The Celtic Phoenix…Five Consecutive Years of Market Gains & 6.6% GDP Growth!?

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Celtic Phoenix, intrinsic value, Ireland, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, stock valuation, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project

A picture’s worth a thousand words – here’s a 5 year chart of the ISEQ:

Truly, a thing of beauty…

And over the life of the blog, the Irish market has delivered four consecutive years of gains:

2012:   +17.1%

2013:   +33.6%

2014:   +15.1%

2015:   +30.0%

Cumulative Gain:   +134%

[And yes, the title of the post’s correct…the ISEQ also managed to eke out a small gain in 2011: +0.6%.]

And here’s the cumulative gains (over the same period) of the other major indices I use as portfolio benchmarks:

S&P 500:   +63%

FTSE 100:   +12%

Bloomberg European 500:   +46%

Wow, even the S&P’s performance looks positively pedestrian…

The Four Mystery Horsemen, Revealed…

Tags

Aryzta, blind stock challenge, Glanbia, Greencore Group, intrinsic value, investor bias, Kerry Group, mystery stock challenge, stock picking, stock selection, stock valuation

Continued from here. A week ago, I set readers a mystery/blind stock challenge – to estimate an intrinsic/fair value for four mystery companies: Conquest, War, Famine & Death. Here’s the data table I provided:

First, let me thank all the readers who participated (by blog comment & email): Congrats, you took the time to stick your neck out & provided me with what I consider a meaningful set of fair value estimates. Second, without further ado, here’s a table of the 4 companies & their actual underlying data:

[NB: For the challenge, remember I normalised to 1 billion of revenue – i.e. applied factors of 20.8%, 39.4%, 78.5% & 17.4%, respectively, to each company’s revenue & additional data points (except CAGRs).]

The Four Mystery Horsemen…

Tags

blind stock challenge, financial analysis, intrinsic value, investor bias, mystery stock challenge, stock picking, stock selection, stock valuation

Last week, I published the third post in my Stock Picking series (see Parts I, II & III), and it got me thinking – I haven’t seen a good mystery/blind stock challenge in a long time! There’s obviously tonnes of great investing advice out there to harvest, but the lessons we really take to heart are those we learn via trial & error, and hard won experience…

As I’ve been banging on about, stock picking is really composed of two very distinct processes: Stock Valuation & Stock Selection. But investors often tend to confuse & conflate the two… Just like meeting a person for the first time, stock selection often boils down ultimately to a first impression – a gut feeling Company X is dodgy/above-board, enjoys positive/negative investor sentiment, is well/poorly run, always/never delivers, is high/low growth, is financially weak/bullet-proof, has huge/no business or upside potential, etc. Basically, we’re making a snap decision whether it’s a good or bad company…

Such first impressions often exert a substantial & pernicious influence on our stock valuation process. We cherry-pick data, we discern & extract more favourable or unfavourable trends, valuation multiples contract or expand, inconsistent ratios are conveniently ignored, etc. etc. Given similar financial/operating histories, quite often we (wittingly, or unwittingly) end up arriving at radically different valuations for different stocks/companies.

Of course, their respective prospects may entirely justify wildly different valuations. Sure, but for the majority of companies, they generally don’t experience hockey stick growth out of the blue, nor do they suddenly fall off a cliff… [Novice investors are particularly susceptible to the ‘hockey stick’ assumption, blithely ignoring the fact they/other investors have sometimes been waiting years already for the same exceptional growth surge!] In reality a company’s future tends to reflect its past, good or bad, far more often than investors might credit – its management & culture, for example, can be a powerful institutional imperative ensuring this is true.

Multiply this potential for valuation bias across all investors, and inevitably you tend to end up with a pretty inefficient/irrational market…at least in terms of individual stocks & sectors. [Ooh, the heresy!] But a mystery stock challenge can wonderfully illustrate how under/over-valued individual stocks can actually become in the market. Plus it’s a highly effective way to separate the (quantitative) stock valuation process from the (more qualitative) stock selection process – and when the companies stand  revealed, investors can examine (individually & in aggregate) their stock valuation process & potential biases in a far more detached and objective fashion. Ideally, it also provides some up-close insight into the perspectives & valuation techniques of a broad selection of investors.

TGISVP – Hot or Not Snapshot

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intrinsic value, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project

Thanks readers, the comments (here & elsewhere) and emails are piling up – keep ’em coming. Certainly seems like people would like to see another year of The Great Irish Share Valuation Project! It’s tempting – the Irish market’s definitely been good to me in the past two years (despite my regular warnings about home bias). Um, except for those poor little junior resource stocks, of course! Fortunately, I’ve studiously ignored them as potential portfolio picks – well, except for my dog food stock, Petroneft Resources (PTR:LN). Jesus, after the walloping most of these stocks have received over the past couple of years (despite QE!), could they now be…ulp, cheap?!

Now now, let’s not get too excited there! That wasn’t a teaser question – I don’t actually know the bloody answer, at this point. Well, maybe I do…sad to say with some of those companies, but the notion they’ll ever prove a good investment is about as likely as US Oil & Gas (USOP:G4) ever producing a commercial drop of Perrier oil. But maybe there’s now a diamond or two to be found in the rough – imagine I find ’em & write ’em up, jeez think of all the new readers I’d attract. Golly, I’d be the bloody one-eyed king in the land of the muppets! Aaah, but then I’d probably have to give up the sarcasm…I mean, if muppets can’t smell bullshit, they surely won’t detect wit.

And if I do go ahead with TGISVP, it will definitely be a project for February onwards – I expect to be kept busy for the next couple of weeks (hopefully leading to an interesting post, or two). On the other hand, with two years of posts under my belt now, I’d hope to progress a little faster analyzing the current universe of Irish stocks. Actually, I note my analyses were more quantitative last year (vs. 2012) – I suspect that trend would become even more pronounced with a TGISVP 2014. Which makes sense:  I certainly don’t consider myself a quantitative value investor, but if the numbers don’t stack up there’s little chance of me going gaga over a company – no matter how good its business model, or its upside potential.

Anyway, it was never my intention to produce a buy/sell guide to Irish stocks. In the end, I’m happy if readers: i) are motivated to research a few interesting stocks for themselves (or to bail out of a total no-hoper stock, or two), and ii) learn something useful from the variety of valuation perspectives & techniques I employ.

Total Produce – A Fresh Perspective

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activist investors, Balmoral International Land Holdings, Carl McCann, empire-building, Fyffes, Greencore Group, intrinsic value, Irish shares, Irish value investing, private equity funds, share buyback, TOT, Total Produce, Warren Buffett

…

Total Produce (TOT:ID, TOT:LN) was one of my very first blog write-ups, back in Nov-2011 at EUR 0.39. [And I’ve written about it a number of times since]. Less than two years later, we’ve enjoyed a nice double on the stock – which is now trading within spitting distance of my original EUR 0.882 fair value target. This warrants a fresh perspective… But looking back, now I remember – even then, I offered up a very specific perspective:

So we’re talking a business that really runs itself, just what I like! Particularly as I don’t have great respect for management (except if you compare them say to Greencore Group (GNC:ID) management – whose shareholders may finally be put out of their misery with a potential bid, rumoured to be coming from Dubilier Clayton & Rice). Carl McCann is Chairman, while his brother David’s in the Chairman seat over at TOT’s ‘sister’ company Fyffes (FFY:ID), and neither is really a patch on their father Neil McCann (I was sad to hear he passed away recently) who joined Fyffes in 1948. I think of the crazy worldoffruit.com online effort in the v late 90s (which ‘…received a very positive reaction from within the produce industry and looks set to dramatically change the way in which fresh fruit and vegetables are traded across the globe…’), the lack of earnings growth in the past few years, the ludicrous de-merger of Fyffes, Total Produce & Blackrock (now Balmoral Int’l Land Holdings, whose shares subsequently collapsed & are now delisted), etc.

I also look at the excessive B/S Cash of EUR 89.6 mio, and I’m bemused (and slightly alarmed) to remember a colleague telling me many years ago his impression that having large amounts of Cash on hand appeared to give management the warm and fuzzies, and they appeared to enjoy playing the banks off against each other for deposits (and perhaps even some jolly currency switching). All very well, I confess I’ve been through all that myself professionally, but always felt frustrated at having giant hoards of Cash on hand to invest – in an ideal world, I knew the best thing for shareholders and Return on Equity was to have zero Cash and just come in each day and draw down/pay down on a Debt/CP facility. With TOT, of course, the obvious answer to this Cash is frequent execution of small/medium sized acquisitions across Europe (similar to what DCC (DCC:LN) has done for years in its Energy business) – considering the nature/scope of potential business acquisitions, I think there’s a marvelous opportunity here to hoover up cos and double their operating margins v quickly through cost elimination and economies of scale.

Then of course there’s the silent but deadly fart in the room…finally figuring out it’s time to swallow their pride and reverse the Total Produce/Fyffes break-up – a nil-premium merger is the obvious way to achieve this and I imagine could easily yield 2-3 years of decent EPS growth even if the underlying business remained unchanged. But kudos to management for the 22 mio share buyback last year…! I was impressed, can you please repeat?

Argo Group – 2013 Interim Results

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% of AUM, Andreas Rialas, AREO, ARGO, Argo Group, Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund, Globalworth Real Estate Investments, intrinsic value, Kyriakos Rialas, Price/Cash, The Argo Fund, TPPI

You may want to first read my preview of Argo Group’s (ARGO:LN) interim results here.

My estimate for end-Jun Assets under Management (AUM) was $333.8 mio. Actual AUM was reported at $308.0 m – down (5.6)% from end-Dec, but up 1.9% y-o-y. The H1 return estimates I noted for The Argo Fund (TAF), the Argo Distressed Credit Fund (ADCF) & the Argo Local Markets Fund (ALMF) were all spot-on. [And my Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund (AREO:LN) estimate was derived directly from their published results]. What tripped me up was the Argo Special Situations Fund (SSF) – its (20.6)% H1 NAV decline was rather unexpected… That’s a loss of nearly $23 m, which accounts for the vast majority of my AUM over-statement (net redemptions presumably explain the rest).

Even with more info to hand, I’m not sure I would have anticipated this kind of result anyway. Here’s management’s explanation: ‘The main contributors to this position were the decline in share price of AREOF; a write down in the value of an investment in the Greek telecommunications company, On Telecoms; a higher valuation ascribed to the investment in TPPI.’ Now, let’s consider each of those components:

– The PT Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Industries (TPPI) gain is no great surprise – TPPI was also the main performance contributor for TAF & ADCF this year.

– While AREO’s price decline (from EUR 0.0522 to EUR 0.02) may seem fairly irrelevant at this point, the company’s share count is high & Argo (Group & funds) own a 73.9% stake. [NB: Argo Group itself only owns a 1.8% AREO stake]. That still translates into a meaningful write-down. If I assume SSF’s the only Argo fund invested in AREO – and I’m not at all sure that’s a correct assumption – by my calculation, its loss could total up to $18.8 m.

– As regards On Telecoms, the Greek telecommunications company, it was my understanding that SSF’s predecessor funds (ACPF & AHL) had already recorded a complete write-down on their investment in the company.

Considering the points above, I’m puzzled how SSF lost almost $23 m..?

Argo Group Interims – A Preview

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% of AUM, Andreas Rialas, ARGO, Argo Group, Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund, AUM, Cyprus bail-out, intrinsic value, Investor Relations, shareholder activism, shareholder value, The Argo Fund

I expect Argo Group (ARGO:LN) will be releasing interim results in the next week or so. I’ve no desire to be a hostage to fortune, but I think we can make some intelligent assumptions about their results – and there’s an important issue I want to highlight:

Let’s begin with Assets Under Management (AUM). First, I obviously have no idea re subscriptions/redemptions! But rightly or wrongly, my impression is that changes in Argo’s AUM have been driven primarily by performance, at least in the past couple of years. [NB: See here – at our meeting earlier this year, Andreas Rialas committed to better disclosure re changes in AUM – breaking out gross subscriptions, performance & gross redemptions is standard practice for the majority of Argo’s listed peers].

I also have no insight into the performance of the Argo Special Situations Fund (SSF) – let’s assume AUM remains unchanged. We then have the Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund (AREO:LN) – which last reported an adjusted NAV of EUR 68.5 mio. For Argo’s other funds, I’ve come across conflicting reports of YTD returns – I prefer to be conservative, so I’m fairly confident we’ll see the following returns (as of end-June 2013), at a minimum:

Fear & Greed (II)

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charting, diversification, Expected Value, falling knives, fear and greed, intrinsic value, investment checklists, momentum, portfolio allocation, position limits, stop losses, sunk costs, technical analysis, trading, value investing, value-trap

Continued from here.

I labelled as tricks some of the techniques I’m writing about here – which might have put off some readers. But surely you’ll try anything that might help combat the impact of fear & greed in your investing? Reconsidering, I’d now argue the five techniques I’ve already documented are actually essential tool-kit for any serious investor. Have another look, and I hope you’ll agree – to put it another way, it would be hard to argue your investing would actually improve if you omitted any of the following:

Learn To Love The Black Box:  Document all your investments, and analyze & learn from your mistakes.

Checklist It:  Develop checklist(s) for every stage of your investment process.

Valuation Orgy:  Value your investments using as many different valuation techniques & metrics as possible.

Watch What They Do, Not What They Say:  Focus on facts, figures & performance, not just the ‘story’.

Well, Are You The Right Size?:  Set pre-defined position limits within your portfolio.

However, a majority of my remaining techniques do perhaps deserve to be called tricks. Which means they may, or may not, suit your investing style & personality. Trouble is, how will you ever know if they’d work for you, unless you give ’em a whirl..?! Or figure out how they’re best adapted to your particular circumstances? Right, let’s soldier on:

vi) Learn Some Bloody Voodoo

The Activist Investor

Tags

activist investors, catalyst, Charlie Munger, growth investing, Howard Marks, intrinsic value, latticework of mental models, mosaic theory, recapitalization, second-level thinking, shareholder activism, value investing, Warren Buffett

I’m obviously not averse to some growth – well, if I can buy it bloody cheap, or free – but I don’t think anybody would dream of calling me a growth investor!? But you may be surprised to hear I don’t consider myself a classic value investor either. Ideally (at least in relation to some investments), I like to think of myself as an activist investor.

In this instance, let me hasten to re-define activist in the v broadest sense: Activist investing isn’t necessarily about public engagement with a company’s management – far from it, in many cases. I believe the essence of activist investing actually lies in the investment analysis & the investment itself – not the investor (as many would presume). An activist looks at a company and, on that rare occasion, sees a v different enterprise vs. the company (most) other investors currently see…

– Perhaps he sees a company that’s genuinely worth more dead than alive. Or one that would be far more valuable in the arms of a larger rival. Or a company that has a jewel in the crown that’s obscured by other/inferior divisions, central costs, etc.

– Maybe it’s a company that has under-utilized assets that can be sold to reduce/eliminate excessive debt. Or a company that could execute a recapitalization, and transform its financial metrics & shareholder value.

– Perhaps it’s simply misunderstood – investors may simply not grasp a company’s management/business/strategy have changed in a major way, or they under/over-estimate the potential impact (for example) of some litigation or regulatory action.

Cyprus & Argo Group

Tags

Andreas Rialas, Argo Group, Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund, Cyprus bail-out, EU economy, European sovereign debt crisis, Eurozone, fiat money, Greenspan/Bernanke put, intrinsic value, Kyriakos Rialas, Lehman Brothers, Price/Cash, The Argo Fund

Obviously, I’ll be returning to Argo Group (ARGO:LN) in greater detail another day, but news of a Cyprus bailout deal has prompted scads of emails & questions to me about Argo. A post is certainly justified…

OK, Cyprus – what a God-awful mess… At this point, years into the European debt crisis, it’s hard to believe EU politicians can attain new heights of stupidity. Whenever politicians: i) do something on the cheap, ii) kick the can down the road, or iii) (perhaps the worst) enforce some obscure point of principle, haven’t we learned it comes back to bite you far more savagely & expensively?

I have to concede the US is pulling ahead of Europe – they’re much quicker to recognize failure & to learn from mistakes. The collapse of Lehman can be ascribed pretty much to one man (Paulson) & his pig-headed intention to prove a point. Oh boy, and what an expensive point it was… Of course, everybody ignored it, lessons were learned & the Greenspan/Bernanke put was accordingly (and infinitely?!) strengthened.