To try to have a feeling for how the German economy is running I keep Hamburger hafen und logistik in my watchlist. The company is in charge of the biggest port of Germany and are loading unloading containers as well as being in charge of transport via railroad or truck bringing the goods to storages or factories for further development. The company also has some property in the Hamburg harbour as well as some fruit and vegetable storage. The stock is down very much and I should probably analyse it to see if it is cheap... But more importantly....
The CEO says that their revenue drop comes from decreased import from especially China but for the loading unloading of containers the revenue/quantity was remained high. He said this came from increased trades with North America.
Secondly the rail and road transported containers which connects especially Eastern Europe was down by -38%. The fruit and vegetables logistics was also down but by -25%.
My interpretation: when money gets tight one of the first things to go is fresh fruit and vegetables from fridge in peoples homes, especially Eastern Europe have a significant decrease in the import of chineese products meaning all kind of technical products as well as cloths. However to keep up the loading/unloading the german export to North America must have significantly increased. With products that they are not in charge of the logistics within Germany but maybe the companies themselves such as chemical producers, car manufacturers as well as heavy machinery producers.
I made a quick look. Not that this justifies my conclusions but Bayer and BASF had 10% growth last year. Volkswagen had 20% increase, BMW had 10%. I wonder if part of the increased car sales were due to Sandy storm and if German cars were then actually bought as replacement?
While reading a little more Hamburger hafen & logistics seems to have been running at slightly decreased capacity due to building out the port to be able to accept mega ships with over 16000 containers. Seems as if they have had a lot of problems with that which pushed down stock a little still they have a p/e of 18 with decreased earnings going back five years so the stock must drop more in stock value alternatively significantly pushed up earnings before it will be of interest to me. I did however find the management trustworthy.
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