Portfolio changes – Criteo In, Sony out

Adding Criteo 6% weight

For the second time I buy back into a stock I previously held. First time it was NetEase, this time it is Criteo (Criteo – Growth Case). To also revisit the reason I sold it was uncertainty on their revenue model and competitors crying wolf (Criteo – lawsuit scares me). Like all previous holdings of mine, I have kept this on my watch-list. With time I have understood their core model better. Although one has to mention that they keep innovating and coming up with new revenue sources that again are hard to understand.

But to summarize, the investment case is not very different from Catena Media, which is the affiliate for betting i have in my portfolio. Both companies are just trying to in the most clever way route customers to companies homepages and generate sales. The more I think about it this a very natural next step, we do not browse as much as we once did, we go to known pages through apps, but companies still want to reach us with their message. It’s a new and changing field and it might be that there is no room in the future for this players and Google/Apple takes it all. But that’s not my view, I think these players will mature and be a more accepted part of the business for anyone wanting to generate online sales. In the current circumstance for Criteo I feel the market has taken a way to negative view of the possibilities that Apple will limit their business model in the future. Meanwhile since I sold, the company has kept delivering very well and building up its cash-pile. I think the company is still misunderstood and negativity has again taken over and the stock is oversold. I find the stock attractively priced with a nice risk reward.

The biggest negative I can find is how they keep increasing the Equity awards compensation, although the stock price is not moving up. Clearly their metrics for Equity awards is not aligned with share holder returns.

Sell Sony – full holding

After a very decent run its time to part ways with Sony. I bought the stock believing the VR gear could become a big hit. It has done decently well but has not at all been any main reason why Sony has had solid results in general or good results in the games business. A bigger reason for the recent profit upgrade is the image sensor business, which goes into smartphones. An area I did not foresee at all would drive profits, sometimes you are just lucky too.