Annual report of Asian Bamboo 2012

The annual report from Asian Bamboo was not very well accepted by the shareholders and ti can be found here. By the look of things the few that had remained have now tried to leave stock and it has dropped by over 20%. This means that the stock is now even cheaper than ever before with almost a remained high book value and high growth potential. What I will have to ask myself in the next couple of days is... am I stuck in a value trap here?
 

Capital increase of Deutsche Bank

Of the too big to fail banks Deutsche Bank has been the most under capitalised bank. The amount they have kept in their coffers has been far too low for such a systemically important bank. So they decided, similar to Commerzbank, to do it fast instead of slow and are therefore diluting their around 930 million shares with almost 10% meaning additionally 90 million shares will be created.

These will be sold to institutional investors at a prime price with the benefit that they will get the full dividends for those shares which means that the result for last year will become even worse. Also in this case, just like with Commerzbank, I am not happy with the development and it annoys me that the institutional investors are getting a benefit that is not offered to me.

Analysis of Orange / France Telecom

Company: Orange previously France Telecom

Business: Landline and mobile telephone services, provider of internet and services which follow with that such as television etc..

Active: They claim world wide but largest focus is Europe where especially France is very heavy.

P/E: 26.3

Bloomberg advice to contrarian investors

This evening I read an article in Bloomberg news by Whitney Kisling. The advice given to all the contrarian investors are to buy computer shares since they have fallen almost 7% since a peak in September and they have never been as cheap as they are today for the last seven years so... since 2006. In a way this is all fine.

It definitely looks like a good moment to look into the tech stocks to see if one can find a golden eggs but it might just as well be that in 2006 the tech stocks were crazy overvalued and today they are maybe still overvalued. The additional argument used was that producers of household goods and health-care had in the same period, so from September, increased by 14%.

Hmmm... so as a contrarian I should have been running my investment philosophy based on %-age up and down of different branches and additionally I should invest on a 6-7 months scale. I guess they are talking about the Speedy Gonzales Contrarians.

Analysis of Alcatel-Lucent

Company: Alcatel-Lucent

Business: Telecommunication with supply of hardware and services. They have both wireless as well as optics networks laid out.

Active: All over the world. The company was created by merging the French Alcatel with the American Lucent. which gave them a strong European as well as American base.

P/E: -1.7

The analysis pushing

The reason why I am pushing out so many analysis reports are because I already have the information collected and it would be a pity not to publish it. Pretty soon I will have managed to push out all the companies I had in the list and then it will become much slower but I hope not too slow. As you probably have seen I decide to publish everything as it comes out when I pop in the numbers in the excel sheet. I have also decided to publish every company I look at even though some of them follow none of my investment criteria and even more of them I would not even think about investing in but I think it is important to have a database to go back to.

Dividends from MuRe

Yesterday Münchener Rückversicherung had their shareholders meeting in München and I was not there but I took advantage of their very nice online services. This meant that I could listen to the entire presentation as well as see the PowerPoint presentation and then I was able to vote on the matters at hand. Something was a little bit problematic with the online voting though but I hope that my votes were registered.

They paid out 7 € per share today which gives me in total 126 € and the Stock Dividends page has now been updated.

Analysis of Blackberry

Company: Blackberry previously know as RIM (Research In Motion)

Business: Smartphones and tablets where they still have a keyboard on some of their models. Their focus was businessmen and generally companies with high security for all the data transfer.

Active: Product sales world wide.

P/E: -11.2

Analysis of Google

Company: Google

Business: As of yet they have stayed in the shadows a little. Doing their internet information thing "Google it!" asking for advertising money and making sure that companies earn a place "high" up in the list. It is a very good business and they have done very well. I would still say that they have the best product. They are now very close to expand into the physical world with their Google glasses. I find this excellent. Good job Google! I personally forget everything I say and write and do and Google glasses would maybe be able to keep me on track on things.

Active: All over the world.

P/E: 24.6

Reverse stock split of Commerzbank

Today Commerzbank made the reverse stock split and 10 old stocks became 1 new one. They did this for two reasons. Avoiding to become a penny stock and secondly because they will now be able to ask their shareholders for more money to buy out the Government and pay part of a debt to Allianz. This means that they will dilute the stock again and it will drop further. I am very unhappy with this decision.

Analysis of Nokia

Company: Nokia

Business: Mainly mobile phones. It is not true but that is even what they push on the investor page so then I will stick to that.

Active: They are fully active globally. Their best markets are the "developing" part of the world just like Blackberry.

P/E: -2.3

Senator Elizabeth Warren

I am deeply impressed by the intelligence, persistence, sense of fairness and courage that this woman has! She is definitely using her well deserved position as senator and are questioning everything that has gone wrong. If anyone will be able to sort out the rats nest then I am sure that it is this woman. I hope that more and more politicians will join her crusade for justice because the sooner justice will occur.

I link to the Big Picture Blog from Barry Ritholtz so that you can see the video as well as read the text. The video is unfortunately only half of the text so please read it!

Analysis of Sony

Company: Sony

Business:  Sony is a technology company that have their toe everywhere. They make PCs, MP3-players heck they invented the Walkman, the own a large part of not only Hollywood but also of artists and the music they have made.

Active: They are active and sell their products all over the world.

P/E: -5.3

Risk enhancement

During the weekend I read an article which concerned the frequent usage of stimulants by many of the investment bankers dealing with large sums of money. These stimulations caused them to take even higher risks then what would otherwise have been the case.

Can this be true? Would the board and the management in the banks allow these high risk-takers, which they already are from the start, to go even further with their risks by using external stimuli?

Analysis of Apple

Company: Apple

Business: It is classified as a technology company that are making sales of various products such as iPod, iPad, iPhone, mac etc. They are selling complete solutions with physical product, operating system as well as software.

Active: They are active world wide as the American giant they are.

P/E: 8.8 

Weekend shoping walk

I took my longer walk in the part called Mitte in Berlin. The more precise area was from Hackescher Markt going up Rosenthaler Str. and then I continued on Torstr. and went back down on Alte Schönhauser Str. To my knowledge this area has become more and more hip with nice modern restaurant (several of them with an Asian cuisine) and also plenty of hip and fashionable stores.

Analysis of CA Technologies

Company: CA Technologies

Business: Software and Service for large enterprises. The have a significant cloud focus and are offering a broad, broad range of software solutions for all kind of problem.

Active: As any software company world wide.

Not that long ago I read someone saying something in line of: If you want to diversify then just buy a company that are active world wide. They themselves are already diversified with a minimised risk. And if you then buy a couple of them in various branches then there is hardly any longer a risk in the long run.

P/E: 12.6

Analysis of Microsoft

Company: Microsoft

Business: Operating system, software (cash cow is office) and Xbox. Over the years they have made several attempt to establish themselves within manufacturing but as of yet the only very clear success was the Xbox but I am sure more things will come in the near future.

Active: They are active world wide as all the American giants are.

P/E: 15.6

Energy consumption II

Today I received a letter from my energy provider which said that I will be getting money back. It is not much but still 16.25€ is always something!

What I found much more exciting though was that I seem to have miss read the information online before. The 772 kWh was my energy consumption last year after changing my fridge and now by turning off all my electronic equipment from their stand-by mode I seemed to have saved an additional 83 kWh because I was now down to 689 kWh per year.

Analysis of IBM

Company: IBM

Business: Today they have three segments. The biggest one is Software (44%) the second biggest one is Service (41%) and the final one is hardware (16%). Before IBM were producing the ThinkPad etc. but now all of that is sold to Lenovo. The hardware they are making today has to do with servers and bigger networks that they are setting up and running.
 
Active: Globally. According to their reports they are today present in 170 countries.

Comment: Berkshire Hathaway had as a rule never to invest in technology companies. Today IBM is so much directed towards services that Warren now own stocks in it.

P/E: 14.9

Analysis of STMicroelectronics

Company: STMicroelectronics

Business: Low power processors for cars, alarm clocks and other similar applications. In comparison to ARM, Intel and Qualcomm moving more in a low value market so not fully valid to be compared with them.

Active: Globally present

P/E: -46.0

Personalised index fund

In the last couple of weeks I have been thinking extensively about creating my own personal index fund. The reason for this is that I do not like the concept of ETF and in many cases the classical index funds are charging too high fees. No fond is allowed to cost more than 0.5% per annum! I did however read an article that claimed that some funds in the US have now taken up the battle against the ETFs and were charging fees in the same region. If so then I would always pick one of those index funds.

Analysis of ARM

Company: ARM

Business: Main business is the low power processors that are present in several (all?) Apple products.

Active: They are globally active and interacting with smartphone producers etc.

P/E: 76.8

Analysis of Qualcomm

When it comes to companies that I do not own myself the story about them will be almost none existing however maybe someone else will find the excel sheet of interest and maybe decide to buy the stock. Qualcomm was analysed for the purpose of comparing it against Intel.

Company: Qualcomm
 
Business: They are mainly working with smartphones but keep all doors open. Making chips/processors as well as working with the LTE technology. They are also involved with software. My smartphone contains a snapdragon processor which is a product from Qualcomm. They are working a bit like an investor and are hunting small companies with great technology that they then help to push forward and bring out on the market.

Active: They are interacting with the high tech companies world wide.

P/E: 18.7

Our Greek friends

I am very proud of what you have accomplished! By the look of it all the milestones have been reached and another 10 billion € will be sent towards Greece. This is great news!
The main problem was and to a large extent still is the amount of people working in governmental jobs. What I understood they have now found a way of which it is possible to decrease the governmental employees even though they have taken an "oath" which would mean they could not get fired... ever... but apparently if two institutions are put together and a job then becomes obsolete then that person can be fired. So they have found a loop-hole to be able to not only decrease the governmental jobs but also to produce a more efficient governmental machinery by decrease the amount of institutions.

Analysis of Intel

Company: Intel

Business: Mainly hardware with focus on processors with "intel inside" being a slogan that everyone knows what it means as well as the quality that stands behind that statement.

Active: Globally working with all technology producers. Intel themselves are active mainly in the US and EU.

P/E: 9.7