Tag Archives: Contrarian investing

Updates: Kinder Morgan (SELL), Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (PBB)

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Kinder Morgan

Yesterday, I sold my complete Kinder Morgan position at ~21 USD per share with a total gain of around 25% (in EUR, including dividends). Why ?

When I bought the stock in April I argued like this:

For me, the “expected case” would be something like a 8% discount rate and 1% growth resulting in a fair value of around 25,60 USD per share. Also, under my assumptions, the downside is relatively limited. Based on 18 USD per share (at the time of writing), that would imply an upside of around +42% which for me would be an acceptable return over my typical 3-5 year investing period (plus any dividends).

So why did I sell out now and didn’t wait for higher prices ? Well, something has changed: Interest rates went up. Since April, the 10 year USD Swap rate went up by +0,90% and the 20 year rate by around +0,70% p.a. If we look at my valuation grid from back then we can see that the value reacts significantly to change in interest rates:

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Coface SA (ISIN FR0010667147) : Ultimate death spiral or contrarian opportunity in an attractive industry ?

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Executive summary:

Coface SA  is a relatively simple contrarian “mean reversion” case:

  • the company at the moment has some specific issues which in my opinion can be solved
  • the industry as such is attractive (within the generally problematic insurance space) with significant barriers to entry and little exposure to interest rates
  • Even in a bad case, the downside at current depressed levels is small. A conservative “mean reversion case” would indicate ~75% upside without assuming any growth
  • no hard “catalyst” and fundamentally it could get worse before it gets better
  • For exposure management reasons, NN Group will be sold and replaced by Coface
  • As always the reminder DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVISE !!!!

The company:

Coface SA is a French “Trade Credit Insurance” company and one of the Big 3 players of this industry which together have 80% market share.

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Australian stocks: Contrarian opportunity or too early ?

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kaenguruh2

Up until now, I only looked at one single Australian stock: Australian Vintage two years ago. I didn’t like it mainly because I thought the interests between Management and shareholders were not aligned. Interestingly the stock jumped in the last weeks after doing nothing for 2 years.

Australian stock market facts

Let’s start with some facts about the Australian stock market. According to Bloomberg, there are 2.059 Australian companies listed on the Australian stock exchange, total market cap is 1.59 tn AUD.

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