As i already hinted in my previous post, NetEase is the only company left that I identified as not having an “edge” against the market. I was at the time of posting not willing to sell it just yet, but now the time has come. I was looking for a better exit level as well as rumors around NetEase selling its e-commerce business. The rumors have now come true and the stock has since rebounded significantly, which gives me the opportunity to exit this holding at a decent level. NetEase has been the holding I traded the most of all my holdings. The reason for that is probably the extremely high volatility of the share. Calculating the return on an investment is actually not the easiest thing when you bought, sold and re-bought the stock over these years. My trades summarized since I started this blog:
41 shares in my starting portfolio at US$147.84 per share.
May 2016: Bought 15 shares @ US$166.08, August 2016: Sold 17 shares @ US$213.33, September 2016: Sold 19 shares @ US$231.27, October 2016: Sold 20 shares @ US$248.6
I then held no shares until, May 2017: Bought 23 shares @ US$276.76, May 2018: Bought 24 shares @ US$233.35, As of Friday: Sold 47 shares @ 278.81
On an initial investment of some 6061 USD, I have made a total return of 5578 USD through all these transactions. Even if this company has been one of my better investments, as my investment philosophy develops, I need to stay true to what I think will generate out-performance in the long term. Owning one of the worlds largest gaming companies does not really tick those boxes for me any-longer. This is a company fully understood by the market and do not have any longer term view than the market. Rather I might see more problems ahead than the market does, the game production space has become an awfully crowded space. To keep delivering hit games, just gets harder and harder. It therefor feels quite comfortable parting with this holding.
Coslight Technology
This holding has truly stayed in my portfolio from day 1 and never left the portfolio, it’s one of only two holdings that’s been with me from the start (the other being Sbanken). So it’s a bit depressing that Coslight is one of my worst investments since I started the blog. I did sell some shares back in September 2016, when the stock was up over 100% from my bought price. I then increased in Coslight again at a lower price. This did reduce my total losses on a dollar basis. Of a US$6000 initial investment, I lost some US$2681 over these 3.5 years. Nevertheless a huge detractor to performance, since my overall portfolio is up some 59% since inception.
Lesson learned
From most bad investments you usually take away some expensive learning, some stocks teach you more than others though. The big lesson in Coslight for me was – company debt. When I started the blog one of my big “bets” were around Electric Vehicles and how they would take over the car industry. I made quite many bets in this sector and the ones that are left are Coslight and LG Chem, which are battery cell manufacturers. I think my predictions from back then has more or less come true in terms of EV adaption, something that was definitely not clear to everyone at the time. What I did fail to realize was how costly it would be to create next generation battery cells. Quite frankly money that Coslight could not muster, given how indebted the company already was. This has really been the main problem for Coslight, they did not have the financial muscles to create the next gen battery cells. Instead they ended up selling parts of their largest factory to pay down debt and kind of give up on the EV cell race. It’s always easy with hindsight, but I should have sold this earlier. I had understood more than a year ago that this was the case, but it was a bit of pride and stubbornness from my side to keep holding. I’m selling this company now when it was trading at a very low multiple. But again, taking into account the debt, the company is actually not that cheap on an Enterprise Value basis. So this is my lesson, I learned to put much more emphasis on cash-flow generation versus debt and Enterprise Value. Something that feels very obvious to me now, but something I managed to get wrong when I was excited about investing in a small cap EV-theme related stock 3.5 years ago. Debt can be a blessing when things are going well, but it might also wipe you out when it doesn’t.
After a very tough October, my portfolio has recovered somewhat and is in total down -1.6% on the year. That compares to MSCI World which is down -4.4% on the year. Both have achieved these returns, with the exact same volatility, 15.1% for the year (calculated on weekly returns). My correlation is 79.5% to MSCI World, which is rather high, but also somewhat expected. When markets fall correlation tends to increase between all equities (the correlation during 2017 was 64%). After being down to 0% cash, when I introduced my new three bucket investment approach, I’m now back above 10% cash after divestments in my funeral related companies and Amer Sports, which I will comment further on below.
Amer Sports – The Chinese are buying
When I launched my big portfolio change: GlobalStockPicking 2.0 – Major Portfolio Changes, it just happened that information came out about a non-binding interest from HK listed Anta to make a bid for Finish listed Amer Sports at 40 EUR per share. Having looked into Anta when I invested in XTEP, the other sport shoe producer I thought this really made sense. Mainly because Winter Olympics in China is coming up. So I used my new Opportunistic investment bucket to take a 4% position in Amer Sports at 34.1 EUR per share.
I wrote at the time: “My own expectation is that this should be priced at 85%*40 + 15%*29 = 38.35 EUR”. I think the market has caught up with my analysis now, given that the stock closed at 38.37 on Friday. I still think this will go through, but there are some small tail risks, that for example USA will block the deal. Usually these things also take quite a long time, needing Chinese approvals. So I’m happy to leave the last 1.5 euro on the table and close my position here. This netted my a 10% gain in USD (some currency headwinds) in a market which was down -9% for the period, very happy with that. As always when an investment goes well, you just wished your bet was a bit larger.
This is the second time I got a more short term bet right, where there was Chinese related corporate action around a Nordic company. The first time was the Rezidor/Radisson case (Adding Rezidor Hotel Group – HNA related idea) which also ended with a buyout from another Chinese company.
Swedish Match – Adding 30% to my holding
The producer of Snus and moist snuff which through countless of studies have proven to be much less destructive to your health than smoking. The stock has been on a wild ride lately, first the markets have been very positive on the possibilities for growth of Zyn in USA. Lately the focus seems to be elsewhere, for example that Swedish Match will not be allowed to sell it’s products in the rest of Europe. I think they have a terrific product as good as all the e-cigarette alternatives. The company is very well run and highly cash-generative. This is one of those companies I plan to hold forever, now was a good opportunity to add to my holding. I add about 30% to my holding as of close Friday, bringing this holding to 6.1% of my portfolio.
Defensive feels good in these times
For the frequent reader, you know that I have been skeptical of markets for quite some time. I have expressed this in many ways, but the main theme has been finding defensive long term holdings. Early on in the sell-off my defensive approach did not really work out, because the only thing that held up MSCI World, was the U.S. market and tech stocks in particular. Being underweight both was therefore short term not good for relative returns. Lately it started to work better though when tech “finally” stopped defying gravity. Defensive feels very good right now, but that doesn’t mean I want to miss out on the stocks with higher return potential, or very undervalued cases. I will hold true to my defensive style as long as the valuation difference to growth/value doesn’t become too large. Now I’m actually more excited about stock picking than I have been for quite some time. Today I find much more interesting investment cases than I did a year ago, one example of that being Tonly Electronics – Another Hong Kong value investing case. There are many more I have on my Watchlist and even some not yet mentioned there. The point of my dental series has been an attempt to find 1-2 companies to invest in, which are defensive health care companies I can understand. To summarize my defensive holdings:
Olvi (5.7%) – Finland/Baltic – Produces beer and other alcoholic and soft-drinks, selling mainly in Finland and the Baltic countries.
Gilead Science (5.2%) – Global – Biotech company with market leading products against HIV and hepatitis.
Essity (5.2%) – Global- New Holding Essity – Wood base hygiene products, like tissue paper, diapers, feminine care etc.
Diageo (4.1%) – Global – One of the worlds largest distillers with brands like: Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Gordon’s Gin, Captain Morgan and numerous others. Also Guinness is a large portion of revenue as well as its 34% stake in Moet Hennessy drinks division of LVMH.
Inditex (2.8%) – Global – The world famous clothing retailer Zara, so far keeps defying the e-commerce slaughter by producing outstanding clothes at a fantastically low price point.
Cash (10.7%)
Total = 53.8% of my portfolio is held in defensive companies or cash.
The above companies are a mix of daily needs, like food, clothes and hygiene and vices, like alcohol and gambling. All of the above holdings I’m confident to hold long-term, especially in a bear market. That doesn’t mean though that none of them will ever leave the portfolio. I try to think long term and get to know my companies well, something I didn’t appreciate enough in the past. Part of being long term is to not rush into the new investments, I will take my time and get to know new companies properly before investing. But if I find a new investment that feels much stronger than what I currently hold, the old will go out.
Currently thinking about
Lately I spent a lot of time trying the understand the Chinese tech scene better. There are a couple excellent podcasters out there who educate anyone willing to listen, on everything related to China tech. One thing that is very clear, is how extremely hot this sector is and how fierce the competition is. It seems to be on a totally other level than outside China. On top of that we have the Chinese government interfering in a lot of different niches. The competition and the intervention has again made me more negative in general. So the three of my holdings I’m currently thinking most about all have strong China and tech ties:
NetEase – Great company, with quality games and co-ops with western gaming companies. Given how much U.S. listed Chinese companies have been punished lately I think investors still really like this company, trading at a trailing P/E of 37 and estimated P/E of 24, is not dirt cheap. Obviously partly this is due to the halt in new game launches in China and everyone is expecting this to be temporary. Still, the government is showing who is boss and they won’t allow especially young people to be gaming addicts. Just as the funeral case, this hampers the upside for NetEase. Although I would argue that it probably very long term is healthy for the company to have more balanced customers and not school drop-out gaming addicts. The other aspect is the competition, which seems to be brutal. In Sweden a number of listed gaming companies have plummeted lately, it’s not that easy to keep delivering one of the few hit games everyone is playing. I have a hard time deciding of this a long term keeper or not, maybe the competition will eat up NetEase future? My Original Post on NetEase: NetEase – Chinese Gaming
JD.com – Here we have a company that is again fighting in fierce competition in the e-commerce space. The moat though and reasons for investing in this company is the fantastic delivery/logistics network they have built up. This is the hidden value in the company and the reason I invested. Some nasty details has been coming out about what the CEO has done in rape allegation case. It doesn’t feel very good to be shareholder alongside someone accused for something like this, but the company as such, I think is valued very low currently. If we disregard from personal feeling around the allegations (which is hard to do), this is in my mind a value investment at these levels.
Coslight – I haven’t written much about this company for a long time, it has been a big disappoint lately. This was an early investment for me on the theme of EVs and back-up power stations. The company has developed poorly due to needs for large investments which has been impossible with the already high debt levels (a misjudgment on my side). The solution became to sell of parts of the factory producing batteries for laptops. I think that was the best they could do out of a bad situation, but I’m not sure if they will be able to succeed to play with the big boys like Panasonic, LG, Samsung and CATL. Already back in 2016 it was clear to me I needed to wait until 2020, before EVs would start to sell in larger scale, now we are almost there. This should perhaps move into the Speculative bucket, but I held it for a long time and I will let this Electric Vehicle hype actually play out before I decide further on Coslight. The same reasoning goes for LG Chem, but there I don’t have doubt about their success, they are and will continue to be one of the market leaders. My original post of Coslight: Coslight Outstanding results
Dream International is a Hong Kong listed plastic and plush stuffed toy manufacturer, with factories based in China and Vietnam. Most of the factories today are based out of Vietnam, which gives a cost advantage on China based producers. The company supplies toys to a limit number of larger companies, such as Disney, Oriental Land, Funko and Spin Master. The company has been growing revenue last 10 years with a CAGR of 12%. This has accelerated last 3 years to a CAGR of 21% for revenue and 38% for EBITDA. Although profits have been accelerating, the company is trading at a trailing P/E of about 6.8. Usually when something is trading so cheap, there is some catch, or is this the holy grail of Growth At a Reasonable Price (GARP)? I will try to give my views of what I have been able to find.
+ Fast growing company trading below 7x P/E.
+ Exposure to segment of toys with high growth (Marvel superheros, Star Wars, Disney figures etc).
+ As one of the worlds largest plush stuffed toy producers, Dream has a long track record with large customers like Disney.
+ Recently expanded the customer relationships to plastic toy sales which has given explosive growth and earnings.
– Poor liquidity in the stock.
– Old (69 years) majority shareholder and CEO, unknown what his plans for the future are.
– Probable margin deterioration due to higher material costs (mostly related to oil price).
– Recently bought it’s office premises in Hong Kong for 200m HKD instead of continuing to rent.
Again this wonderful company delivers very strong results, and I realize it was a mistake to sell out of the company. A small comfort is that at least since I sold I managed to recycle the cash in other profitable investments. But now I can’t stand on the sideline and therefor I take a position of 5% of my portfolio in this company. If you know nothing about this company, start by reading my analysis from 1 year ago: NetEase – Chinese Gaming.
Since that analysis a year ago, the company released extremely strong figures. For Q1 this year NetEase delivered the following headline results:
Net revenues rose 72.3% to 13.6B yuan (about $2B, above consensus for $1.73B); gross profit rose 63.2% to 7.5B yuan (about $1.1B).
Meanwhile, non-GAAP earnings per ADS were $4.75, above expectations for $4.03.
Taking the revenue of Q1 times 4, we end up at 2017 revenue which according to my analysis 1 year ago would be reached in 2021-2022. Geez I was wrong on this one (and most other people too). I’m going to stop putting shorter term target prices on this one and just keep it as a long term holding for now, since obviously I am not capable to model future cash flows at anywhere near correct levels. Just as a side remark a quick update of financials with the same future percentage growth (as my assumptions 1 year ago), a DCF gives a fair value of about 320 USD per share.
Three reasons why I think NetEase will continue to have a strong future, even-though competition is heating up:
They have the scale to distributing their games through their own platform in China, which means not sharing revenue with other sites. Also they are now confident enough to start launching their games outside of China in larger scale.
They are launching (world-wide) a potential blockbuster called Crusaders of Light (https://crusadersoflight.com/) this summer, which might become the first truly successful mobile MMO. The game was released in Beta a few weeks ago and so far reviews are very strong among gamers.
Launching of Minecraft in the Chinee market this year, as a free-to-play game (with in-game purchases) in co-op with Microsoft. The game will be available both on PC and Mobile, another highly likely blockbuster. Here income will be share with Microsoft, and I believe quite a lot of it is priced in already in the share price, but anyhow, it will generate significant cash-flow.
I recommend this video on NetEase, which I wish I would have found earlier:
The downside
NetEase is already a huge player in the Chinese market place and launching new games will not only take market share, but also cannibalize on their own games. On top of that, the gaming sector is very hot right now, with competition being very fierce. Like a drug company a gaming company like NetEase needs a portfolio of games in the pipeline, which needs to keep delivering the best games in the market, or the competition will quickly step in at fill their place. Extrapolating earnings in to eternity of this type of companies and doing so with high multiples, might be a too bullish way of looking at the company.
A personal downside with this investment is again getting a too high China concentration in the portfolio. The reasons for the long silence in the blog is that I have been doing my best to analyze companies for a potential new investment. I have been looking at Biotech in the US, Vaccine companies, breweries and much else. But really struggled to find something worth buying. I have two interesting companies on the radar though, but the valuation has unfortunately run a bit crazy right now
In the future I will move to quarterly performance reviews, so this is the last irregular update. The portfolio has done extremely well and I must say this much out-performance does not come without a certain amount of luck. I feel we are reaching the end of this long bull-market and we are probably moving into a more challenging investment climate over the coming years. Even so I still think there is enough dispersion in the market that it gives some comfort in attempting to pick stocks. The strength of the USD is concerning I think. I don’t see how the US stock market can be at it’s peak and the USD keep strengthening as well, at the same time other equity markets are far from peak levels. Something got to give.
Performance
The graph above shows The “GSP Portfolio” performance including all trading and dividends since the blog inception (no trading fees deducted).
Current Holdings
Previously held stocks
Notable Movers
+ Coslight Technologies
After tremendous results in it’s semi-annual report, the stock soared. I have been analyzing all the battery companies that are listed and I have been able to invest in. Out of all of those I placed my bets into two stocks, that were pure-play battery companies. One has with a lot of volatility, mostly gone sideways, but Coslight had the sales turnaround I was expecting, driven by China’s significant insentives for electric vehicles, both buses and cars. Nice to be right for once, after spending tremendous amount of research on the topic over a 1 year period. Now there is talks about a potential over-supply situation among the Chinese battery-makers, I’m somewhat worried about that, but more short-term than long-term. I see signs everywhere that the growth of Plug-in hybrids and all electric cars is just in its infancy. If this company keeps playing their cards right, this stock could go another 100% within the next 2 years. Previous write-up on Coslight.
+ Shanghai Fosun Pharma
This was an example where a lot of things together made me take the investment decision in this holding company. The chart looked like the stock was set for a leg up, I wanted a healthcare stock in my portfolio and the valuation started to look more and more compelling (SinoPharm holding >50% of Fosun Pharmas Market Value). Right after I bought the stock started surging, a quick 25% gained. Lucky yes, but at the same time it was strangely out of sync with SinoPharm. Now the stock is more fairly valued, although still not expensive. Since I have understood from Chinese friends that Shanghai Fosun’s management have a bit of a reputation, I might need to have some margin of safety in this one. I have another “Pharma” holding on my radar, if it looks more compelling I might switch this for something else. Fosun Pharma write-up
+ NetEase
This fantastic company is over-delivering for every report they release. But I can’t keep holding the stock at these valuations, so I sold all, at an average gain of over +50%. I’m hoping there will be a rebound, because this is probably still a great stock to hold over the long-term. NetEase full analysis
– MQ
Well, I thought I got this stock on the cheap, and I still think I did. But it got even cheaper. I’m surprised by how weak retail sales are in Sweden, given how well the economy is doing. This was a play on the Swedish consumer, and although I wasn’t dead wrong, I was not right either. Seems it’s sales through internet channels that are hurting retail all around the world and perhaps also in Sweden? Well I chose to move on since I don’t believe in the Swedish consumption over the coming 5-6 years anymore., even if it pains me to sell something that is still cheap.
– LG Chem
Again I thought I got in on a technically good level, where the graph looked like a move up was in the cards. And it was, but it became very short-lived, a month later the stock peaked and then took a serious turn downwards, now sitting -10% from my purchase price. But the stock falling doesn’t generally bother me much, I’m in for the long-run for their battery production (although it’s not a pure-play). But there was a reason for the stock falling, which was plans from LG to merge LG Chem with LG Life Science. I don’t know anything about LG Life Science, but what I do know is that I bought this for it’s future in battery making, not to own a conglomerate with a small part in battery-making (like Panasonic) – frustrating! So, right now it is wait and see, I’m not ready sell, especially when the stock is trading fairly cheap. On a more positive note the Chevy Bolt is coming out with great positive reviews from everywhere, just like the Tesla model S before the Tesla share surged with 300%. The Bolt is very much a LG product, with battery produced by Chem and the electronics inside is produced by LG Electronics. Looking at competitors it’s clear that LG is one step ahead of its competitors in battery technology (price per kWh). Short LG write-up
My holding Coslight Technology (1043 HK – listed in Hong Kong), a batter producer in China did what is commonly called a turn-around by presenting very strong first half 2016 results. They actually issued an pre-announcement that the results would be significantly better, but the market did not react much on the news. Anyhow the results for H1 2016 was an EPS of about 0.36 HKD per share and at the time the stock traded at about 3.8 HKD. Multiplying the result with 2 gives a forward P/E of about 5, so I think you can understand why the stock soared 30% the next day. Since then the stock has continued to trade very strongly and in a wobbly market closed today at 6.7 HKD up +76% since the result announcements. Since we bought our position in the stock at 2.87 HKD we are now up +133% and our first stock price doubling since the blog started! This also means that the holding is close to my holding guidelines of max 15% position size. I am therefore forced to reduce my position size somewhat, the question is how much and does the stock still have room for more upside?
Analysis of Coslight
The outstanding results were partly thanks to subsidies by the Chinese government on EVs. And also that the subsidies where design in such a way that it favored EVs who bought batteries produced in China. I bought this stock because it is one of the most pure play Lithium battery producers that is listed anywhere in the world. And even this company is by heritage involved in production of lead acid batteries (which they are currently losing money on) and also doing something as bizarre as mobile games for the Chinese markets. It happens so that the mobile gaming unit is actually very profitable and not at all something to laugh away, it has very high margins and I see it as a free option for launching a new hit game (you never know).
A move from lead acid to Lithium battery production
The figures in the Semi-annual reports tell a story. The story told is that lead acid battery sales used to be a terrific product, with healthy margins. Coslight made great money on their products and the stock traded in the 10 HKD range in its glory days. Then something must have happened in the industry, because margins deteriorated to the point were Coslight was losing money on its lead acid battery business. At the same the shift started towards Lithium battery production, which has similar healthy margins as the lead acid batteries used to have.
As the graph above shows, net and gross profit margins were healthy back in 2007-2009 and then slumped sharply. Lastly we can see a shift in the trend, where the latest report which created the surge in share price, indicates that the companies sales are back in the healthy area of gross and net profit margin. The reasons for this is because Lithium battery sales has totally taken over and lead acid battery sales has been scaled down significantly. See graph below.
The red line shows how Lithium battery sales has gone from around 30% of total sales in 2012 to around 90% of sales in the last years (although with some volatility). And the blue line also with some significantly volatility shows that lithium battery sales is profitable business. So now we have a transformed company, which stopped producing loss making lead acid batteries and focus on profitable lithium ion batteries. They recently also announced they are going to double production volume (with a 400m USD investment), meaning if they can keep margins at these levels, they will be able to generate a forward EPS of around 1 HKD per share, justifying a price of Coslight of around 10 HKD. The big if is if Lithium battery margins can keep at these levels. I would argue that there is a lot in the pipeline that suggests it will. The demand for batteries is huge among Chinese EV makers and listening to Coslight themselves it sounds like this:
“Power Batteries benefited from Chinese government policies on new energy, the sales volume of China’s new energy vehicles surged to 170,000 in the first half of 2016. The demand for our power batteries grew dramatically for the corresponding period. We have delivered 11,127 sets (2015: 3,061 sets) of all types of electric vehicles batteries, representing an increase of 264% over same period last year. We continued to collaborate with domestic and foreign auto makers to provide battery system solutions for electric vehicles. Our customers include wellknown brands of domestic new energy vehicles manufacturers. Our products include lithium ferrite phosphate batteries and ternary power batteries which are applicable to different types of electric vehicles, including buses, commercial vehicles and sedans. We expect the amount for delivery will rise substantially for the whole year.”
Other areas
Coslight produces batteries for many purposes, it’s not just EVs that are interesting, but also mobiles, laptops, drones and other wearable devices. One big are of sales for Coslight is laptops. I’m impressed with how advanced Coslights battery technology is for the latest generation of laptops. If you haven’t noticed all Laptop brands are coming out with new ultra slim, around 1 cm thick laptops. And I after some serious digging found out that the HP Spectre laptop comes with a Coslight battery. I find this very impressive, the laptop has good battery life although it is so slim. This gives me confidence that Coslight knows what they are doing and are up fighting with the best battery-producers.
Conclusion Coslight
I will reduce my position because I want to follow my investment guidelines, but only by 25%, I want to keep this as a large position in my portfolio, since this is somewhat of a breakthrough and turn-around in the company. I will hold on to my stocks at least until I see prices around 10 HKD per share, somewhat aggressive to expect the stock surge to continue short-term, but reasonable in the next 1-2 years I think.
NetEase Slicing position
I already reduced my position once in this stock, now I again sell half my position, since the stocks keeps defying gravity. I’m super happy with the return I got in this stock, but it reached my target price and I see better opportunities elsewhere at these valuation levels.
So the earnings season continues and it is definitely throwing a mixed bag at me this time, some serious burns and a few good ones. Let’s go through the largest movers:
NetEase
The day before the earnings release I cut my holding with 30%. So was that a good move? Yes and no. Yes, because the stock price actually initially fell 6-7%, but since I am not a day-trader that doesn’t matter much to me. The stock later recovered and is now trading a few percent below my selling price. No, because they actually came out with the best possible earnings I could imagine, I’m actually surprised the stock has not traded higher. So at the moment the market is still putting a fairly substantial risk premium to this stock, I still feel its american investors not trusting a Chinese company.
Zhengtong Auto
Well this was a disaster report, I have counted this as one of my value stocks in the portfolio. A lot of the other car sales and services companies in China has started to recover nicely, both in terms of earnings and share-price appreciation. But Zhengtong is clearly lagging her, suffering from mainly their tilt towards BMW cars. BMW sales have been weak, because BMW is not delivering new models attractive to the Chinese consumers. Stock was down -15% on the report and continued down from there, ouch.
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical
I bought this just before their earnings release, which was solid, not amazing, but solid. The stock market slowly took the figures to its heart and the stock trended slowly upwards ending up over +8% on the day, lucky start for this holding.
CRRC
OK earnings and net income, but outlook was weaker than expected, the report was not well liked by the market, I think it has been punished somewhat harshly, but my doubling up in this stock just before earnings became terrible, the stock is down -9% from where I increased my position, again, ouch.
Tomorrow NetEase, which has become the portfolios biggest position will report results, I still believe in the company long-term but I decided to slice the position somewhat, to lock in some profits while we are close to what I saw as the short term price potential of the stock. I sell 30% of my NetEase holding as of close today. I’m still optimistic about the report though, Tencent released it results today and they beat analyst estimates, mainly due to very strong gaming profits in their mobile games. NetEase is not as heavily tilted towards mobile (yet), but I still see it as a positive that the sector seems to still have some legs to it’s growth. As a Chinese colleague of mine explained to me, the urbanisation has created all these huge cities where people have 40-50 min daily commutes on the subway, what else would they do than play games on their smartphones to and from work.
The cash from NetEase I place in CRRC, which I had at a smaller weight and now take up to a full size position. From the cash I have left I also take a 3% position in Autoliv, the stock has been trading fairly weak lately, although they have a lot going for them in the smart car space.
Yes, it’s time to deeplet these high cash levels, I have suffered some serious performance drag having 15% cash in an uptrending market. First it was LG Chem announced the other day. As of today’s close I’m allocating a 6% position in my first Pharmaceutical company – and no, it’s not Valeant (although it seems to have bottomed out by now).
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (2196 HK)
Yet again I dig into the Chinese market, this time through the fairly famous Fosun Group, which I previously been a shareholder in. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (from now on Fosun Pharma) is a H-share listed in Hong Kong, meaning it’s also listed in mainland China (as is some of my other holdings – BYD, Ping An)
Provide Healthcare services, they have been fairly aggressively buying up hospitals.
In Co-operation with it’s big shareholding and partner Sinopharm they co-operate in drug distribution in China.
Produce Medical Devices.
I’m taking this position for a number of reasons:
In general I think the Pharmaceutical companies need a re-visit, after being the market darling stocks, they have taken a beating lately and I have been looking for a good candidate to invest in.
Fosun Pharma listed in HK is fairly cheap, trading at trailing P/E 15 and looking like 2016 figures will come out around P/E 13-14.
The stock looks oversold and the China listed stock has started to move upwards lately, the spread between China and HK listed stock is as stretched valuations as they historically ever been. See picture below for spread in orange.
Fosun Pharma is a big shareholder (11%) in the pharmacy distributions company SinoPharm, this stock has been soaring lately. This holding accounts for over 50% of the price for Fosun Pharma’s stock price, meaning you get the rest of it’s business very cheap.
I need a Pharma holding in my Portfolio.
This is the first time the China listed stock has been moving so significantly, without any spike in either the stock or the Chinese stock market.
Portfolio Update
I also include a Portfolio update (not including Fosun Pharma yet).
A lot of beats
Skandiabanken came out with fantastic results that beat estimates, after Altor came in as a new big investor, the stock has been soaring. As always when you bet correctly you wish you did not allocate more in an earlier stage, but with this significant gain the current weight in the portfolio has become a high conviction position.
NetEase continues to deliver, awaiting a report in a few days, if the stock keeps soaring I will probably cut the weight in this one short term. It’s a struggle to stay long-term in companies where the gains you were hoping for over the coming 1-2 years materialize in 3-4 months. Definitely the type of luxury problems I would like to keep having.
Microsoft also came with a beat, the market seems to start to value it’s Cloud business (my reason for investing), not sure about the hefty price tag for buying LinkedIn though..
Sony beat estimates with a strong report, I read some comment like “Nintendo should look at Sony, a Japanese game maker that actually makes money”.
One big disappointment was Ramirent’s report and the market struck down the stock -13% over two days. The momentum seems to keep holding though, which was one of the one the reasons I bought this stock (no I’m not a value investor).
Overall in the strong market many holdings has started to recover (Zhengtong, Ctrip, CRRC and MQ). The only company that is strangely weak is Avanza Bank, I might need to re-evaluate this one, as I always listen to what the market is trying to tell me. Stocks going side-ways in a up-trending market will not do well the day the market breaks down. I have also discussed this company with some friends who are knowledgeable about Swedish Banking, they think Avanza will have a tough time finding ways to making money out of their customers. More to follow..
I’m sitting 11 000 meters in the air, over the Siberian tundra writing this post, if someone told me ten years ago that I would be able to do that, I would probably have laughed. Technological advance often goes quicker than we can imagine and it also opens up opportunities for substantial new revenue streams. One such area is how mainstream gaming has become. About 20 years ago when I was a kid growing up, playing NES, early PC-games like Prince of Persia etc, gaming was definitely not mainstream – it was something mostly nerds did. And it kind of stayed nerdy when internet and multiplayer gaming started. We nerds played games like Warcraft, Starcraft, Quake and Counter-Strike. Then around the time when Playstation 2 had gained some traction, something in our society started to change – gaming started to be cool and the gaming industry grew enormously. With the entrance of smartphones the world was ready for the next level of gaming – suddenly even our mom’s became gamers, playing Candy Crush in the subway on their way to work. I think we all can agree that games in our daily lives through PC, Consoles and Phones are here to stay and most of us are willing to spend a few dollars now and then for this entertainment.
Throughout the years I have always been impressed with Blizzards game making, in the same way as Nintendo they built a whole world of characters that they re-use in all kind of games. It has become so big that they are just launching a Warcraft movie (I’m watching it tomorrow). In my opinion they also deliver products with immense quality. Blizzard was bought by Activision and one way to gain exposure to their games would be to just invest in Activision Blizzard, but I think I have found a perhaps riskier but better way to play the investment and that is through NetEase. Let’s see what type of company this is.
