Spekulatius

Hmm, another buyout another problem. Price for FOPE SPA seems a bit low at nary a premium. I own a few shares recently acquired at 8.4 Euros. It seems like aninvestor has acquired shares from the controlling family for 9.25 Euro and now wants to tender for shares from minority shareholder for the same price. I wonder if I should hold out for more. knowing this is Italy, I shouldn’t get my hopes too high I guess. This is a nice business I think - high end artisan jewelers sold in their own stores., worth 9x EV/EBIT? Where is Arnault? width=600http://i.imgur.com/nemNQnJ.png]http://i.imgur.com/nemNQnJ.png[/img]

I am just glad these guys weren’t put in charge of writing the Bible. An investors letter with 128 pages! Gheez.

The annual letter is shorter and less imaginative than former ones. No doubt, both Charlie and Warren are slowing down a bit. While the economy is performing well, manufacturing and railroads are not exactly performing that great right now and all things considered, the performance of their operating business is decent, but it’s clear that both Lubrizol and PCP weren’t great buys. Their Insurance business is performing well. Buying back 1% of their shares is better than nothing. Things could be a whole lot worse.

Good catch. This was in 2001 or 19 years ago. It is likely that his thinking has evolved since then.

Schrodingers software helps with drug discovery, but I don’t think it has any impact on the time consuming clinical trials Phase I-3 where the real money is spent. CRISP at this point is ay an early stage and we do not know how effective that approach will be. Any treatment likely is at least 5 years off. It is likely that there will be opportunities where the hype cools off and those type of stocks can be acquired way cheaper, but who knows.

I listened to a podcast a while ago, but forgot the source. The risk is that if you buy into a dumpy Park, the tenants may just leave and leave dumpy trailers behind that may be costly to remove and discard. Tenant selection is always critical when renting, but the further down in quality and creditworthiness you go, the more important it gets. A good friend of ours also rents lower end and section 8 housing in a town nearby at double digit cap rates. he has done this for a long time and tried lots of different things (pool halls etc) and has good results with south East Asian immigrants (Vietnamese, Cambodia) which have sort of a local community there and while they often have no credit, they have cash. He does put a lot of work into this, so it is really a second job for him and after doing this a long time, he is scaling back. I wanted to pick his brain a bit more, but I think a lot of his ‘excess’ returns just come from hard work and somewhat painfully gained experience.

End of the saga - I sold my shares at 128.5 Euro (exactly the tender price) as they started trading again and there was a huge bid out there, presumable from the broker house administering the tender. Whew - problem solved! Now I need to cancel my transfer request with Fidelity (the shares were still in my IB account) Thanks to everyone who helped out here.

Shorting momentum trash is a good way to get over by a dump truck lately.

I can see my personal Fidelity accounts now, but I can't see my 401K. It looks like Fidelity's Netbenefits site is still down. Same here. This happens quite frequently lately.

Tweet of the month (imo): https://twitter.com/capitalobserver/status/1229769517045252096?s=21 ;D

More AMA.AX (car repair rollup in Australia, kab60’s pick). A small add to CCU as well.

I have developed some persistent lower back pain last year and then did some research on YT and settled on dong these exercises every morning for 10-15 minutes as well as some pushups. Worked wonders for me.

I think 1) - applying nonspecific filters - is the way to go for most individual investors to avoid getting into fraudulent investments. Proving fraud is very very Hard and few have the forensic accounting skills and resources to dig deep enough. Enron is a good example where the story looked much better then the numbers. A more recent example was Valeant, where the GAAP results as well as the balance sheet looked horrible, and management provided all kind of mental gymnastics to justify the business model. Perhaps a more recent one is Tesla, it it’s overused, so I won’t elaborate on this. I believe now thwt tech and specifically SAAS companies are probably misrepresenting, although I am not sure their financials are fraud, I think the fraud lies more in the fsct that the GAAP financials may be more representative of the economic reality than the adjusted numbers that management is representing. Case in point may be YEXT, a SAAS company. I have no idea about their product an TAM etc, but I have rarely seen a company that has a gross margin of ~72% and manages to spent an even higher percentage on sales and marketing and losing 50% of their revenue on a GAAP basis. one would think that such a company gains economy of scale on S&M too, but that’s actually not the case, this outfit managed to increase their S&M expenses since the IPO more than revenues actually, indicating negative operating leverage. Perhaps there is a good reason for all this, but I fail to see any explanation why all this expense will lead to an explosion in profitable revenue in the near future. It’s not accounting fraud per say in a sense that the GAAP numbers may well be correct, but if just the GAAP numbers matter in this case, this company would be absolutely worthless and you would have to pay a buyer to take it. YEXT isn’t a sole exception either, but it’s one I have taken a closer look after some folks mention it on Twitter. I hope they know what they are doing, but my sense is that those folks tend to ignore operating results altogether and invest solely based on some momentum or qualitative factors. For me, when the numbers don’t make sense on a first principle basis, I tend to stay away from these stocks as far as possible.

No? Because of such sentiments I think situations like this are likely to be mispriced. I suggest you try to see it as an exciting hobby like sky diving or swimming with sharks. Only instead of doing something actually dangerous you have to read tedious documents and e-mail and call with office clerks all around the world. Same adrenaline kick but much safer. And you get paid to play. Seriously, can it get any better? You are correct. The reason why in the end I don’t like that investment is because the IRF in the end was single digits. I bought this stock several years ago and thought I‘d hit on something. A brewery in Africa (growth market) with a rising dividend,a great balance sheet and rising profits and almost a monopoly (80% market share) what could go wrong? It turns out a lot - the oil Crash dunked the economy, currency tumbled, rebels taking over part of the country (and a BCAM facility for a while). Those were just the thing I am aware of and there are likely more. Profits tumbled and bounced a round, dividend was cut some too and the price faltered after rising quite a bit. I sold some shares onto a spike in 2019, then bought them back when it dunked to 80 Euro and change and then finally the buyout. ingress from the buy it looks Ok, but form start to finish, i would have been better of buying a SPY ETF and be done with it, without the brain damage in between. Although I do admit the the BCAM Ride was more interesting. Ingress there is going to be time when going the extra mile is going to be worth it, but the last 5 years that surely want the case.

Actually, even if you new nothing about the SPE, just a casual look at the balance sheet , the lack of profitability (ROIC) and valuation should have been enough to keep you away from investing in Enron.

Gems from the Daily Journal Meeting from Tren Griffin (who is well worth a follow on Twitter): https://twitter.com/trengriffin/status/1228485879397662720?s=21

This probably ends up with my head on a stick. Things are kind of rough in some areas in Cameroon, rebels of some sort have captured one BCAM’s of the bottling plants (I guess rebels get thirsty too) for a while. Possibly one of the reasons why this investment hasn’t gone that well organically.

Thank you so much for your help and the fact that they may resume trading to scoop up stranded shares (like mine) is new to me and indeed great news. It also seems like an obvious solution. I interpreted the docs I saw on Euronext that the shares may never trade again (and so far, the trading halt is in place 3+ weeks already). As far as reward for your due diligence on my behalf is concerned, I would be happy to buy you a couple of beers, but it would certainly not be Cameroon brewed beer from BCAM as their flagship brand (if we want to call it that) Export 33 apparently is of despicable quality. I would rather invite you to a local brew, which are very easy to find in myNeck of woods (Greater Boston area). I am not sure where you reside in Canada, but of its the eastern part, it may be within reach when driving. do far, I have ventured only once into the land of Poutine and my do so again. If you ever happen to venture near Boston, hit me up and the beers will be on me. The rest is probably better handled with a PM.

ALPIB Dave Waters posted about it yesterday and I immediately knew I wanted to own this one: https://otcadventures.com/?p=2135 Question for the thread: if you are not liquidity constrain, is there any reason why one wanted to own WFC vs ALPIB, beside perhaps dividend yield?

I agree. Kudos to all those who chimed in. This thread shows what’s so great about this forum!

As expected, IBKR is pretty much no dice. They simply can‘t do it. Also it seems correct thstvthe issue is with the custodian Euroclear: I called up Fidelity today and after explaining my problem, they connected me with the international trading desk. They briefly reviewed the tender offer with me and they seem confident that they can tender the shares for me, but someone from another department needs to review this in more detail. I should hear back from them by next week. They recommended to just open a new Roth account with Fidelity( I have already multiple other accounts with them) and transfer the BCAM position from IBKR to the Roth account opened for this purpose. Sounds like a good start to me, and I guess I will find out more next week. I feel like that squirrel in the ‘Ice Age’ movie intro that finds a hazelnut , but soon finds out that it needs to work really hard to keep it. This also makes me consider some life choices regarding obscure stocks and so I sold another bugger waiting for a buyout today for a 40 Euro gain. ( In case this thread doesn’t deter people, the ticker is ARTO.PA from the Bollore solar system ). I really don’t want to deal with this sort of crap ever again.

Thanks for your suggestions. So far, I have contacted SABC and actually received a response overnight (redacted threatens for privacy): I have also reopened the ticket with IB and might escalate. I had some luck before elevating matters before (in one case right to a CEO who delegated it down, butt still got the job done). I have been with IB for years (15?) and don’t want to leave. They suit me well generally, but when they suck they suck bollocks, I also appreciate the suggestion to go to Fidelity. I have already considerable accounts with them (recently moved a Wells Fargo account there too) and they have an office close to where I live. My French is pretty rusty and sucks, but I would probably get by with written communication and google translate.

What do you mean by "60 day rollover rule"? You can remove funds from your Roth IRA without penalty, if you put them back in after 60 day or less; at least that’s my understanding.

John, thank you for offering your help, but I don’t think there is much you can do, as my situation is unique (as an US investor holding now stranded shares). This wouldn’t be an issue as a French investor for sure, as the whole process was designed to get rid of minority investors to begin with. I will have to come up with the right way to address the issue, before finding out who to pester on the phone. As far as trading is concerned, well the shares stopped trading on 1/16 when notice was issued on Euronext all of a sudden, then the tender was announced on 1/21. Since the trading stop, the shares have never traded and my understanding is that they will never trade again. Again, that is pretty unique as in most cases I have been involved in, shares still kept on trading for a while, which allowed participants to sell their shares and avoid going through the corporate action procedure. In this case, there was no way to do just that. My own sense is that the mother company SABC wants to get rid of minority investors and will give me a path to do just that. perhaps transfer shares to their company register and then liquidate or something like that. I think there is a way to transfer shares out from my IB account although I have never done that either. It not a large position (70 shares ~ 9000€) and I actually thought that this strange stock would be bought out eventually, just didn’t think it would end up where I can’t exercise my right to cash in easily. I will keep posting how this saga develops.

The bold sentence is basically the very simplified bull thesis.