Deutsche Bank (DB) report Q1 2014

When I was looking over this report there was a children phrase that jumped into my mind and it goes "Liars, liars, pants on fire" the severity of this problem is different if you follow the American use of the word pants or the British one and in my opinion the good one to use here is the British one. To my huge surprise the stock market responded to this report from Deutsche Bank with standing ovations and the shares increase by +2.18%. Insanity!

Analysis of Sollers

Company: Sollers

Business: A Russian automotive company. They are producing cars for UAZ, Ford, SsangYong, Toyota, Mazda and Isuzu. Until 2012 they were also producing cars for Fiat. Besides from these commercial vehicles they are also producing automotive components, assembly kits and diesel engines.

Active: In Russia but the cars they produce for other companies are being sold world wide.

P/E: 4.9

Analysis of TransContainer

Company: TransContainer

Business: A Russian logistics company. They have four pillars to stand on: Rail Container Transportation (moving the containers by train ca: 28% of the revenue), Freight Forwarding & Logistics Services (Preparation of shipping, shipping door-to-door etc. 55% of the revenue), Terminal Services (loading, unloading and storage 11% of revenue) and finally Container Trucking (From for instance harbours to clients warehouse etc. 5% of revenue).

Active: The entire Easter Europe block including Germany and Turkey, Russia with neighbours and in Asia they are present in China and Japan.

P/E: 6.5

Screener for Ukrainian stocks?

source: Wikimedia

It seems as if I spoke in haste in my article "how contrarian has Russia and Ukraine become?" last time when I said that I had finally found a good stock screener for Russia and Ukraine. It works very well for Russia but I have at the moment nothing good for Ukraine.

So therefore this is more or less a plead asking if someone knows a good site that I can use?

Part of the problem seems to be that many of the Ukraine companies are registered elsewhere. I have already previously analysed two stocks from Ukraine and one is Kernel (analysis of Kernel)which is registered in Poland and then we have Agroton (analysis of Agroton) which is registered in Cyprus. This of course makes it very hard to even figure out which companies I should look at to analyse.

So... I will keep looking. Worst case scenario I will just fire off some analysis of the biggest companies in Ukraine and hope that at least one or two of them will be contrarian enough to be of interest. Even if they are not contrarian I will still publish them for future reference as I always do.
 

Analysis of Kamaz

Company: Kamaz

Business: A Russian vehicle manufacturer. Their product portfolio included first and foremost Trucks and secondly Buses but they also have Trailers, Tractors, and parts such as Chassis, Engines and Power Units.

Active: Today over 85% of their sales are made in Russia. The other 15% is mainly to neighbours such as Ukraine (maybe not so much right now), Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan as well as Turkmenistan.

P/E: 4.1

Comment: This analysis is based on the years 2008 to 2012 and they will soon come out with the full year 2013. More interesting though... German Daimler (analysis of Daimler) owns 11% of the shares in Kamaz and on Kamaz homepage they are talking about a more intensified cooperation with Daimler in the future as well as mentioning increased export as being part of their strategy for increased revenue for 2020.

Analysis of Pharmstandard

Company: Pharmstandard

Business: A Russian pharmaceutical company. They are producing and selling around 250 different pharmaceutical products. They have eight production lines of which six are already complying to the EU GMP regulations and the remaining two will be converted before the end of 2014. They already have a foot in Cyprus (EU) which means they have the possibility to step into Europe.

Active: They are currently focused on Russia, Ukraine and have, as mentioned, one foot in Cyprus.

P/E: 4.7

Associated British Foods (ABF) H1 report 2014

Associated British Foods arrived with their H1 report and the market went ballistic. The full ABF H1 report 2014 can be found here and everything is taken from it. With ballistic I mean that the stock increased directly with 6 to 7% and to be fair my take is that it had nothing to do with the report but on two press releases that were made at the same time upon which one was probably even more important than the other...

Analysis of Novatek

Company: Novatek

Business: A Russian gas company. They are active in four fields with their gas and liquid hydrocarbons and those are: Exploration & Production, Processing, Storage & Transport and finally Marketing.

Active: Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region (all their exploration and gas fields are there) and Russia which they support with 16% of their entire gas demand. They are actively selling products to Europe (large contract with Germany), the US and China.

P/E: 9.4

Analysis of Aeroflot

Company: Aeroflot

Business: A Russian air transportation company. They performing all the classical tasks such as Transportation of Passenger and Cargo, but also Catering, Insurance, Cargo-Handling, fuelling Services and Duty-Free Retail.

Active: Main focus Russia but are flying to 52 countries world wide

P/E: 20.6 (however what makes it a bit more interesting the P/E3: 6.4)

Kernel operating report Q3 2014

It has indeed been a difficult period for Kernel and the stock market has been hard on them due to the conflict with Russia. This caused the shares to drop far over 20% during the last quarter but besides from that how has the company actually been doing?

Happy Easter to all of you

This year I even received an Easter card from my little nephew which I am very impressed over since he is only one year and eight months so his skills are spectacular! Now for Easter I will see him once again and this time maybe he will even be talking a little! This is indeed good news because that also means that one can start teaching him about frugal living and austerity.

As a responsible uncle I will do my very best to explain to him that he will not be allowed to buy a new car, that he will never be allowed to take any credit unless it is for buying an apartment or a house and when he studies he is not allowed to take the credit only the part that is given by the Swedish government and on the side he should flip burgers or something similar to make sure he can pay his bills.

Most of the things I want to teach him I probably have to wait with but maybe one can start with small steps of his and mine and that to get things he must do something in return... Most likely I will fail with this little project during the Easter especially since I only got one and a half day with him but I will try.

Looking back at my own life I have made many of the mistakes that I want to teach him and in a way I wonder... just like I want to teach my nephews and future kids about things I find important to live a good life I wonder what my own parents took with them and have tried to teach me and what about my siblings? What do they want to teach their own children?

And what do you want to teach yours?

 

Analysis of MegaFon

Company: MegaFon

Business: A Russian telecom company. Besides from offering the classical things of voice, mobile, and fixed-line data transfer and roaming they are also active in offering mobile phones, laptops etc. with their own brand on the products.

Active: Main focus is Russia but they have also expanded into Tajikistan, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

P/E: 10.4

Analysis of Gazprom

Company: Gazprom

Business: A Russian energy company that are sitting on 18 % of the worlds calculated gas reserves. They are active within several fields and to just mention a few: Geological Exploration, Gas Production, Gas Transportation, Storage of Gas, Processing & Sales of Gas as well as Marketing of of Heat and Electric Power.

Active: Main activity is Russia but they are a large exporter of gas via their 168.000 km gas pipelines and are therefore present in 30 countries. Is a major player in Europe since several countries buy the gas from Gazprom.

P/E: 2.6

How contrarian has Russia and Ukraine become?

source: Wikimedia

When the conflict between Ukraine and Russia started my company Kernel (analysis of Kernel 2013 can be found here) directly dropped by several %-age and I decided to step in with more money to get more shares. Kernel is however registered in Poland but are active to 100% in Ukraine. The registration in Poland makes me a little bit more comfortable since it is within EU and to go further East has an increased level of risk to it but on the other hand if I am crazy enough to buy into a war then why should going further East stop me?

Since the start of all the troubles I have been interested in taking a closer look at Ukrainian as well as Russian companies. Until now I had not found a company screener that I was comfortable with but now I have (at least for Russia) and in the next couple of days / weeks I will try to take a look at companies in both these countries. Easter is however coming up and I will be travelling so we shall see how many articles I will manage to produce... maybe none... maybe one per day as I usually try to do it depends a little on my neighbour and that he sometimes graciously (but yet unknowingly, I am sure) leaves his internet open for the world to use.

If we only look at the stock markets then the drop has been in Russia over -20% and already from the start the companies were traded at low P/Es. In Ukraine if I got things correct the shares are even up by +35% this is very exciting! I guess it comes from that investors / institutions have done two things... punishing Russia and at the same time discovered that Ukraine existed and woops had a lot of cheap companies and I am very much looking forward to digging thru a few of their companies!


 

Analysis of Asseco Poland

Company: Asseco Poland

Business: A Polish information technology company. They have two pillars that they stand on and one is the sale of software (platforms for internet based businesses) and services (knowledge management, risk management and workflows)

Active: Poland is their strongest market and from there they are moving out into the rest of Europe. They grow by acquisition of smaller companies using the Polish market and market position as a cash cow for doing so.

P/E: 9.5

€ vs $

This article was started in the beginning of December 2013 due to two events that happened:

1. I received a letter in October 2013 from my stock broker telling me that the dollar would definitely become much stronger very soon and now was the time to act on that! The entire thing can be found here as maxinfo for DB customer.
2. A relative of mine (back in November 2013) was talking about how strong the dollar would become very soon.

If it would have been only one event happening then I doubt that it would have triggered me to respond to it but since it was two then some thoughts is always needed and especially what is that statement based on that the dollar will become stronger? Or maybe it is easier to start to ask why is the dollar so cheap today?

Analysis of Neste Oil

Company: Neste Oil

Business: A Finnish oil and refinery company. They have two business segments: Oil Products & Renewable (procures crude oil, produce classical products such as lubricants as well as renewable diesel) and the second segment is Oil Retail (fuel stations, biggest in Finland and have a market cut also in the Baltics and parts of Russia)

Active: Mainly around the Baltic Sea with Finland, the Baltics, Sweden but are also present in the Netherlands, in the US and in the Middle East.

P/E: 7.3

Analysis of OMV Group

Company: OMV Group

Business: An Austrian oil and gas exploration company. They are divided into four different segments: Exploration & Production (of oil and gas currently mainly in Austria and Romania are expanding towards Africa), Gas & Power (using their gas for energy production), Refining & Marketing (running three refineries and over 4k filling stations) and finally Global Solutions (offering services solutions for their clients).

Active: Mainly in Austria, Romania and in Germany some presence in additional eight countries and are expanding with their exploration towards Africa / Middle East.

P/E: 9.0

Light in the end of the tunnel

In my last summary of March 2014 that can be found here I brought up that I started to see the light in the end of the tunnel. That was wrong. The rug has once gain been removed from underneath my feet. I have not spoken much about it besides from mentioning decreased salary etc. but this time I will be more open about it and explain more in detail.

Analysis of Semapa

Company:Semapa

Business: A Portuguese holding company with three legs to stand on and those are: Paper and Pulp (production and sales of cellulose pulp and paper, almost 75% of the revenue comes from here), Concretes and Aggregates (manufacture and sale of cement and concrete, almost 25% of revenue) and the third leg is Environment (collection and recovery of animal by-products as well as recycling of cooking oil, <1% of revenue).

Active: Paper and Pulp is active all over Europe and US, Concretes is mainly Portugal and some in Africa and Middle East and Environment is in Portugal and Spain.

P/E: 9.2

Visit to Prague in the Czech Republic

The first thing that hit you is that the Czech Republic is doing well! The infrastructure with trains and roads connecting not only between the different parts of the Czech Republic but also to the neighbour countries of Poland/Austria/Slovakia and Germany is excellent and they must have very early on understood that it is important to have an excellent infrastructure to attract investor money and foreign companies.

Analysis of Devro

Company: Devro

Business: A British supplier of collagen for food casing (mainly sausages). They have four lines of products: Edible Casings (standard on the supermarket sausages today for boiling and frying), Non Edible Casing (very often on salami and other larger "sausages"), Films (holds together larger pieces of smoked and cured meat) and finally the appetizing name of Plastics (also used on sausages and other pressed products).

Active: Active world wide in 100 countries. Production in USA, UK, Czech Republic and Australia. Europe represents 46% of sales, US 26% and Asia/Pacific 28%. Interesting fact is that in Europe only 30% is collagen based, 40% in the US and a total of 60% in Asia.

P/E: 11.2

Contrarian stock bought April 2014: Cez

As I fortunately had the possibility to buy another stock this month I decided to continue investing in the energy companies. This time I did not go to the south of Europe but instead towards the east and the Czech Republic. The new stock became Cez and the analysis of Cez was previously made and can be found on the link..

I bought the shares on the Frankfurt stock exchange so at my normal fee but paid slightly more for the shares since few trades are being made. Either way I am now the happy owner of 50 Cez shares at a price of 21.183 € per share including the trading fee.

With the next update of the monthly report the new change will be brought in to the Stock Portfolio.
 

Analysis of Austevoll Seafood

Company: Austevoll Seafood

Business: A Norwegian fishing and fish farming company. They have five segments to lean back on and those are: Fishmeal & Oil (grinding down all the leftovers and extracting the fish oil. Often use as animal feed etc.), Human Consumption (fresh fish as well as canned fish), Pelagic (frozen fish), Production - Salmon & Trout (these are the fish farms they have a total of 137 of them) and finally Sales & Distribution (we all know what that means)

Active: With fishing and farms they are active in North Atlantic, Peru and Chile. They are making sales to 29 countries world wide.

P/E: 17.1

Dividend from BP: April 2014

BP is one of the companies that I have that pay out dividend each quarter and now it was time once again! This time I received a total of 24.39 € (or 20.20 GBP) for my 354 shares in BP. I hope that in the end of the year that I will have managed to receive out over 100 € from BP to invest in other contrarian companies however it is difficult to say exactly how much it will become due to currency fluctuations. For check out BP please see analysis of BP 2014.

The Stock Dividends page has now been updated.