Previously, I wrote about “Which Valuation Matters?” and a key input in most valuations is what the company has earned. With the increasing abstraction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and many management teams publishing their own “versions” of earnings (so-called “adjusted”, “normalized”, “core” or “underlying”, et al earnings), the next logical question is: what…
Tag: stock
Domestic Distribution Gem
What feels like a billion years ago in 2021, I shone a light on the fantastic job domestic industrial and consumer distribution group, Hudaco (HDC), was doing: Hudaco group is flying. While global supply chains have eased (though Durban port & South African infrastructure has worsened) and COVID has receded (only to be replaced by…
Omnia: The Right Chemicals
Following a decade of intensive investment with meager returns and a bloated, debt-laden balance sheet, I was one of the skeptics in 2019 who saw Omnia’s R2bn rights issue as confirmation that they had lost their way as a diversified chemicals group. Normally, issuing equity to pay off debt is a very expensive way of…
Hospitals: Overlooked Reopening Trade
Some sales lost during lockdown are lost forever. The money that was not spent on restaurants, hotels, holidays and haircuts during lockdowns will not result in more being spent on these items after lockdowns. On the other hand, those that needed knee replacements, back surgery or other so-called “elective” medical procedures and delayed those due…
Pick of the Education Stocks
Over the last month and a half, the three JSE-listed education stocks have reported their 2021 results (all have December year-ends, so the results are comparable). On the 23rd of February, private schooling group, Curro (COH), reported revenue growth of +15% from +9% learner growth (& fee increases), good cash generation and a strong recovery…
Trellidor: Building up to a Rally
Originally published over here. Cashbuild (CSB) recently indicated that their sales till end of December 2020 had jumped +24% y/y. Massmart too has indicated a strong second-half recovery in their Builders Warehouse sales with Spar’s BuildIT outfit echoing the same sentiment. While these are great results, they are not unique. Building materials, DIY and home…
Afrocentric vs. Discovery
ORIGINAL ARTICLE APPEARS HERE. Having listed on the JSE in 1999, Discovery Ltd (DSY) has been a phenomenal success generating early investors multiples of their money. The Group administers the Discovery Medical Aid (a separate legal entity to the listed company) and, through data mining, clever incentives and cross-selling, the Group has won huge medical…
EOH: The Cracks Appearing
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on July 28, 2017 It may sound like I am picking on EOH Holdings (EOH), but I am not. My job is to look critically at companies and, where appropriate, disagree with the consensus view. Even if this is uncomfortable and hurts peoples feelings, it is important that I do…
Master Drilling: The Big Mistake
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on August 26, 2016 Previously I wrote the following article on Master Drilling (Master Drilling: Unknown Gem). I will not rewrite the investment case that I noted in that article for Master Drilling as a world-class, niche industrial technology play with global, growing scale and sophistication. Pretty much all of that…
Santova: Growing & Undervalued
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on October 11, 2017 Santova (SNV) is a non-asset based supply chain manager with more than 65% of its earnings coming from outside of South Africa, including the majority of hard currency in this. Santova put out a H1:18 trading statement yesterday that can be summarised as follows: H1:18 EPS and…
Warning Signs: Retailers, Shopping Centres & Retail REITs (Part 1 of 2)
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on November 22, 2016 Following an exchange with Byron Lotter on Twitter (see here) after what I believe (and the market believes) was a very poor trading update from Woolies (WHL). But Woolies is not alone in this regard. Here are the key listed retailers, their like-for-like same-store growth, inflation…
What Is & Is Not Fraud?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on July 24, 2018 The American-styled short-selling model works on aggressive negative press releases, research and other PR stunts (now apparently including legions of anonymous Twitter accounts) to drive a share price down. Fair is fair, none of these actions are illegal if they disclose their beneficial interest. While this…
Tax-Free Savings Accounts: Buy Risk & Sell Time
OLD ARTICLE – Originally posted on June 4, 2019 A Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) offers a superb, tax-efficient mechanism to compound long-term investments for South African citizens. In the below example, I use an assumption of 15% CAGR per annum from a basic South African equity investment and assume that you are paying a marginal…
Lessons: Over-reliance on Management
OLD ARTICLE – Originally posted on January 7, 2020 The last couple of years have been very hard on those that invest in South African small cap stocks. Unfortunately, me, the Alpha Prime Small & Mid Cap Fund and my (incredibly resilient) investors have been no exception to this. Since the FTSE/JSE Small Cap Index’s…
Lessons: Two-edged Blade of an Anchor Shareholder
OLD ARTICLE – Originally posted on January 9, 2020 More than any other directive, human beings act in line with their individual incentives. In the natural world and bleeding into modern-day addictions to drugs, social media and pornography, human beings are predominantly incentivized by dopamines. In business, though, human beings are typically incentivized with money. The ability…
Lessons: Narrow Doors Make for Tricky Thoroughfare
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on January 27, 2020 As a fund manager of a small cap fund, I am keenly aware of liquidity in the stock market. It is not just a constraint but a risk that needs to be managed on both a granular and an aggregate basis. And, sometimes, it can also…
How Does Acquisitive Growth Work?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on January 4, 2017 Due to consolidation accounting (or “Group accounting”) rules, when one company controls another one (from 50% + 1 vote up to full-control of 100%, depending on circumstances), that first company (or the “parent” company) gets to accounting for both the financial performance of itself and the financial performance of all…
Forgotten Safeguard: Diversification
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on April 7, 2016 The global economy is desynchronised with significantly diverging views at both global and country-level. China could implode, Europe could fragment and USA could falter. All of these could happen. And then you get commodity volatility coupled with massive forex swings (up and down)…. If you listen to…
Why Are You Investing in Small Caps?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on February 16, 2016 All the global uncertainty and domestic panic is a great opportunity to re-evaluate your risk profile as an investor. If you are reading this website, I think it is a fair assumption that you are interested in (if not actually actively) invest in the JSE small cap market….
The Value of Forecasts
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on June 30, 2015 In the context of the stock market and its underlying individual listed companies, what is the value of building, making and using forecasts? By their very nature, forecasts for companies are an attempt to anticipate the future earnings of a company. They are not a promise of what the…
Independence = Overrated; Incentive = Underrated
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on June 18, 2015 There is a lot emphasis on independence in various roles in financial markets. External auditors have to be independent, advisors hopefully too, wealth managers, some members of company Boards, and so on. All independent. But why? The theory goes that if a person is independent, then…
Pan African Resources: The Cheapest Hole-in-the-Ground
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on December 29, 2014 Firstly, I have no strong conviction on gold. I think that it is largely an ego-based commodity driven by investment fashions. In the short- to medium-term I suspect that the collapsing gold price has less to do with gold and more to do with the strengthening…
How to Read Results Like an Analyst
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on September 23, 2014 Here is a (brief) list on how to read a listed company’s results on the JSE like an analyst. I’m going to list a couple key things to work through with the intention that in a matter of minutes you’ll be able to work out if the…
Key Attributes of a “Ten Bagger”
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on September 1, 2014 A “ten bagger” is colloquial for a share price that rises a thousand percent or, in other words, makes you ten times your money. In some ways the Holy Grail of investments, the key consideration is how do you go about finding a ten bagger? Firstly,…
Look Beyond the Numbers
OLD ARTICLE – Originally posted on September 29, 2019 When analyzing a listed company for investment purposes, its financial statements are obviously a key variable to work through. If you have to ask ‘why’, then I kindly refer to this series of short webinars I did a few years back: Four Pillars of Fundamentals. While…
Five Lessons with Liquidity
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on July 28, 2013 Besides all the usual skills and knowledge that goes with investing in stocks, operating in the small cap space forces you to master handling positions in low liquidity stocks. Here are five rules to help you handle low liquidity stocks: 1. Stretch your time horizon Low…