12 attributes of scalable businesses
First hand experience of value investing in Africa (h/t qed1984)
Morgan Housel summarizes his learnings of hist first year at a VC
John Kingham (UK Value Investor) shares his 39 lessons on investing
Bill Ackman has a new acivist position: ADP
Some deep thoughts on Disney (vs. Netflix)
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!
A few months ago, fellow blogger Wexboy had a very interesting post on Record Plc, a UK based “specialty asset manager”. Go and read the whole thing, it is worth it.
I try to summarize the business & background in my own words:
Record Plc provides so-called “Currency overlay” asset management services. Currency overlays are in principle used for two reasons.
It is important to know that they do not manage the underlying assets, but “just” a derivative portfolio hedging the underlying assets and that they do not use their own balance sheet but act solely as an agent for the ultimate client.
Provident Financial
Wow, that was fast. In November I looked at the stock but luckily dismissed it. This is what I wrote back then:
However for me, despite I do like financial companies, I don’t want to invest into a company which in my opinion runs an ethical questionable business. Some might argue that Lloyds Banking is not much different but I think that there is still a big difference between a well run main street bank and an aggressive subprime lender.
I do belive that in the long run, a company which takes advantage of clients has a higher probability to get into troubles than one which actually benefits the customer.
Although the “Crook” is out, the stock tanked an incredible -70% alone on Tuesday
So what happened ?
A couple of good spin-off links
Jeff Matthews doesn’t like Uber
John Huber likes Tencent a lot
Some interesting statistics from the US bond markets
Maersk and Amazon are clashing to control the container industry
Is cloud computing already a legacy technology?
Time to do another “travel series” post after the last Tripadvisor post a few months ago.
GDS – The business
The so-called “GDS” (short form of Global Distribution System) is one of the oldest “platform business” I know about.
Basically (and as far as I understand it), it is a real-time repository of available airplane seats, hotel rooms and rental cars from different suppliers (airlines, Hotels etc.). This repository can then be accessed by travel agents, OTAs etc. in order to book these offers for their ultimate clients. The GDS charge money both for access to the system and transactions. The added value comes clearly from the fact that they act as a single interface to many different back-end systems on the supplier side.
Nice portrait of legendary trader & Hedge fund manager Stanley “Druck” Druckenmiller
An alternative perspective on the multitude of crypto currencies
How to name a new (hedge) fund
Prof. Damodaran updates his Tesla valuation and wonders about the debt financing
Interesting thoughts on product pricing and gross margins
Wexboy with a portfolio update
One story which is currently making the rounds is that of Warren Buffett’s huuuuuuuuuuge cash pile or “war chest” at Berkshire.
Bloomberg had an article in May about the 86 bn “war chest” , and then 2 days ago Bloomberg said that his “cash pile” is now close to 100 bn USD.
Speculations are rampant what he could do with it for instance:
Half year report of TGV Truffle funds (NOV, DNOW)
Half year report of TGV Rubicon Stock Picker
Damodaran with a great summary on Crypto currencies (Bitcoin)
Interesting: Analysing companies via word clouds
Farnam Street on filter bubbles
DryShips, the world’s weirdest listed stock ?
Ben from WertArt with an “epic” analysis of Gilead
Podcast interview with Tucows CEO Elliot Noss on investing in a Changing World (h/t Valueinvestingworld)
Some presentations from ValueX Vail (including Tripadvisor, registration required)
A very good summary on Kinder Morgan and mistakes made
Spain finally seems to have made it out of crisis
An interesting comparison between Microsoft now and IBM 25 years ago
Background:
As mentioned a few days ago, ALD SA has been IPOed by parent SocGen on June 16th. SocGen sold ~23% of the stock and remains majority shareholder. The first question of course is: why did they do this ?
The official reason was the following:
The IPO confirms the strategic nature of ALD within Societe Generale group. It will allow ALD to accelerate its development and become a leader in a rapidly changing mobility space.
value and opportunity 