Spekulatius

I don’t think I can know 10 years ahead I think Fuso business will correlate to leading edge wafer starts since that’s what Fuso materials are used for. So in ten years, Fuso will basically morph from a chemical company with business for food as well as semiconductor supplies to a company that is mainly a semiconductor consumable business. On the financial side the semiconductor material supply is way more profitable than their traditional business with 30% operating margins. Everything else being equal this business should grew faster, with cyclical ups and downs and be way more profitable. On the capital allocation issue, all we know that management told us they intend to pay a progressive dividend which is what they have done over the years so far as well.

Why not lay a trap and get foreign capital suckered in before letting it snap shut. It makes perfect sense to me.

@jefke $3673 looks interesting. Looks like they went cold Turkey with their transitioning to the SAAS model. if a company does that there is a huge hit to revenues, earnings send cash flows. I own $9928 (ERP/Tax software) which took a more gradual approach. https://contents.xj-storage.jp/xcontents/AS08232/3ef18a9b/4d97/4e0f/b957/fab3450580ac/20241126112026890s.pdf I added $3673 to my watch list. Thank you for posting.

Reddit critique. Just my opinion - everyone tries to come up with alternative metrics that agree with their agenda but none seem to make much sense, if you look closer Also, many of the issues with lower paying jobs have been a round and discussed ever since I emigrated to the US in the late 90’s and probably before that. For example, the Reagan years weren’t exactly great for the common man either, at least not in many sectors like manufacturing, farming or other that produced goods.

Far too much but I don’t have 40 hours. A lot of things I study are generally interest that have an investment outlet. When I hear or read about a stock and it looks at least reasonable or even better well priced and I think there is something special about it (management, product offering or macro tailwind)l I tend to buy a few shares. Examples are APR ( Auto Partner ) which I bought in 2022 after the Ukraine invasion when the polish stock market went to hell. Somehow got only a position in one account while the limit order in another account didn’t fill. I really didn’t spent much time on it the last few years, except checking in the annual reports and some earnings. I noticed the stock had retreated due to slower growth and a margin hit partly due to one off factors. I feel the story is fundamentally intact so I bought a few shares for the other account that didn’t have any. I think I will make it big, I don’t much about the polish stock market , but the business checks a lot of boxes and the valuation is almost as attractive as when I bought it in 2022, so I just add a few more and hope it works. I have many positions like this and I don’t think there is anything wrong with doing it that way. Smother one I want to point out on “interesting story or market” is Fuso Chemical was first posted here as a Wall Street article claim8ng that some semiconductor suppliers get exploited by TSMC put a lot of Capex in. The article ticked a few checkboxes due to my material science background and I know that those ultrapure colloidal particles that Fuso produces for semiconductor polishing etc are not easy to make and customer don’t like to switch suppliers as those wafer that are processed can be worth thousands of $ depending on the process stage and you don’t risk it for saving a few bucks on consumable. Not a unique insight but these things something help me make a decision to determine that there is something special about a business. So in a way my portfolio are breadcrumbs that follow my interests over time? I have found that it keeps me interested and while investment mistake are made along the way, there are also quite a few unexpectedly good outcomes.

It is also timely in term of what is happening on the political stage with respect to our era becoming a Neo imperialistic era. Others call it multipolar. The nice thing about studying history is that you realize everything has been there before, not exactly the same way but close enough that it rhymes.

Seems like great book. Boy did Fisher have a way to cut through BS- classifying ships in “Sheep”, “Llamas “ and “goat”, “ Bath chair flotilla”. Maybe his reincarnation should run the Pentagon. I am sure he would give HII’s management an earful in that role.

More than 50

I think the 2-3 years in cash reserves are enough , if you have a diversified portfolio. My thinking is that within 2-3 years there will be stocks in my portfolio that will be close to fair value and that I could sell to replenish shrinking cash reserves. What to sell is of course a judgement call and may well be the wrong decision individually but this is how I would approach this problem.

How could a boat show not be optimistic? If you are about to lose your job or feel lousy about the future, you aren’t going to buy a boat. A boat show is basically selling good times.

I actually bought Rheinmetal during COVID-29 for less than 50 Euro. Sold my shares at 180 Euro and they are now at 800 Euros. They were given away because half their business was auto related and temporarily shut down. If you are around long enough, you see everything. I think Germany may be uniquely positioned to become a large arms producer in quantities due to their deep supply chains. Japan and Korea can also do it. The US currently not so much. With tariffs to Canada and a Mexico even less so.

Soon will be updated, I think: https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/France.pdf https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/UK-Factsheet_updated.pdf

Definitely multiple expansion because they outperformed the competition for quite some time.

I think European defense is going through a supercycle and they will make a lot of money. They used to lack scale because spending was low but that’s now changing. I think Saab is interesting, based on in their product offerings (excelent submarines, low maintenance Gripen etc) I also think world wide many nations will seek alternatives to Russian and US arms for different reasons. Just look at the stock performance since 2022 and compare European defense to US defense stocks. Most European defense stocks are already multibaggers. Us defense stocks not so much.

Uninvestible they say:

I checked on this, NVO revenue are 57.5% (167/290B DKK) in the US, but the US manufacturing site is only the 4th largest site of NVO, which to me indicates they are importing a lot into the US. This makes them vulnerable to tariffs. Trump has specifically mentioned medicine/drug imports a few times as well. Also, NVO is Danish and there is this Greenland thing going on as you well know. I expect we will hear more about this. European tariffs are on the menu, I think by April 1st and I don’t think it’s going to be a joke.

Starter in HII (more ships against China thesis) and add to CACI (Doge inspired meltdown of a compounder).

I agree, Vance/Trump can hardly take the high ground here. Trump still claims to this day that he won the 2020 election against all evidence. However, Vance also brings valid points, regarding freedom of expression as well as ignoring their citizens and voters. Those are real problems in the EU. Emigration is clearly something that people in Europe want to reign in so rather than say, this is a right wing agenda, the democratic parties need to take the people will into account and act accordingly, imo. But since we are talking mainly the Ukraine war here, I am perplexed about Trumps approach to end the war by giving out a bunch of free concessions to the Russia to start and basically take away Ukraines agency while basically stating that aside from negotiation they will not back any guarantees. I guess he could taking away military aide, what makes him think that the stakeholders will actually follow through with the negotiated results? Without backing up the result, Trump has no agency to negotiate imo. Will Ukraine fall apart militarily if the US aide goes away? Maybe we will find out. For sure tariffs to Russia won’t work. In any case, the questions for European leaders is - well you don’t like it? So what are you going to do about it?

You could buy BWXT for 13-14 earnings when nobody was paying attention to defense stocks. These things go around in cycles.

It also only worked that well in the USA. Same strategy in other countries would have let to much less favorable results. There is no guarantee that I’ve will get the same outcomes in the future.

Yes we do, but it’s diluted with Gulfstream, a mediocre military IT business and land systems (Abrahams tank, Stryker). They are good operators but I don’t like many of their business they are in especially IT and Land systems. Anything catering to the army will shrink, imo.

My simple take is that you need enough cash to survive a bear market without drawing down equities. About 2-3 years of expenses in cash or cash equivalents ( high grade bonds/ treasuries) should do it.

US needs lots of ships. I bought some HII this morning at the open. It may be a crappy shipbuilder but it’s the only one we got. Obviously not investment advice.

It is very relevant if you are closer to retirement though , which is also the time when most people actually have a lot of money invested.

This is one concern. The bigger concern is that next conflict in Europe will have Chinese troops involved too. The world is just to get divided up here. Europeans really need to arm themselves with nuclear weapons well as strengthen the conventional forces. They better be home made or they may not work (kill switch) if use is deemed against US interests.