Tag Archives: Bill Ackman

Greenlight Re (sell), Handelsbanken (buy) & Bill Ackman

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Greenlight Re

Following the E.On discussion, I really asked myself if it was such a good idea to invest into Greenlight Re.

My argument was as follows:

  • the stock looks historically cheap
  • Einhorn had a few very bad years
  • based on its track record hw might do much better in the future

After the E.On discussion however, I recognized the follwoing: Whenever I looked at a stock that Einhorn bought (Delta Lloyd, AerCap, SunEdison, Consol, E.on), I never understood why he did it or I thought it was not a good idea. Even if I look at his 20 bigest disclosed positions, I don’t find any stock that I would buy on my own:

     APPLE INC    AAPL  US
GENERAL MOTORS CO    GM  US
ISS A/S    ISS  DC
CHICAGO BRIDGE & IRON CO NV    CBI  US
TIME WARNER INC    TWX  US
MICHAEL KORS HOLDINGS LTD    KORS  US
AERCAP HOLDINGS NV    AER  US
CONSOL ENERGY INC    CNX  US
ARKEMA    AKE  FP
AECOM    ACM  US
ON SEMICONDUCTOR CORP    ON  US
BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON COR    BK  US
TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWR    TTWO  US
GREEN BRICK PARTNERS INC    GRBK  US
MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC    MU  US
MARKET VECTORS GOLD MINERS    GDX  US
VOYA FINANCIAL INC    VOYA  US
LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC-SERIES C    LBTYK  US
DILLARDS INC-CL A    DDS  US
APPLIED MATERIALS INC    AMAT  US

That in effect lead me to the conclusion that I am most likely the wrong kind of shareholder for Greenlight Re. If things go really  bad, I am not sure if I would have enough trust to keep the position or if I would get really nervous because I could not identify with the manager.

Secondly, I honestly don’t have much insight, how Einhorn generated his fantastic past track record.

Together with not liking his long position, I think it was a mistake to invest in Greenlight and I sold my stocks as mentioned in the comments at around 18,45 USD per share with a tiny profit of around +2,5%.

It could well be that Greenlight maybe has a spectacular 2016 but as I have mentioned above, one should not allocate money to someone where you don’t understand what that manager is doing. Conviction is important to withstand all kind of behavioural traps in investing.

Finally, I am not sure if there could be some isues on the Reinsurance side. AIG surpisingly disclosed a pretty massive reserve strengtening for Q4 and it looks like that this is mostly “long tail” exposure from long ago which is also the “bread and butter” business of Greenlight Re.

Handelsbanken

Following the market turmoil, I began to establish a first (2%) position in Handelsbanken. Purchase price was on average ~98 SEK per share. Valuation wise they are now at a level where I would expect to earn around 16-17% p.a. long term which looks atractive to me despite potential short term head winds.

I plan to increase this to a full position over the next months. I funded this position by selling some of the HT1 bonds, as I want to keep some cash (~10%) in order to be flexible if some of my watch list shares become really cheap.

Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman came out with his Q4 letter to investors just a few days ago. His results were similarily bad than Einhorn’s with -20,5% after fees for 2015.

There was already good coverage on his letter for instance from Matt Levine.

My 2 cents on this:

  • compared to Einhorn, he mostly blames others for his losses (index funds, copycats, the market)
  • he doesn’t seem to fully understand how index funds work
  • funnily enough, he accuses index funds that their only goal is to “attract more funds” at low costs. Why did Ackman then create the public vehicle Pershing Square Holdings ? Well, he also wants to attract more fund but a high costs.
  • he thinks that there are not enough activists. Understandable from an activist perspective. Subjectively I have the feeling that Carl Icahn alone is activist at every single stock in the US.
  • at least he admits that “platform” companies like Valeant are not such fantastic cases per se.

On a personal level, I do think there might be already TOO MANY activists. Many of them only care for short term payouts which, in many cases, might not be benefitial for long term share holders.

All in all, if I would have money invested with Ackman, I would really ask myself if I would trust a guy who only blames others for his misfortunes.

 

 

 

 

 

The Herbalife “Slugfest”

Posted on by 11 comments

In my opinion, the most interesting (and entertaining) story in equity markets is the current Herbalife story.

Herbalife is a US based producer and distributor of diet shakes, vitamin pills etc.

Looking at the chart, one can see that until early 2012, Herbalife was one of the “hottest” stocks out there:

Herbalife went public in December 2004 at a price of 14 USD per share. Including a stock split, the stock returned a phenomenal return of ~ 30% p.a. until the end of 2011.

Earnings per share rose more than 10-fold from 0.47 USD per share to more than 4.80 USD in 2011. During the “financial crisis”, the stock suffered but then quickly went back into outperformance mode.

The first “crack” in the success story appeared, when David Einhorn personally dialed into the conference call on May 1st 2012 for the first quarter and started to ask some weird questions.

Two weeks later, when Einhorn spoke at the annual Ira Son conference, the stock bounced back 20% because Einhorn didn’t mention Herbalife. So far I didn’t find out if Einhorn is still short.

The next step in the story is well known, the epic presentation of Bill Ackman why Herbalife is a Pyramid scheme. To reinforce his point, he even set up a dedicated website about his Herbalife short thesis. For Ackman, this is not his first short battle. There is even a book (by the way highly recommended) about his several year long fight against the US mortgage insurers, called “The confidence game”:

However, pretty soon after his presentation, some quite savvy investors and bloggers pointed out some weaknesses in Ackman’s presentation, especially the claim that the Herbalife “scheme” is illegal and the US regulators will have to shut the company down.

One of the first was blogger Kid Dynamite and one of my personal favouritesm, blogger and hedge fund manager John Hempton.

Like sharks smelling blood, some other “famous” hedgefund managers joined the party, most notably Dan Loeb’s Third point which actually took a massive 8% long position in the company. Yesterday, even “activist” legend Carl Icahn came out swinging against Ackman, disclosing a long position in Herbalife.

So this is quite an interesting situation:

On the one side, we have some of the brightest “new generation” HF managers David Einhorn and Bill Ackman against well respected “activists” like Dan Loeb and Carl Icahn as well as extremely clever bloggers like Kid Dynamite and John Hempton.

Last Thursday, Herbalife held an investor day, trying to take on Ackman’s acusations. I found the Herbalife presentation rather unconvincing.

My advice on this:

If you are not a famous investor who can move markets with a presentation, STAY OUT OF THIS !!!!!

Otherwise you will end up like this poor guy, who “joined” Bill Ackman just at the wrong point in time:

The Herbalife story is the proverbial “hot potato” investment one should just enjoy and watch (and learn) instead of joining.

Personally, I think that Loeb and Icahn are only in for the quick rebound and long term Ackman will most likely come out with a nice profit, but I wouldn’t really bet on this, as you might be killed (or squeezed) in the meantime.

So get your popcorn, lean back and enjoy !!!

P.S.: For anyone more deeply interested in “multilevel marketingg companies”, there is a very good detailed post at Seeking Alpha.