criteo SA
  7. Saga Plc
  8. Paul Hartmann
  9. Creditshelf
  10. DormaKaba
  11. SIAS SpA (revisited)
  12. FitBit
  13. System1
  14. Listed VC funds part 1
  15. Listed VC funds part 2 – Vostok New Ventures

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A great deep dive on how to measure network effects from A16Z

Ben from Wertart with some general thoughts and reflections on investing 

A good overview on how Buffett’s investment focus changed over his carreer

Ben Thompson’s “State of the technology” is a very good read on Google & Co

AMD has benefited form the Crypto craze. Is it now a short candidate ?

“Big Beer” AB Inbev is facing headwinds

Manning  & Napier: Cheap active asset manager or gone for good ?

 

 

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