BP report Q2 2015

BP arrived a couple of days ago with their Q2 report and it was no fun to read it as it almost never has been since I decided to step in as a shareholder. There is no way around it but to say that it was a mistake to step in to BP back then when the entire horrible accident and litigations were still in the cradle. Now we know how large the costs became and BP have divested plenty of assets to be able to pay for this fault which means that BP is definitely no longer the company that it once were. Just as a reminder to myself for the future. If a company looks cheap when litigations are over then that is the moment to consider to buy them and not any moment before then. In this case I bought BP three years and three months to early and looking at BP today... would I then buy it? And if not, then why am I not selling it? Especially now when the oil price is so low and with little chance of short-term improvements... difficult, difficult.

Is the first million the hardest?

I got absolutely no clue at all because I am far from it and my set plan also does not concern reaching one million euro in stocks. My original plan is 750,000 € but I have come to realise that I need even less than that.

It is however interesting that so many says that the first million is the hardest to make. Where does it come from and how does that apply to me?

BASF report Q2 2015

BASF arrived with their Q2 2015 report and the market was very unhappy with it this time and the share price even dropped by well over -3%. What I find interesting here is that in the last report I was seriously annoyed due to their party costs and this report looks to me like business as usual so I wonder why the analysts expected so much more from BASF than what they got.

Kernel operating report Q4 2015

The black soil of Ukraine still manages to give large harvests despite of wars, debts and inflation. To buy a Ukrainian agricultural and logistics company in the middle of a war was, in a way, an experiment to see if the investor fears were justified. I know that the only way for me to follow a company properly is to step in as a shareholder otherwise it would have been more clever to not do so and only to kep the data from an imaginary investment made. 

Analysis of Ensco

Company: Ensco

ISIN GB00B4VLR192 | WKN A1JYNN 

Business: A British oil and gas service company. Their services offered is offshore drilling for the petroleum industry and are the second largest in the world. They have a fleet of: 9 drillships including 1 under construction, 11 dynamically-positioned semisubmersibles, 3 moored semisubmersibles, 40 premium jackups including 3 under construction, 2 deepwater and 3 shallow-water managed units. They have around 7 rigs for sale, 13 are cold stacked (to decrease maintenance costs) and 8 are available without customer.

Active: On six continents!

P/E: -1.1 (also P/E5 becomes negative)

Comment: The dividend might look good but they have cut the quarter payments from 0.75 USD to 0.15 USD which gives a yield around 3.2% if they continue like that. In 2014 they depreciated their assets by -4.2 billion USD and they took a cost of -1.2 billion USD for non continued operations. They have almost no goodwill left in their books now. Without these two they would have had an acceptable profit in 2014 and Q1 2015 looked ok so even with so much of the fleet out of business they still seem to make a profit. They have the right to buy back shares for 2 billion USD and they can issue up to 450 million shares right now 271 millions are issued. Looks as if the managers can fool around a little as they please.

IBM report Q2 2015

The American internet service company IBM arrived with their Q2 report for 2015. This report was not well accepted by the market and I fully agree with them this time. The report was bad and what I thought was a temporary thing last quarter does not seem to have improved yet.

Analysis of Agrana 2015

Company: Agrana

ISIN AT0000603709 | WKN 779535  

Business: An Austrian agricultural processor. They are divided into three segments: Sugar (traditionally their core business but decreasing sugar prices is having a large impact), Starch (potatoes and corn sold to food, paper, textile, construction and the pharmaceutical industry) and finally Fruit (prepared fruit and fruit juices, the growth business).

Active: In over 40 countries world wide but around half of the revenue comes from Austria.

P/E: 13.7

Comment: They have two large owners. Südzucker with around 50% of the shares and ZBG with 43% of the shares. The free-float is only 7.3%!

Analysis of TJX

Company: TJX

ISIN US8725401090 | WKN 854854  

Business: An American off-price apparel and home fashions retailer. They use several store names based on take overs and store concept and in the U.S. they have T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Sierra Trading Post and in Canada they have Winners, HomeSense, Marshalls and in Europe they got T.K. Maxx and HomeSense.

Active: in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Poland, Ireland and Austria.

P/E: 22.0

Eniro report Q2 2015

Yet another bad report from Eniro and it seems to be a never ending story. Well actually there are two ends to that. A) I sell my shares and B) They go belly up. What was then of interest this time I wonder?

Intel report Q2 2015

Intel is out with their Q2 report for 2015. Things have been, and by the look of it, will continue to be difficult for Intel. The thing I love about Intel thought is that they keep making money even in troubled times and I hope that they will keep doing so for many more years even though the market today does not seem to believe so.

Analysis of MLP

Company: MPL (best viewed in German)

ISIN DE0006569908 | WKN 656990

Business: A German financial service company. They are specifically directing themselves towards academics to get lawyers, dentists, medical doctors, engineers etc. to start early to plan for for instance retirement. When you have them as customers also other products are offered and today they have wealth management, health insurance, property insurance etc. They do not exclusively offer their services to private people but they also offer it to institutions and companies.

Active: To my knowledge Germany only.

P/E: 14.4

Analysis of Balda

Company: Balda

ISIN DE0005215107 | WKN 521510 

Business: A German injection molded plastic company. The group contains three daughters: Balda C. Brewer, Balda Medical and Balda Precision (two were bought in 2012). They have three major field of activities which are: Healthcare, Technical and Eyewear.

Active: Main areas of activity is Europe and the US.

P/E: 24.4

ABF operating report Q3 2015

The new regulations in the UK says that the publicly traded company do not have to arrive with interim reports and since those things do cost money ABF directly cut it. They still arrive with a little statement but the content of that is minimal. Some people definitely want a report each quarter to be able to follow the companies they own and for me it does not matter that much. I prefer to get one good report per year than a couple of bad ones each quarter.

For the report in full please go here and for the previous report from ABF please visit ABF annual report 2014 and to find out more regarding ABF please click on analysis of ABF 2014.

The report more or less only contained that due to currency effects, strong GBP and strong USD, the revenue was flat compared to Q3 2014. ABF have also interacted with one of my other companies namely BP and they have bought out BPs part of Vivergo Fuels which is a bio-ethanol producer using wheat as the basis. Generally I find it inappropriate to make bio-fuel out of none waste material.

The sugar segment will most likely enjoy higher prices next year but on the other hand they have contracts which is 20% less than this year so that does not sound very good and I will expect more years to come with low earnings from the sugar part. 

Retail, meaning Primark, is doing very well and that I personally also observe as often as I can. they are making some re-organizations for logistics and selling space reasons and then they are preparing for the launch in America and more precisely in Boston.

I will continue to wait for the magic word of Primark going solo but until the other segments are performing better I guess that thought will not even cross the managers heads.

Conclusion: ABF continues to be a waiting game and in the meantime Primark keep pushing forward and increasing the value of the entire conglomerate. I will of course continue to be a shareholder.

Analysis of Romgaz

Company: Romgaz 

ISIN ROSNGNACNOR3 | WKN A1W7F9 

Business: A Romanian energy company. The main activities concerns: Exploration, Natural gas production, Electric Power Production. Storage, Trade, Technological Transport and finally Well Operations.

Active: Romania

P/E: 9.2

Comment: For an excellent and in-depth analysis please visit my blog colleague Value and Opportunity by clicking on SNGR Romgaz.

Analysis of Immofinanz 2015

Company: Immofinanz 

ISIN AT0000809058 | WKN 911064  

Business: An Austrian real estate company. They have decreased their focus and are now mainly working with retail, office and logistics.

Active: Europe and more specifically: Austria, Germany, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

P/E: 13.1

Extra stock bought July 2015: Gerry Weber

This buy is very difficult to explain and most likely I will fail in doing so but still the company has been bought and is now part of my portfolio.

For month after month Gerry Weber has turned up on the inside trading reports. The reason for this was that there would be a management change in the company. Herr Weber the elder would leave the CEO position to his son Ralf Weber. Since Herr Weber the elder does not give away his own shares to the son, Ralf has been forced to buy and buy from the stock market. I like this. The new CEO steps in and the first thing he is doing is month after month to tank shares. To me that shows commitment and dedication. Sure he would probably inherit the shares form his father at some point but apparently he has considered the price for the shares to be low which is why he has been buying them at around 30 € per share for almost one year now.

Analysis of Wüstenrot

Company: Wüstenrot & Württembergische

ISIN DE0008051004 | WKN 805100 

Business: A German financial group. They are active in three major fields: Banking, Insurance and Real Estate. There seem to be one daughter company dealing with each part of everything including the different banking, insurance and real estate parts. I wonder why they make it look messy when there is no reason for that.

Active: Main focus in German. They have started up some business also in Ireland, Slovakia, Hungary and in the Czech Republic.

P/E: 6.4

Dividend from ABF: July 2015

This dividend I had more or less forgotten about. ABF seems to have a habit of paying out two dividends. One large on which is paid out in January and then a smaller one that comes half a year later.

For my 100 shares I received 10 GBP which got converted into 14.04 €. From that I had to pay a taxes in the size of 3.70 € which then gives me paid out as cash on my broker account 10.34 €. In total I have received 43.24 € from ABF in dividend which gives a YoC of 2.6% which is not very good but ABF was not bought due to dividend payments.

To find out more regarding ABF then please visit analysis of ABF 2014.

To check out my current dividend payment history then please visit the Stock Dividends page which has now been updated.

Analysis of Gerry Weber 2015

Company: Gerry Weber

ISIN DE0003304101 | WKN 330410  

Business: A German fashion retail and accessories company. They currently have four brands for women: Gerry Weber, Taifun, Samoon and (the new addition by acquisition) Hallhuber. Underneath the Gerry Weber brand they have an additional two brands (Gerry Weber Edition and G.W.). They run their own stores but also franchise as well as online and sale of their brands in department stores. 

Active: In over 62 countries. They themselves are running 1000 stores (219 from Hallhuber)

P/E: 13.5

Stock bought July 2015: MüRe

When I started to build my investment portfolio back in spring 2012 then MüRe was the very first stock that I bought. The share price was pushed down heavily due to the accident in Fukushima and it caused an extremely bad year for MüRe. Back then I got the shares for the bargain price of around 109 € and in the beginning of this year the share price was up a bit above 200 €.

Since then the CEO have talked down the share price and the managers have been buying like crazy so who am I not to join in on that?

I therefore bought an additional seven shares for the price of 160.94 €. I now hold 25 shares in total in MüRe and including fees I have invested 3108 € which gives me a price per share of 124.32 €.

I have now owned MüRe for 40 months that value will keep growing.

To find out more about MüRe then please click on analysis of MüRe 2015.

If you want to see my current Stock Portfolio then click on the link but the portfolio will not be fully updated until the end of the month. 

Analysis of PotashCorp

Company: PotashCorp

ISIN CA73755L1076 | WKN 878149 

Business: A Canadian mining and fertilizer company. They are improving the crop yields by providing farmers with potash (K), nitrogen (N) and phosphate (P) that they are mining mainly in Canada but they are also active in six more countries.

Active: World wide with sales.

P/E: 17.04

Comment: Due to the latest interaction with one of my holdings, K+S (analysis of K+S 2015), I felt that it was a good moment to take a closer look at them.

Stocks of Interest: July 2015

As many of you know, and probably shake your heads about, the investment for last month became Avtovaz. This is my second investment that is purely based on the management. This also means that a completely new holding was yet again started. Some investors want to be focused with few holdings and based on how I act I am very clearly not one of those. Good? Bad? Right? Wrong? Who cares. There are even more ways to be a successful investor then there are companies in the world and of course the inverse is also true.

Summary of June 2015

As I have already written was successful on the two exams and I have now managed to pocket 30 credits in macro economy. Next autumn the journey continues with business administration... at least I hope that I will be accepted but the chance that I would not is very low.

It seems as if a period of relaxation is starting now for me. We are getting almost no orders in the company and the projects that I have running demand very little time. I will therefore focus on trying to write and file at least one more patent in the coming two months so that value is still being created in the company.

German inside trading: June 2015

June arrived and passed and with it there were also registered insider trades occurring. The activity on the stock market has been up and down and all over the place. The zero interest rate + Greece seems to make it difficult for the market to place a correct value on a company. The question is if the managers in the company are better able to do this?

For the previous report please click on German inside trading: May 2015.

The dealing were: