Some links

Jeff Bezos’ letters to Amazon shareholders are the Berkshire letters of the Digital Age

According to its IPO prospectus, Uber isn’t so sure about these self driving taxi fleets

John Kingham (UK Valueinvestor) likes Rightmove

Paladin with an update of their Innogy case and TomTom (German)

Great article from Forbes on Venture Capital all star Andreesen Horowitz (A16Z)

A great story on Rich Barton, the founder of Expedia, Glassdoor and Zillow

Don’t miss: Rob Vinall sharing his thought on the importance of management:

Performance review Q1 2019

In the first Quarter 2019, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained 8,3% (including dividends, no taxes) against 11.9% 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 Q1 2019:

Partners Fund TGV: 10.63% *

Profitlich/Schmidlin: +8,45%
Squad European Convictions +6,44%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos +6.09% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen +0,37%
Evermore Global Value  +6,54% (USD)
Greiff Special Situation +2,56%
Squad Aguja Special Situation +6,56%

*Since inception (01.01.2011), this translates into +173,2% vs. 86,4%  for the Benchmark.

Q1 2019 transactions

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Some links

Good analysis from the UK Value Investor why Interserve was taken over by its creditors.

Lyft, the new hot ride sharing IPO is to a large extent actually an insurance company

Interesting thoughts on Aviation Economics by Greenwood

Deep thoughts on Banks, Fintechs, Open Banking etc.

Naspers is (somehow) spinning of its Internet assets

FTAlphaville with a great post on cloud software stocks

Clark Street Value looks at Howard Hughes and Oncomed Pharmaceuticals

Special Situation “quicky” – KAS Bank (ISIN: NL0000362648) take-over

DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. Please do you own research !!!!!

Background:

Some readers of my blog might remember KAS Bank. I bought the stock in August 2012 and then sold it with a decent profit in MArch 2015 because I had not paid attention to the pension liabilities.

Looking at the stock chart, the decision to sell in 2015 was a good (and lucky) one:

kas bank 5y

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Zur Rose AG (ISIN: CH0042615283) – Loss making failed IPO or long term growth opportunity ?

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

csm_zurrosegroupFINAL_01_70165d445d

The company

Zur Rose AG is a Swiss company that specializes in selling / distributing pharmaceuticals. The core business is Swiss distribution business where they distribute pharmaceuticals to Doctors, as in some parts of Switzerland, Doctors canboth, prescribe and sell pills. In 2012, Zur Rose made a smart/lucky buy: For only 25 mn EUR, they bought German based online Pharmacy Doc Morris from Celesio, a German Pharmaceuticals wholeseller that got later acquired by McKesson (I owned the stock as special situation)

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Some links

Warren Buffett now has abandoned book value officially as measure for Berkshire’s success

Damodaran is  looking at the mess at KraftHeinz

Bill Gurley on the success of digital market places plus a checklist of what makes digital marketplaces interesting

Broyhill Investment’s 2018 letter

Deep thoughts on value chains (Walmart, Amazon, Google, Microsoft) from Ben Thompson

An interesting stock pitch on Nintendo

UK Fintech Revolut seems to be a tough place to work at

Some links

Warren Buffett’s 2018 letter to the Shareholders

A very interesting and comprehensive annual fund letter from Semper Augustus (h/t ValueInvesting World)

Zillow,the US Real Estate online classified leader, tries to become THE one stop shop for online real estate.

Morgan Housel has a very smart collection of the “different kinds of stupid”

The UK Value Investor has a look at HSBC

Good write up on Pershing Square Holdings and Central Securities

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