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General Discussion / Re: Things People Say...
« Last post by galumay on April 22, 2023, 11:35:43 AM »
"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
~Robert Heinlein
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General Discussion / Re: Things People Say...
« Last post by galumay on April 01, 2023, 11:48:11 AM »
"Sometimes the best investments are the ones you dont make."

Possibly the only intelligent comment ever made by Donald Trump. Although likely stolen from someone else.
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Shares / TPC
« Last post by galumay on March 30, 2023, 10:11:39 AM »
Started having a look at this business, micro cap, very tightly held, top 20 hold nearly 85%, very illiquid. At a glance looks interesting, its a supplier of  retail electricity and gas services to residential and business customers in Australia. Financials are a bit messy to work out, quite a bit of hedging of energy & currency, impacts the balance sheet and P&L in a distorting way. It does seem to be quite a lumpy business, FCF has been all over the place which makes it hard to value. ROIIC is quite good at around 15% and EV/Sales makes it look undervalued, but operating cushion is low, at 5% so its only turning $1 of sales into 5c of FCF.

Its a bit too lumpy and complicated for my liking, maybe one to watch as it may be able to flatten its performance in time. Very hard to build a position too, so would need strong conviction to buy in.

$2.50 on 30/3/23
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General Discussion / Re: Decision Journal
« Last post by galumay on March 24, 2023, 08:56:26 AM »
I am considering selling a small parcel of our largest holding, $AAPL, it is no doubt trading at a premium to value by my calculation, at ATHs at the same time as the AUD is historically weak, so that maximises the return. The reasoning is that we will have about $20k AUD tax losses we can offset against the capital gains from selling AAPL, and it would boost our advance cash levels for retirement funding. My thinking has changed a little as we close in on both being retired, I was always happy to be basically fully invested, but I think a cash buffer makes more sense once we need an income stream from the SMSF. I suspect the increased liklihood of a recession with a hard landing also informs my emotional reaction, as much as I eschew ignoring macro, it does make sense to have a cash buffer to reduce stress and increase resiliance.

Sold 9o AAPL at $159.10 24/03/23
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Shares / EGG
« Last post by galumay on March 15, 2023, 09:17:59 AM »
Started looking at Enero after finding it in a screen on Uncle Stocks, healthy metrics, first impression - Looking at a little business that is vaguely interesting, $EGG. Metrics are good, but 20 year CEO departing, leaving a very new BoD, (<5yrs) is a concern. Found it turning rocks, so nothing to go on other than my research & analysis. (how i like it!)

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It looks very cheap on most metrics I look at, my valuation range is around $3.50 even when heavily reducing the FCF reported, (53c less adjustments for distortions of IFRS 16 & then reduced further to smooth for last few years.) The current price implies either high single digit negative growth and/or large drop in FCF, or very high IRR/MoS.

FCF took a hit in the H1 2023 result, mainly due to working capital changes & increased tax. Need to see what that looks like for the full year.

Reinvestment rate and ROIIC both very good, margins probably weakest metrics and that leads to a lowish operating cushion, generating only 14c of OCF for every $1 revenue.

EV/Sales is 0.37 which is quite cheap.

Yield is about 6%.

What does Enero do? It is a marketing, advertising and PR conglomerate servicing sectors they claim expertise and knowledge in, technology, healthcare and consumer. They divide the company in two segments, Brand Transformation (PR) and Creative Technology and Data.(ads, marketing). They have a strong focus on what they call the digital transformation - the move from traditional advertising to online basically. The business is geographically diversified operating in 11 countries and 15 cities, with over 750 employees.

This is some of the keywords they use to describe their purpose,

* Analyst relations
* Digital marketing
* Branding
* Content strategy
* Research & analytics
* Consulting
* Platforms
* Communications
* Communities
* Creative advertising and brand strategy
* Integrated campaign development
* Proprietary Photography Studio
* Short and long form content development and production
* Design
* CRM
* Public Relations
* Public Affairs and Government relations to influence perceptions and manage reputations



This is a summary from the 2022 Annual report,

Strategy and operations of the Group
The boutique force in modern marketing, Enero Group is an international network of marketing and communications businesses located in 11 countries, with over 750 employees (at the date of this report). Enero is a group of specialists who accelerate high-growth businesses by transforming brands and deploying creative data and technology to enrich customer experiences. During the current year, the Group includes BMF, CPR, Hotwire, Orchard and OBMedia. The Group�s service offering includes integrated marketing and communication services including strategy, advertising, public relations, communications planning, design, events management, direct marketing and programmatic media.
The Group has three key geographic locations: Australia, UK and USA � which house the majority of the Group�s businesses and employees. The Group also has a number of non-owned affiliates in other geographic areas which connect the Group into a global network. Being a nimble team with a global perspective, the Group is well positioned to take advantage of the new developments taking place in this highly dynamic sector.


I like the business, my reservations are probably around the relatively new BoD & my struggle to really understand and articulate what they do! The fact is I dont have enough conviction to either sell down or sell off an existing position in order to take a position in EGG so at this stage I will probably give it a miss.

$1.87 16/3/23

Finally got in contact with IR, only to discover they outsource it to their share registry! An instant red flag for me, they waffle endlessly about shareholder engagement and value creation - then cant be bothered communicating with them! The Share registry employee clearly had no idea what they were talking about, just referenced web presentations rather than answering questions. Very disappointing.
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Shares / Thorts
« Last post by galumay on March 04, 2023, 11:50:04 AM »
I percieve risk as all the things that can happen that lead to a bad outcome, there are infinite things that can happen and there is no way of imagining all the things tha might happen. (risk & opportunity are the mirror of each other.)

Everytime we have a capital loss our tendency is to try to analysis what we did wrong and seek to avoid it in the future. Thats all well and good but I suspect a lot of the time something happened that we didnt expect, had no precedent for and its just what happened, no more no less.

I was thinking about this in the light of our holdings in PPH, a business that recieved a takeover offer thru a Scheme of Arrangement, the BoD and Management resolved the offer was more than fair, they all supported it, and by extension, no longer wanted to run the business. - not exactly the sort of people you want running your continuing business. So on the basis of that information I voted in support of the SoA.

To my amazement a significant amount of shareholders voted against the SoA - enough for it to fail! So the extraordinary situation is the Shareholders have destroyed capital in a meaningful and deliberate manner, BoD & Management are forced to continue running a business they no longer wanted to and shareholders like me have been victims of risk - one of all of the bad things that can happen!

The point is that in my thesis for investment in this business, and every other business I have invested in, I never perceived of a risk of Shareholders being the ones capable of, and willing to destroy capital.

In investing I suspect there is almost never an edge in writing long winded theses, pretending that you have assessed the downside, we certainly know there is no edge in intelligence. Almost no one beats the market in the long term, yet there are millions of us convinced that we are part of the 5% that end up successful active investors! Its like the old joke that 90% of men think they are better than average drivers!

I suspect that luck, both good and bad is nearly everything, from there temperament is probably the single greatest potential advantage you can have as an investor, along with rationality and the delayed gratification gene.

Humilty is important too, given our starting point is the over riding arrogance and over confidence of believing we can consistently beat the market over the long term,

Rationality is huge, again if asked most people will say they believe they are rational, yet the evidence is all around us that this is not true. Nearly half the humans are religious, believing in a culture specific sky fairy is not rational, billions believe in astrology, homeopathy, chirapractics and many bizarre conspiracy theories. Humans by and by are anything but rational, so if you truly are I think its a great advantage in levering luck/risk/all the infinite things that can happen.

The extension of these thoughts is that we should not be studying what the great investors do, but rather how they do it in terms of temperament. Quite diverse processes can work, compare Buffett to Lynch as an example, but what they have in common is humility, rationality, integrity and

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Shares / Re: DDR
« Last post by galumay on February 28, 2023, 06:50:37 PM »
DDR suffering pretty severe margin compression so needing to grow revenue hard just to stand still on earnings. Will need to watch carefully especially with the amount of debt it carries.

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Shares / Re: CXZ
« Last post by galumay on February 28, 2023, 06:48:10 PM »
H1 2023 a big step forward for CXZ, good result considering and resigning the GM contract significant. Went up 90% on the day of releasing their update about the contract!

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Shares / Re: KOV
« Last post by galumay on February 28, 2023, 06:42:24 PM »
Pretty sad H1 2023, margin compression has really hurt and guidance implies H2 will be similar. Might be a quiet couple of years for KOV, but the growth has been strong and I am happy to hold at this stage.

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Shares / Re: SDI
« Last post by galumay on February 28, 2023, 06:38:46 PM »
A steady half year for SDI, not much change from PRP, should see some improvement in H2 I suspect They now have a little bit of debt, so will need to watch that closely. No meaningful guidance for 2nd half


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