Short report out on one of my holdings

globalstockpicking 4 Comments

I just wanted to give a quick heads up that a short report is out on one of my holdings.

https://www.cloudythunder.com/

Quick thoughts are that there seem to be some merit to their claims, I dont think the company is a zero though. Just less profitable (or even loss making) than it appears if they are right. They dont seem to have been so fraudulent as that all sales are fake.

Also the company is listing in mainland China. Its very unusual for Chinese to “China hustle” their own mainland population. One thing is Hong Kong or US ADRs, but you are in deep trouble if you hustle the mainland population. So the report has some parts that are hard to believe.

Portfolio changes: Valneva, Philip Morris, Veoneer, Vinda & Kirkland Lake Gold

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Time for some portfolio changes again.  I have continued to contemplate what I’m comfortable with in my portfolio and have come to some conclusions:

Philip Morris & Kirkland Lake Gold – Swapping my defense

PM International was bought as a highly defensive holding in my portfolio, a way to get a higher return over time than sitting on cash when I was negative on the market. I have slightly re-evaluated how defensive PM is. Partly because of declining tobacco sales (which I did know about), but because Corona obviously shows the need for healthy lungs, which perhaps will speed up this process. The other part is the debt load that PM is sitting on. Instead I decided to move into the ultimate defensive – gold. My thesis is that all this money printing by FED, ECB and other central banks in combination with banks actually at the same time lending more, will over time devalue fiat currencies. Most likely we will see a short deflationary shock initially, but I think this will turn to inflation for a number of reasons. First the mentioned money printing, secondly because supply chains and just in time delivery is going to revised – at a cost, which also adds inflation. On top of that air cargo will probably be more expensive as well, at least for a few year. With interest rate near zero, the “cost” of holding gold becomes very low at the same time as fiat currency is devalued. I’m not putting on a tin foil hats here going all in on gold, but a small allocation to gold feels good in this case. Kirkland Lake Gold is as close to what I can find to a well run gold mining company in an industry full of crooks. They don’t have mines in countries with problems and have a track record of building a good business creating shareholder value even without gold price going up. So, I’m selling my full holding in Philip Morris as of today, basically around the same levels as I bought it. This gives me some 2.4% of my portfolio in cash. I allocate 3.5% of my portfolio to Kirkland Lake Gold as an Opportunistic holding. Opportunistic because this is more of a mid/short term hedge, than necessarily something I planned to hold 5+ years.

Veoneer – Sell

Another opportunistic holding was car safety company Veoneer. It’s been a hell of a ride these past month, but now I’m back to flat. They have written of parts of their business recently, showing me that things I thought had value seems to have almost none. This was speculative, I can’t say I have been right, neither wrong. But the stock was apparently not as undervalued as I thought when I bought it. The revaluation might come later, but the probability of Geely bidding for Veoneer I think has gone down as well. I choose to move on to other holdings as my conviction is not so high anymore, I sell my full Veoneer holding as of close today, which releases 1.6% cash.

Vinda – Reduce

This stock has had a fantastic performance year to date (up +58%). The stock surge is partly warranted, but partly just hype in Asia around the whole toilet paper thing. I decide to take some profit here and reduce my position from some 7.5% of the portfolio to 5%. There is nothing more sophisticated about it than that I think the valuation is somewhat stretched short term, I think it’s still a great long term holding.

Valneva – back in the portfolio!

Finally Valneva, the company I previously owned, made a quick buck on and then sold. Here is my write-up: Valneva Microcap Vaccine Producer. Later when I sold I wrote: “If I had a strong belief they would succeed with the launch of a Lyme disease vaccine, I would be happy to hold this company through the 5 year process they have in front of them. Instead I will sell my full holding as of today’s close.”. Basically what has changed is that they have landed a good agreement with Pfizer to develop the Lyme vaccine. Thanks to that I know feel the company is investable again, unfortunately I have to pay the price of having this information known. I sold at ~3.4 EUR per share and today I will have to pay ~4 EUR per share. But I feel this is reasonable given that the company might have a revenue share in a new block buster vaccine. Again to weave in the Coronavirus into this case (it feels like you should mention Corona in every stock pick you do nowadays), I think the anti-vaxxers will be less loud when the whole world has got use to taking another vaccine here in the next year or so. It will raise the awareness of how important vaccines can be, and Lyme to be honest is also such a case. This is an important point, because the previous Lyme vaccine was discontinued due to loud anti-vaxxers. I take in Valneva at a 3% position of the portfolio.

 

 

Essex Biotechnology (1061 HK) – Core products fund investment portfolio

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+ Silly low valuation at P/E 8 (net cash) given the companies track record of profitable growth.

+ A number of own developed patented products in the market selling at good margins, with large market share in China.

+ Founder led for 20+ years, building this company from scratch.

+/- Using much of it’s cash flow for investments in products from other research teams instead of dividends or share buybacks, which to me is still a negative. On the other hand the products are related to the companies own core business so the investments makes sense.

– The founders are running a real estate company listed in Singapore as well. It does not seem to be doing very well lately (hotels in Japan).

– A fair chunk of revenue is dependent on a distribution contract with Pfizer, which is expiring in 2021. It has been rolled multiple times since 2014, but its still an unknown.

Background

In the early 1990s, most Chinese pharmaceutical companies were focused on manufacturing generics. Essex instead pioneered the use of recombinant DNA technology (a process that involves molecular cloning of DNA from any species) to develop their own unique series of biologics. The company has obtained seven patents for drugs developed using recombinant DNA technology in China. The company enjoys more almost 60 percent market share in its niche areas (eye products). The high market share is largely explained by their very competitive pricing. For example, its Beifuji spray for treating burns and skin ulcers sells for $5 per 15ml bottle. By comparison, a 2.5ml bottle of Regranex, a widely-used spray for treating wounds and ulcers, sells for $74. The company’s products are used in more than 4,500 hospitals across China. Although Essex never explains it as such, my interpretation is that these products are like an advanced form of generics, which enjoys higher margins than simple generic pills.

The company listed all way back in 2001 and for many years grew revenue slowly of a very low base. The company disposed of an agriculture related business in 2009 and has since then developed in it’s current form. I therefore focus on the history of the company since 2010.

Some of the background story is taken from this article: Essex Bio — Bringing Pharmaceutical Innovation to China

Core products

Essex core products Beifushu series of drops and gels to treat eye injuries, dry eyes, refractive and cataract surgery, and the Beifuji series of sprays and powders to treat surface wounds, including burns, ulcers, and cosmetic plastic surgery. They also make Beifuxin, a gel that repairs and regenerates cells damaged by bruises, burns, contusions, cuts, surgery incisions, skin grafts, skin resurfacing, laser therapy wounds, bedsores, fistulas, and cervical erosions. The products are patent protected until 2030 in China. Essex also undertakes exclusive distribution in China of third party products that complement its area of focuses. Major third party products distributed are Pfizer’s eye products Xalatan and Xalacom, Iodized Lecithin Capsules for treating various eye diseases and Yi Xue An Granules for treating bleeding or spotting of uterus after induced abortion. Below is a picture of the products:

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Portfolio re-balancing and selling Diageo

globalstockpicking 16 Comments

The rationale for worries and opportunities in all my holdings are spelled out in my previous post. Today I will just briefly announce my portfolio decisions. One little obstacle in this extremely volatile market is that in the blog execute all trades on close, this might mean quite large deviations from the levels I would have been happy to enter or exit my positions on. Anyhow, that’s how its going to be, the blog NAV is just a proxy of performance.

Some quick thoughts around my investment philosophy in this market:

  • Classical defensive holdings not necessarily defensive in a Covid-19 situation. It’s somewhat of an all bets are off situation here. One would think that Diageo with liquor sales is a super defensive stable business, not so much in this situation. Philip Morris another holding is reporting that they have to close their factory in Spain. It doesn’t matter of how defensive cigarette sales are if you can’t produce cigarettes. This market is truly hard to navigate.
  • Don’t try to be a hero in this market – focus on surviving that will give you plenty of returns long term, permanent capital loss is what will really hurt returns. I will reduce/sell anything I see risk of permanent loss of capital or dilution to shareholders due to leveraged balance sheet.
  • My small cap strategy of investing in less discovered (overlooked) stocks makes sense in a normal market. In an highly distressed market, it might as well be a large cap which is wrongly priced. I will therefore consider all-cap companies going forward. When markets have normalized I plan to go back to my small/micro cap strategy.

Selling:

  • I will fully sell my holding in Diageo, the debt levels the company has is scary in a scenario where sales significantly drops, which is surely in the cards if this continue. It’s unfortunate when a holding you bought for it’s defensive characteristics fall even more than the general market, but here we are. I should have reacted earlier and it’s probably very late to sell, at least I will re-allocate the cash into other cheap companies.

Reducing:

  • Although company proved a turned around, due to debt load and total stop in business I will reduce my holding in Modern Dental Group to a 1.5% position.
  • Reduce position in Olvi to 4%, not due to company doing poorly but just that the business will be hurt, but the stock is not trading as cheaply as many other holdings with better prospects.
  • Reduce position in Tianneng Power to 1.5%, although the company is not doing badly, this was a speculative holding now I want to focus on building positions for the long term in strong companies.

 

All in all this raises about 11.5% of my portfolio in cash

Adding:

  • Greatview Aseptic is in my view a big winner on this, people will be buying packaged food as never before. The company is already super-defensive to begin with, being net cash and very non-cyclical business. I raise this fairly new holding to a high conviction position and take the position size from 6% up to 8%.
  • I choose to double down on my oil positions TGS is increased from 2.6% to a 4% position and Tethys Oil I will increase slightly from 2.3% to 3%. This is a real pain trade to do, since in this sentiment these stocks can probably quickly drop further. At the same time these type of extreme events is when you need to dare to go against the sentiment.
  • Dairy Farm is another company where I spelled out my thinking quite clearly for that this is way oversold and actually quite defensive. I will increase my position from 4.7% up to 7% here.

This takes some 6.4% of my cash, which leaves me with roughly net +5% cash (give or take depending on today’s close prices). These 5% + ~7% in BBI Life Science (if the takeover goes through) is left to be deployed at a later stage.

 

Portfolio update – what a difference 3 weeks make -22% YTD

globalstockpicking 7 Comments

My portfolio has dropped -22% year to date and it’s been a struggle how to position myself in this type of market. This still compares fairly well to MSCI World which is down -30% YTD, both calculated in USD. Talking about USD, the currency moves we have seen lately has been out of this world. I have a few holdings in NOK and SEK, in the last three weeks USD strengthened 25% vs NOK and 8% vs SEK. This means that my portfolio calculated in NOK is actually UP year to date! Such moves are way to big to ignore and must be incorporated in the analysis of the company you are buying, especially if the companies income is in USD. And then we have the oil, here I feel a bit unlucky buying into my first oil investment since I started the blog just before this epic double whammy of Corona scare and Saudi/Russia oil price war. A bit more on that later. Oil is important, but the big one has of course been the spread of the virus and lock downs around the world. First of all, I think it has been a process for all of us investors to come to grips with this. What does this all mean for my holdings and the economy? I had a head-start given I had closely followed this situation in China before most investors barely looked at it. Even with a head-start it has not been easy. Question like should I re-balance my portfolio when one holding drops unreasonably much compared to another, pops up for me on a daily basis. It’s very easy to over trade in this type of market. I will do a new quick review of all my holdings from a corona perspective. Debt levels for example become more important (I have usually been careful with this). First a few more Corona thoughts..

Further virus thoughts

First I want to say, you are probably pretty tired of reading about virus opinions from unknown readers online. Like 99.9% of these opinions I’m not an expert on virology. That said, I spent an almost unreasonable amount of time following this, listening to experts, trying to form an opinion on what is happening, long before most of you did. Not because I’m more clever or anything, it just happens that I live in a region which was close to the epicenter of this. I mentioned this many times before over the years in my blog, normally I would ignore Macro and focus on stock picking. But some events are so large you should not ignore them, this is such an event. I previously posted about how serious I thought this virus was in China. I just assumed that other developed countries closely monitored the situation and would sound the alarm if cases started to spread elsewhere. I was wrong. It’s now clear that the virus must have spread for a long time in Italy before getting noticed. But I wasn’t entirely wrong, in my post Feb 9th I wrote: “I really don’t understand why we are 1% off all time high the S&P500 when we are staring this situation right in the eye.” That doesn’t mean though that my portfolio was hedged for this scenario. I have tried to stay in defensive stocks for quite some time now, but that was defensive in a general sense, not Covid-19 defensive. In the past three weeks the whole developed world has changed and with that stock markets has totally repriced the world economic outlook. Credit/default risk and significant rise in unemployment is a certainty. The question now is not if, but how bad it will get, before it gets better? Vaccines is everyone’s big hope and that would be wonderful, but unrealistic to have before late this year. If we are locked down until a vaccine comes around then, this will be as bad as the depression in the 1920’s in my opinion. My hope stands to a medicine which significantly reduces the symptoms and the deadliness (right now malaria medicine + zinc seems like the best candidate, with HIV medicines a good second). Such a medicine could potentially reduce symptoms and would enable the younger/healthier part of the population to dare to go back to work and a more normal life. I read that most countries are now giving their patients the malaria medicine (based on the results from China and Korea). Given that governments have to find a way to at least partially normalize this situation, I see such medicines as the base case scenario, where governments can within a month or so go out and proclaim that they have a positive effect. A more bullish scenario would be an even more effective medicine, making the disease harmless, which seems unlikely to me. Then there is the depression scenario, one has to at least have a plan to survive that as well. That scenario goes a bit outside of this blog though. It means buying physical gold (which I have done and potentially I will buy more), stock up on goods at home, and hope you are lucky still have a job with cash flow coming in. I will focus less on the depression scenario, such scenario is a bit to bleak and in my view, still unrealistic, at least at this point.

2nd Corona status check on my holdings

I need to redo my Corona virus status check from Feb 9th, since the one I did a month ago was discounting “only” a significant spread in China, not a world pandemic. So here we go again (press read more):

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Buying TGS & Veoneer, Add Dairy Farm and Selling Irisity

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I wrote about a month ago about my take on the Corona virus from a Asia perspective, basically my worst case scenario has come true and then some. The virus is more or less out of control in Europe and large parts of the developed world is staring into two scenarios: Either they do a shut-down like China and suffer the economic consequences of that, or they keep things running as per usual and the spread will just continue. Two horrible options to choose from. And on top of that we have a highly political situation between Saudi, Russia and USA, which knocked oil completely. My timing of buying my first oil holding ever into the portfolio Tethys Oil, could not have been less well timed, but such is investing life. I have managed to time things horribly before and I will do it again.

First my overall portfolio strategy right now, is to stay defensive and I think I have many such holdings (Swedish Match, Philip Morris, Diageo, Greatview Aseptic, etc..), the second thing is more short term tactical. We have seen a multi-year out-performance of Developed Market stocks vs Emerging Markets, just like the growth/value spread I have been wondering, when is it time for EM to shine again? Given the Corona spread in developed markets, I think this will exaggerate a mean reversion of returns (which was bound to happen anyway)  in favor of EM. So I’m happy that my portfolio already has a strong tilt to Emerging Markets and I intend to keep it that way. Thirdly currently I’m mostly worried that this virus will kick-start a (also overdue) cyclical downturn with rising un-employment. So although EM might on relative basis fall less than developed, it might all come down more from here. Finally, a market like this creates opportunities to build positions in things you would not normally consider, so I will use this opportunity to make some portfolio changes.

Selling Irisity

This was a speculative holding with a lot of potential upside, unfortunately the company has not been able to deliver what the promised. I have full respect for that things take longer than planned, but you also need to decide at some point that you waited enough. That time has come and I choose to sell my full holding. Unfortunate and I realize a loss of 50% on this holding, but I knew the risks when I invested.

Buying TGS Nopec and Veoneer and Adding to Dairy Farm

I don’t have very much cash right now in my virtual fund, which is a bit ironic going into this downturn, given that I held larger cash levels for quite a while before. With the Irisity sell I have about 6.2% of my NAV in cash. So these 6.2% needs to be spread into these three holdings:

TGS Nopec – 2.5%

My favorite blog buddy valueandopportunity has for a long term held TGS and he recently added to it in this downturn. It is a oil exploration services company, please check his blog for more info on the company. The stock is down some -60% is a short time. I think this is exaggerated, the company is very well managed, asset light operations and is debt free with some cash in the bank. Previously when oil price hit $30 the company had one single quarter with losses. I’m happy adding TGS as a new long term at these levels. I realize just like my fellow blogger said I might be early here and I’m catching a falling knife, but I don’t really care. If oil doesn’t stay at these levels for years TGS will recover. On the downside oil might stay low for years given an significant economic downturn is in the cards but then most of my other holdings will also be down more from these levels. The risk reward looks very good at these levels in my view.

Veoneer – 1.5%

This is speculative case, again looking like catching a falling knife. This company is the spin-off from Autoliv which produces the next generation safety equipment for cars. More or less everything has been going against the company lately. Car sales declining, then corona, then some delayed contracts and lost contracts to a competitor. Due to all this, its easy to forget that this is a big tech company, with a lot of skillful engineers and a lot of patents. The company recently raised 420 million USD at 17.5 USD per share, its now trading below 9 USD. So the short term capital raising risk is gone, although down the line another one might be needed in a about 2 years time. This company is now deducting cash from market cap trading at Enterprise Value of 500 million USD, for a company with a good pipeline of products, 700 staff, which to a large extent are engineers and having revenue of some 1.9bn USD this is cheap. My belief is that someone like Geely will just come and snatch this up very soon.

Dairy Farm – 2.2%

I thought long and hard about this holding, I know it very well by now. I considered to throw it out for a while as well when I feared that the company would be loss making for the coming years, due to the situation in Hong Kong (protests not Corona). The report for second half of 2019 was released and the company is not in as bad shape. I was quite positively surprised and they are executing fairly well on their turn-around in other markets. After all, this is a very defensive company, running 7-elevens and supermarkets in the Asian region. Longer term it has many things going for it. The general population growth in Asia and a larger middle-class being the main investment case. Right now with the HK situation and Corona shareholders have just decided that this is almost un-investable, which I fully understand, short term. But now the stock is so cheap, I decide to take a long term perspective again, although it might fall more before it recovers. I only hold a 1.8% after selling this down recently (at 5.71 USD per share),  now I get to buy that back at 4.33 USD per share. Going back to some conclusions I made around my investment skills, this is another example where I have to say I traded this stock very well:

November-17 buy @ 8.2
December-17 buy @ 7.91
January-19 sell @ 9.44
October-19 buy @ 5.83
December-19 sell @ 5.71

Fully invested – but..

So I’m as of today’s close fully invested, for the first time in a long while. But I do have something which I see as an alternative to cash at that is BBI Life Science, which is the buy-out event I invested in some months ago. The stock is flat lining here waiting for the offer to go through, I could sell out to a small profit and use that cash for other investments. BBI Life Science is a bit over 6% of my current portfolio.

5 years and blog still going strong!

globalstockpicking 6 Comments

It’s 5 years since I started this blog and what a journey it has been so far! When I set out on a mission, of becoming a better investor through this blog, I realized it would be hard to consistently keep posting. With life having it’s ups and down it has from time to time been a challenge to do so but I’m proud to have been able to keep up the pace. I have at least posted once every month since I started, and on averaged slightly above 2 posts a month. This sometimes cathartic exercise of publicly sharing all my investment decision has really been helpful in honestly reviewing what works and what does not work. Some of you readers have been part of most this journey and some might have scrolled back through my posts. But most of you are likely readers that found my blog in the last 3 years. So let me take the opportunity to introduce how I view my journey and also highlight some older posts that might still be worthwhile for you to read.

Pre-blog days

Everyone have their story of how they started investing and how they became better investors. My early days of investing is very colored by the 2003-2007 bull market. I had fantastic returns, about 200% return in 4 year time period. I really thought I had investing figured out back then, the 2008-2009 period taught me I did not. I like explain my feelings around how skilled of an investor I am with the hype cycle:

For me I was at the clueless stage in the early 2000’s, I got naively confident around 2006-2007 and discouragingly realistic around 2008-2010. I understood around 2011-2012 that the path to “Mastery Achieved” is extremely long. I needed to find a venue to set a long term plan to become a better investor. I considered just writing a personal diary, but realized it would be hard to keep it up. At the same time, I had been doing deep research into Electric Vehicle investments, trying to understand the whole supply-chain. This theme I spent some 6 months to research and that was how it started. I wanted to write down everything I had learned about this emerging sector and share it online. I realized I could use a blog format to share such information and at the same time structure the thoughts in my head around investments. I really wanted to get on the journey towards “mastery” in investing and a blog seemed like a good way to structure it.

First year of the blog

So my first big investment theme was that Electric Vehicles would totally change the car industry, below is the post where I truly kicked off my blog. Back in 2015 people did not talk about EVs like today, most people were still great skeptics that EVs would take over the car industry, I believed after all my research that they would. I think I have been proven right by now (sentiment actually turned already around late 2016). In the same post I formed my early thoughts around what kind of edges you can have in the market. I identified that investing with a longer term horizon was one such way.

Investment Theme: Electric Vehicles

As you know by now, my blog mixes discussions about my current portfolio, sometimes dropping a shorter note on a holding and writing lengthier write-ups of stocks. One of my first lengthier write-ups was of NetEase, which has been a very strong performer in the stock market since:

NetEase – Chinese Gaming

One of my more important posts which shows that I started this blog to go on a journey to become a better investor, was the following post:

Investment styles and lifelong learning

I particularly like this point I made in the post. I will come back to this later:

“but for me personally I want to spend a few more years understanding both stock markets around the world, different sectors, as well as different investing styles. Because if it’s one thing I learnt from meeting all these great managers out there, with great track-records of alpha generation – there is not one style that is superior to others, all different styles of investing can work, if you do it right. And maybe as important, different investing styles will outperform during different times.”

Second year

I started the second year with the best analysis I probably produced on this blog. At least if you evaluate it in terms of stock price returns (I don’t count stocks I just mention, like the DNA discussion I start of the post with – CRISPR there would have been a fantastic buy). The post was followed up with an equally good commenting from many of you readers.

Nagacorp – Casino in Cambodia

I was very early on the sneakers trend in China and invested long before Anta and Li Ning moved up multiple-fold. I did get a good return with XTEP in the end, but it also shows that buying value is not always the best case. A lot of the value sits in a brand and here Li Ning for example was a much stronger candidate. I understood that during my due diligence, but instead went with what looked cheap on fundamentals. As often is the case, cheap is cheap for a reason. I have gotten better at being skeptical against cheap companies, although I still do mistakes.

Chinese shoes – XTEP

Another analysis I spent a lot of time on was YY, which recently changed name to JOYY and which I re-bought into the portfolio. I was way too quick to sell the company as it doubled after I sold (and later came back down again).

YY.com – Full Analysis

Since I started the portfolio I always had a fairly high weight towards companies with exposure in the Chinese market and often listed on the HK exchange. The reason for that has been valuation and the nice growth prospects. At the same time I’m always fully aware of the Macro backdrop, which always scared me. I’m pretty sure at some point we will see a major economical collapse in China (before they really take over the world), maybe it will come now triggered by Corona. Anyway, the first time I got cold feet was in 2017 and I wrote this post.

Rotate away from China & Portfolio changes

Well in the end I have not been able to stay away from China, I still have a lot of China exposure in my portfolio, perhaps I should take a look at that once again?

Tokmanni was a company where I did the analysis correctly, but I did not have the patients to wait for the stock to reprice (which it did in the end):

Buy the dip – Tokmanni

One of the larger write-ups and due diligence processes I ever done on a stock was Teva. That taught me a lot about the industry which was good, but it also taught me that it’s not really worth it. A large Pharma company is just too complex to value and it takes too much of my precious time. Time better spent on smaller companies. I guess my analysis is still somewhat relevant (written in two parts) and the company is still a controversial highly leveraged investment:

The Perfect Storm – Teva – Part 1

Finally in December 2017 I did another large piece on a company I still hold, Dairy Farm. The company really is in a pickle right now with Corona virus, HK protests and in generally mis-managed supermarkets. The valuation also reflects it. This post gives a good overview what the company is about:

Dairy Farm – Asian food giant

Third year and onward

Given that these are more recent I will keep a bit more brief.

I was very proud of how I combined my knowledge of China and an entity listed in Europe when I presented this idea (which turned out be perfectly timed):

Adding Rezidor Hotel Group – HNA related idea

I also want to highlight a stock a still own, which continues to trade on a very low multiple, Dream International:

Dream International – a dream investment?

One of the post I’m most proud of in terms of originality is my Art of Screening post. I took a fairly scientific approach of trying to find out which markets have the lowest retail stock investing participation and through that approach find the stock that are most overlooked. This concept has stayed with me since and is another important puzzle piece to what today is how I go about finding new investments and building my portfolio. I think I will have to follow-up on this post, there never was a Part 2 written..

The Art of Screening – Part 1

Another major stepping stone in my approach to investing came with this post, where I introduced 3 buckets of investing, Long Term, Opportunistic and Speculative:

GlobalStockPicking 2.0 – Major Portfolio Changes

Just as Electric Vehicle was this big theme I researched I in the same way researched the Dental Industry in a three part series. Unfortunately most of the investment cases were in my view priced for perfection, but I learned a lot, which will be helpful to pick up these stocks in the future if the market provides a buying opportunity. The stock I choose to invest in which I still hold is Modern Dental Group:

The Dental Industry – Part 1- Overview

2019 saw my first guest post from a friend of mine. Maybe given the current situation is worth revisiting some Macro thoughts?

Guest post about the US debt cycle

And finally, in my view another one of my very solid write-ups, Polish listed LiveChat, which so far has had a very strong stock performance:

LiveChat Software – company with a strong track record

Readers input please!

I hope you liked what I have written over the years! What were your favorite posts? What would you like to see more of and what should I spend less time on? Please comment!

Investing in challenger to dominant Tetra Pak – Greatview Aseptic (468 HK)

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The history and development of the Liquid Packing Carton market, or aseptic packaging as it is also called, is a very interesting one. Although the industry is a huge global industry, it has over the years been almost totally dominated by one player.

In 1952 the Swedish businessman Ruben Rausing convinced a local dairy company that his peculiar tetrahedral shaped cardboard beverage carton was the way of the future. The rest as you say, is history. Aseptic packaging as it is called became the most popular way globally to sell milk products but also many other beverages, the packaging being superior in both preserving the drinks taste and ease of transportation. Later on the Tetra Brik was invented and the company Rausing created with these innovative products became Tetra Pak (part of Tetra Laval). The company today has 11.2bn EUR of Net sales. The case of Tetra Pak is interesting because the company has over the years had no to little competition in many markets – a dream situation for any company to be in. But how was it possible to be so successful and why did not more competition come in? Firstly it came down to patents, which gave the company a monopoly position in the early years. Secondly the company has and continues to be extremely well run with a clever sales strategy. Tetra Pak sell the filling machines that creates the packaging, to the beverages producers at a low price. Then making the margins on selling the cardboard box paper used by the machines, which of course will be continuously ordered. The contracts for the machines tied the customer to not buy the cardboard paper from anyone else. In this way the customers were tied to Tetra Pak and had to invest in new lines of machines, to switch to a competitor, obviously at high switching costs. In 2002 it was estimated that Tetra Pak still had 85% market share globally, but around this time things slowly started to change, partly due to regulatory intervention but also due to beverages producers who helped create companies like the one I want to present to you now.

For the interest reader here is some more history of Tetra Pak family: Tetra Pak, a Fortune Founded on a Clever Idea & The death of Eva Rausing and the decline of the Tetra Pak dynasty. For the very interested historian the story above is somewhat simplified. There was a american inventor that was even earlier than Rausing in creating a similar packaging in USA. The company, Cell-O was the beginnings of Elopak. Read the full story here: History of Elopak. 

Now moving on to my latest investment

Greatview Aseptic Packaging (468 HK)

 

+ Operating in a market with Tetra Pak as a dominant player. This creates an incentive from beverage producers to diversify supplier base.

+ Favorable shareholding situation. Company led by the founders who have large shareholdings. The largest shareholder is conglomerate Jardine Group.

+ Very compelling valuation at P/E 11 and EV/EBITDA 6, the company is net cash which de-risks it further. Swiss listed SIG is trading at almost twice the multiples for a very similar business.

+ 8.5% dividend yield with a stable track record of paying dividends.

– Price taker in the sense that they compete towards Tetra Pak on providing same product at lower price point.

– High dependency of few customers, mainly Mengniu Dairy has a very big portion of the companies sales.

– Negative trend of China profit margins and seems to struggle to grow further in China.

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The situation in China & Hong Kong

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Although I find it highly interesting with Macro analysis, I deliberately write less about such topics on this blog. I want this blog to be focused on stock picking and the struggles of portfolio management. That said, given how many investment I have with a majority of their revenue exposed to Asia/China/Hong Kong I guess it’s time to write down some thoughts on what is going on in the region. The ground is moving very quickly around the Coronavirus (2019-nCov) and the attention has grown a lot over just the last few weeks. Even so I think people living in China & HK vs rest of world have very different views on the situation. I do not pretend to have the answers of what is going but I want to share my view and what I see and hear from people who I know live on the ground. In the end of the post I will go through why I’m as of Friday sold my full holding in Union Medical Healthcare.

The situation from my perspective

I would like to start of by saying, that I think we are facing an extremely serious virus spread. It’s the sneaky feature of the virus that it can spread before people feel sick, which really makes this so very dangerous. Thanks to very powerful actions taken in China and elsewhere, we might just dodge a major major global health crisis.

When the contagion started a lot of people where quick to comment, and in some cases I also drew conclusions too quickly. If you followed this virus situation closely you might recognize comments such as:

  • It’s only old or with previous health issues that passes away from this.
  • The mortality rate is only around 2%. 
  • A normal seasonal flu in the USA kills 10x as many every year as this flu, you don’t see widespread panic from that.
  • More people die from road accidents in China, since people now stay at home, road accidents should be down, meaning total deaths is down. What’s the big deal?

All these comments have some merit, but let’s look at the one by one.

“It’s only old or with previous health issues that passes away from this.”

It’s easy to understand why such comments came in the first few weeks of the spread. Because naturally weaker individuals would perish more quickly to the virus. A stronger individual would naturally fight the virus longer, even though in the end they might lose the fight. So it is interesting to look at is how many of the identified cases have fully recovered. The count changes hour by hour, but right now there is 37,566 confirmed cases and 2,152 recovered. That is 5.7% has so far recovered, which in itself does not say anything about how many will make it through to the other side. But at least it is clear it takes a person a long time to be rid of the disease. One of the whistleblowers of the virus, Dr Li Wenliang only became 34 years old when he recently passed away due to the virus. According to reports he started coughing on January 10th, but was only a confirmed case on January 30th. It took him almost a full month from starting to cough to actually passing away from the disease. That brings us to the next statement.

“The mortality rate is only around 2%”

I’m not the first one to point this out, but I’m more or less repeating what a lot of people have been saying. You can not take the current 813 dead and divide with the confirmed cases 37,566. Yes this division gives 2.1% but is faulty on so many levels. First of all, like was described in the case of Dr Li Wenliang, who had worked with this from the start. Although he started coughing on Jan 10th, it took another 20 days before he was a confirmed case. The procedure to be tested and confirmed for Corona is not uncomplicated and there is not endless resources to perform this test on request from the public. My best guess is that the test is restricted to really sick people that show most of the symptoms already (fever, short of breath, etc). Again, same with the death figure, this is only confirmed cases that pass away in the hospital. Most likely there will be many that tried to fight through this at home and also passed away at home, never identified as a corona case, but actually was one. So both figures are probably higher. My best guess again is that the actual confirmed case figure is much much higher than the 37,566 figure we see. The death figure is probably also higher, but not by as much. The third and maybe most important factor is that even though every single case of corona infection and death was accounted for you still can’t divide one with the other, due to the timing lag. A person that got sick today, naturally will not pass away on the first day, he will still be a confirmed case though, that might pass away in a few weeks. So how long a lag should we apply? Well again nobody knows, but from the case of Dr Li Wenliang it took him almost a month to pass away, but only a week from that he was a confirmed case. China also classifies how many of the confirmed cases are severe, where one can presume that the death rate will be much higher, that stands at some 14%. Taking all these factors together, you end up with a big range of guesstimates. My own guess is that the mortality rate most likely is above 4% and hopefully not higher than 10%, if I have to say a figure, I would guess 6%. That’s a pretty big span and also a much more scary figure than 2%.

“A normal seasonal flu in the USA kills 10x as many every year as this flu, you don’t see widespread panic from that.”

Yes it might kill more, but there are a lot of factors explaining why there is not a widespread panic from such a disease. First of all, there are vaccines against seasonal flu for the ones that do feel worried. Second, as soon as we step out of bed we are facing risks to our life. As long those risks are very small we seem to be able to brush them off as nothing to worry about. The seasonal flu according to CDC data has a mortality rate of 0.05%. Since a lot of people get the flu, the number of dead will be high during a season. Another podcast I listened to described this in another way. Everyday there are many many roads accidents around the world where people die. Very seldom these accidents even make news headlines. But every-time a plane crashes from the sky and all people on the plane die, it makes news headlines all around the world. This virus has the impact of a plane crash on peoples feelings. The problem is that the virus cases are like planes that keep crashing every day and the news media keeps pumping stories.

“More people die from road accidents in China, since people now stay at home, road accidents should be down, meaning total deaths is down. What’s the big deal?”

The big deals is how people perceive this danger and the actions they take due to this fear. In the end it actually doesn’t matter, from an economical perspective, if the mortality rate is 1% or 10%. It’s the actions the population takes in fear of the disease that matters. Social media plays a big role in this. Panic and fear especially with the help of mobile phones and social media spreads like wildfire. The actions people taken is what I would like to focus on now, because in the end that is what matters.

Situation in China and Hong Kong?

When I started to write on this post a few days ago I felt my fellow investors in the US and Europe had not understood what is going on in China. But just over the past few days I think investors are getting input from company management and decent news reporting on what is actually going on. I felt all worked up, how could equity markets continue up when 1.4 billion people had decided to sit at home, not work and basically tend to basic needs!?

We humans are pretty easy to scare and what influences most of all, is the behavior of the people around us. People can be calm and rational about the likelihood of catching the virus, but change mindset very quickly when put with a new group of people that act more panicked about the virus spread. It’s very quick back to basics in situations like this, Maslow’s pyramid comes to mind. Nobody is any longer thinking about which Hermes bag or new car to buy, when you are fighting at the local supermarket for the last rolls of toilet paper. Maybe it sounds like a joke, but this has been the actual situation in Singapore and Hong Kong over the last few days. People are so scared that they have started to hoard goods like toilet paper, rice, cooking oil. Let’s not even talk about facial masks and hand sanitizing soaps etc. This is a highly sought after good that even if you are rich, you might not be able to source. People in Hong Kong are scarred by the SARS days and takes this extremely seriously, almost everyone is avoiding gatherings by now. People more or less mostly stay at home and most companies apply work from home. On top of that both Hong Kong and Singapore has now effectively shut their borders for Chinese coming into the country. This is obviously very bad for local business, especially for Hong Kong who has suffered tremendously already on back of the protest movement that lasted since last summer. I believe Hong Kong will see a massive wave of lay-offs very soon and with a city with very poor social security, this is going to be extremely tough on a already frustrated population. But, what happens in Hong Kong and Singapore, is still fairly irrelevant for the world economy, what matters is what is that big population in China up to.

China is a big place, so it’s always hard to generalize what is happening. As far as I have been able to gather, the mainland Chinese are either isolated and quarantined in the worst hit areas, or they are voluntarily quarantined in the sense that they barely go out-doors. Partly because they are scared of being infected, but also because they are told by their government to take this seriously and help minimize the spread of the disease. For example you are not allowed to travel on public transportation without a mask in the major cities. So due to Chinese New Year (CNY) holidays, the whole country has been shut since Friday, Jan 24th. A longer CNY break is still fairly common in a normal year, especially for factories. The situation from a work activity perspective is not that extreme compared to a normal year. It would be the services sector (which has grown big in the past years) which has operated at a minimum activity level this past week. The really crucial period will be the next two weeks. China can’t afford to have people just sitting at home another two weeks, it would just have too big economic consequences. At the same time sending everyone back to work, risks severely worsen the virus spread. There is some serious anger in the Chinese society after Dr Li Wenliang passed away, so there are even political stability angle for the Party to consider. A highly sensitive situation indeed. The largest aspect though is the psychological part, reports come in of restaurants being empty or just closed. Home food delivery which is huge now is reporting some 50% drops in deliveries, because people are afraid of contamination just from meeting the food delivery guy. A population which is that scared, will not turn around in a few weeks and buy plane tickets, or go out shopping for a new car. It’s really back to basics in China.

Implications

So my take is that the Chinese population is taking this super seriously, on a government and individual level. Since everyone is taking this so seriously I think we will see long lasting effects on the Chinese economy, with spill over effects on other economies. I see it as wishful thinking that the virus spread would disappear anytime soon, a vaccine takes too long to develop. So we are looking at the virus being around for at least a few months and during that time the Chinese will be very careful spenders. Very few will buy a car, with all the knock on effects to suppliers and sub-suppliers that implies. Very few will invest in real estate, so property prices might turn soft, which is fueling most of the private individuals wealth. Extremely few will travel. I think much of this might stay true even for a few months after the virus seems to really dropped off in new cases. So when 1.4 billion people, more than Europe and USA’s population combined suddenly tightens the belt and stop consuming, could that trigger something else? Perhaps the world has for the past few years, during a epic never before seen bull run for both equities and bonds, built up excesses and made stupid investment decisions during a low interest rate environment? With a Private Equity bubble lurking, and easy leveraged loan money available everywhere? What happens to all this when we get an external shock that significantly slows down the economic wheels? I really don’t understand why we are 1% off all time high the S&P500 when we are staring this situation right in the eye.

The Chinese consumer is today just too big of a part of the economical wheels that are spinning. As Ray Dalio so nicely explains in videos. One persons spending – is another persons income. And when the Chinese are not spending, this is going to hurt the income of a lot of people. In a worst case scenario this could trigger the end of the bull market we have seen.

I want to end on a positive note, about something which I have not seen written about anywhere. I’m convinced China will see a small mini-boom in childbirths in about 9 months time. Remember where you read it first!

My holdings majorly affected by the virus situation:

In order of trickiness to handle

JOYY (a.k.a YY)

The companies cash cow is live streaming in China. With the whole population sitting at home with very little to do, I think this might be one of very few significant winners on this short term. I don’t really get it why the company is not trading up stronger. I have to consider if I should add to this holding.

Vinda

This is the toilet paper producer which everyone is rushing to clean out the shelf’s off. The stock price has probably somewhat stupidly moved upwards due to this. I mean people are just moving consumption in time, the paper they stock piled will mean less consumption in the future. Perhaps this can have some inventory positive effects for Vinda, and the company for sure will have another monster quarter in Q1. But long-term it doesn’t change the case much, it’s also not that overvalued right now that I would take the opportunity to sell. I rather think that long term there is still upside at these levels.

Dream International

Again this toy producer is a winner when China is in trouble, with most of its factories in Vietnam they will be able to run at full steam, whereas the competitors mostly have their factories in China. The company does also have a few production lines left in China, so the company is not totally unaffected. The stock price is stuck in value trap land though, eagerly awaiting my semi-annual report and let’s see what that says!

NagaCorp

Some 50% of customers and even more of the profit for the Nagaworld casino comes from Mainland Chinese, which is still less than Macau, where that figure is over 90%. Even non Chinese customers will probably be much more hesitant to travel to Cambodia during these times. I expect Nagacorp to take a significant short term hit from this just like any business dependent on Chinese and in this case even travel. But the stock has also taken a significant beating lately. One has to weigh the short term loss of income against the strong prospects the casino has over the long term. I have taken the bet that gamblers will be back at the Casino in full swing by summer and that the stock price already discounted a bad period up until then. I might very well be wrong and the market continues to hammer Nagacorp down, my strategy will still be then to weather through it.

Tianneng Power

This was a speculative holding, which performed fantastically until the virus fears shot down the stock. Obviously this is terrible for a producer of batteries in China. They might have trouble with their factories and there will for sure be less sales/replacements of electric scooter batteries when people are not even driving their scooters. Not really sure how to do here, I think I need a bit more time if I should close this speculative position. The case is much less clear than it was a month ago, that is for sure.

Union Medical Healthcare

I thought a lot about this holding lately. A lot of their business is built on Mainland Chinese coming to Hong Kong for different type of treatments, for health, minimal invasive procedures, etc. Lately they expanded more towards actual doctor clinics. Since the protest got violent in October, there are barely no mainlanders coming to HK and by now, with the border shut, there will be zero, for quite some time probably. On top of that due the shortage of facial mask, private clinics are even struggling to stay open. Locals population is neither for sure focusing on these type of activities now. So just like Nagacorp, UMH will most likely see a deep dive of it’s revenue and profits. I still like the founder, but this is just too much headwind for too long of a time. I have to be a bit tactical here and even if I like the company, I most likely will be able to get in cheaper in the future. I’m actually baffled that the stock is holding up so well. I have to be humble that I have misunderstood the situation and maybe the business is less dependent on mainlanders than I have understood. But I decide to sell my full holding as of Friday’s close.

Dairy Farm

This is another one of these which has got everything going against them, since the protest started. First it was the mainlanders that stopped coming during protests, which hurts the Mannings business. Then it was the protesters who got angry with the Maxim’s family, so nobody is eating at their restaurants. Then the 7-Elevens of course in general gets hit by less tourists and people moving about in the city. Now the virus. Well the only thing that finally must be flying is the supermarket business in Hong Kong. I can’t imagine a better market than these past months. People in general stay at home much more since the protests and obviously buys their goods from the supermarkets instead of going out eating. Problem is that I think the losses will be so severe in the other areas, so a great quarter or half year for the supermarket business won’t hold up the rest. In the long run this matters less, what matters is, will Hong Kong go back to normal long term and will the (not so) new CEO turn around the rest of South East Asia? This is not a high conviction position for me anymore and I need a bit more time to decide if it should perhaps leave the portfolio entirely. l have already reduced it to a very small position and the stock price is already hammered.

Changing my mind can be embarassing (Sell: Valneva, Reduce Swedish Match, Add Nagacorp)

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Selling Valneva as of today’s close

Other bloggers and people public about their investment decisions have spoken about that it’s harder to exiting something that you recently bought. This due to some type of shame factor of changing ones mind so quickly on sometime, one recently thought was a good enough investment idea to add to the portfolio. I have to confess to having similar feelings when writing about this decision to sell Valneva. But I try to ignore those thoughts and do what feels right, given the information I have at hand now. Finalizing my full write-up on Valneva in the post below cleared out things in a way, which I hadn’t been able to see before when I had just sat and read a lot about the company and some competitors. Also this time I got some valuable feedback from you readers (and even some more help from one particular reader on twitter). All in all this made my understand that I don’t have such high faith in the development pipeline for Valneva. I think the company is valued reasonably cheap given the cash they generate from their two vaccines in the market, but I think there is high risk of the research pipeline being value destructive and not constructive. This narrows the margin of safety significantly. Right now the company has announced the listing on NASDAQ, which I mentioned in my previous post, the stock is up another +7% today after rallying sharply this whole year.

So the reason to sell is my belief about the research pipeline. Not that I have been lucky and gotten a quick revaluation of the company (I think partly on back of the Corona virus scare). If I had a strong belief they would succeed with the launch of a Lyme disease vaccine, I would be happy to hold this company through the 5 year process they have in front of them. Instead I will sell my full holding as of today’s close. I bought into my position on the last day of 2019 @ 2.57 EUR per share, it is now trading at 3.375, a gain of 31%, a fantastic result in such a short time!

I almost want to apologizes for putting this out as my latest investment idea and then turning around and selling a few weeks later. But on the other hand, it has been a great stock pick performance wise.

Swedish Match – trimming to 8%

I haven’t updated my holdings page in a few weeks, but this holding after a continued rally is now 10.1% of my portfolio. The market seem to really have bought into the story that I believed in for a long time now, that ZYN will become a big product in USA. There are still some worries on the horizon with flavored cigars being banned in the USA. This is still a substantial part of Swedish Match revenue and profit. I have still strong conviction in this company long term, but I’m happy to trim my holding somewhat at these levels, I sell down my holding to a 8% position as of today’s close.

Nagacorp – increasing to 10%

My current holding size is 7.7% and given the recent sell-off I think this my current high conviction bet. I visited the Casino recently and I was very impressed with the operations the built up. I was equally impressed with how the country is transforming, much thanks to Chinese investments in the country. That Chinese can get VISA on arrival when they visit Cambodia is key to the continued growth on back of Chinese tourism. So the main reason for adding to this holding is the fantastic long term prospects. One of very few worries, where we probably will get an answer this year, is the gambling tax, which still has not been decided. If the tax comes in much higher than anticipated, we will see more downside in the stock. But I rather believe there will be a relief rally (i.e. tax will come in very favorably).

Obviously Nagacorp will be hurt by a significant slump of tourist due to the current Corona virus outbreak. But I believe that is short-lived and by summer tourism will normalize. I also believe Nagacorp will be less hurt by this than Macau, given that 50% of customers comes from rest of South East Asia, who will travel more than Chinese do currently. Another factor is that Macau is going to close all its casinos for 2 weeks now, it will probably not mean a flood of tourism to Nagaworld, but at least if some people still want to travel and gamble, there are not that many options during these two weeks. All in all, Nagaworld will in my view be less hurt than Macau, but has traded down much more than Macau stocks. Looking a bit further than the next quarter, this is a great opportunity to add to the holding (as of today’s close).