Dividend summary 2015

For the previous report please visit dividend summary 2014.

The first year (2012) of investment I received 461 € in dividends. The second year (2013) I received a total of 1,367 € however from this 653 € was due to selling share rights to Commerzbank, leaving 714 € in real dividends. The third year (2014) I received a total of 1,025 € in dividends of which 70 € were due to sale of rights leaving me with 955 € in real dividends. In the fourth year (2015) I received 75 € due to sale of rights for Eniro and additionally 1,852 € in dividends.

So the yearly dividends are increasing year by year which is great!

The dividend that I am receiving based on my total stock portfolio was a little bit more than 2.5 % which I consider to be good these days especially considering that I push in so much money into the stock portfolio. The dividend increase in comparison to last year was 94% which is extreme. I would love to see that continue!

The stock portfolio development 2015

As all of you know my target in the end is to reach 750 k€ invested on the stock market that will be my retirement fund. This means that I should not forget to every now and then look at the development for reaching this target.

Merry Christmas 2015

Since I found last years tree so cute it became also the picture this year! Why waste a good picture?

This year my wife and I have gone back to Sweden to celebrate with my family. Next year we will celebrate with her family to start getting the ball rolling of those celebration visits.

Since my brother came home from Australia with his entire family this year my parents house is pretty stuffed and to make ours as well as everyone else life a little bit easier we decided to stay in the summer house and drive the one hour back and forth when the traditions demands it.

Since we will celebrate with my family the food costs will be a little bit better off this Christmas, but the travelling (back and forth to Sweden + within Sweden) + the ski trip will drain the account. Most likely the smaller investment will be made for the first couple of months.

In my last Christmas greeting the Merry Christmas 2014 I wrote that I would try to give myself an increased salary which should hopefully make it possible for me to increase my investment pace slightly. I hoped to be able to invest 20k €. I was not that far off. In the end I invested a bit more than 22k € which I am happy to have managed to push out onto the stock market. The companies picked still needs to be improved though in the future. Oh, the salary increase will remain for now but I do not know for how long it can remain as such. The clouds are growing dark, which I am preparing for by increasing my buffer system and by increasing my cash to cover around eight months of living expenses. I will feed money into that cash buffer for the next couple of months which will also influence how much I can push into the broker account.

Anyway... Christmas is here. I am in my summer house with my beautiful wife. The wind is blowing, the rain is falling but inside the fire place is burning.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Analysis of Polaris

Company: Polaris

ISIN US7310681025 | WKN 893819

Business: An American, mainly, off-rode, vehicle producer. They have a wide range of products and those are: Side x Side Vehicles, All-Terrain Vehicles, Victory Motorcycles, Indian Motorcycle, Snowmobiles, GEM Electric Motorcars, Parts, Apparel & Accessories, Polaris Defense and finally Generators.

Active: Main focus is the US and Canada. They have distribution of their products on practically every continent.

P/E: 12.4

Dividend from BP: December 2015

The dividend payment from BP arrived on the broker account. This was the final one for the year so that is of course sad but the amount increased mainly due to that I decided to push a bit more money into BP during this last quarter.

For my 590 stocks in BP I received 39.14 GBP which got converted to 53.76 €. On this I had to pay 14.17 € in taxes and I ended up with 39.59 € on my broker account as cash.

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

To see my total dividend flow then please visit the Stock Dividends page that will soon be updated. 

Analysis of Horsehead

Company: Horsehead

ISIN US4406943054 | WKN A0MSW0

Business: An American Zinc producer. They are standing on two legs from what I can could see and those are: Zinc Production (will everything that follows such as Zinc oxide for paints or that it is used in galvanization process to protect steel from corroding and is 60% of the market. Zinc is often used as sacrificial anode meaning that it gets oxidized before and instead of the steel) and secondly Recycling (for instance of batteries etc that contains plenty of Zinc. Batteries is probably one reason for why many investors are involved as an attempt to benefit from the growing use of electrical cars).

Active: Production is the US and I assume they make world wide sales since they are the world leader in zinc production.

P/E: -6.3 (P/E5 will not be any better since they have kept loosing money)

The investment check list

As I wrote in a comment somewhere I have become more and more interested in making an investment check list. I heard about it from Mr Mohnish Pabrai and I find it to be a very correct thing to use.

Thinking back on my own investments and starting to considering this investment check list I must admit that I get a big embarrassed because I have bought cheap companies that I have found but I have very rarely taken a look at their competitors. So in situations where the entire sector crashed I have only bought more or less randomly the company that I looked at that then appeared to be cheap. This is not ok. There were for sure many other companies / competitors in the sector that were equally cheap but maybe with a significant advantage that I have completely missed to analyse.

Analysis of YNAP

Company: YOOX Net-A-Porter

ISIN IT0003540470 | WKN A0YFBT

Business: An Italian headquartered online luxury retail chain. They have two different operations and those are: Multi-Brand Online Stores (with NET-A-PORTER.COM, MR PORTER.COM, THECORNER.COM, SHOESCRIBE.COM, YOOX.COM, and THE OUTNET.COM) and secondly they run Online Flagship Stores (they design and manages the online stores for luxury brands).

Active: With offices and operations in the US, Europe, Japan, China and Hong Kong. They deliver today in 180 countries and they have two million active customers.

P/E: 316

Comment: The South African Mr. Johann Rupert that owns 9% of equity and 50% of votes in the luxury holding company Richemont also these days owns 50% of this company. I assume the cooperation between Mr. Rupert and Mr. Marchetti (the CEO of YNAP and founder of YOOX) has worked out well the last couple of years.

Analysis of Urban Outfitters

Company: Urban Outfitters

ISIN US9170471026 | WKN 888903

Business: An american retail chain with some dabbling in the food business. Their retail brand names are: Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, BHLDN and Terrain. They have 566 stores in total and their products are being sold in around 1600 wholesale specialty stores.  In November they also decided to buy the Vetri Family which is a casual dining pizza restaurant that Mr. Hayne apparently hope to be able to expand.

Active: Mainly USA and Canada with some presence in Europe.

P/E: 13.6

Dividend from IBM: December 2015

And also the final dividend payment from IBM for this year arrived on the broker account. As always we look forward to receiving new fresh money in dividends in the coming year. Ideally one should re-invest it but with crazy high broker fees as well as not having the possibility to own parts of shares we end up with no other possibility but to invest the dividends from IBM elsewhere.

For my 16 lonely shares I received in total 20.80 USD that got converted into 18.94 € from that was taken 4.84 € in taxes and I received 14.10 € cash on my account.

To know more about IBM please click on analysis of IBM 2015 and to check out my current dividend payment history then please visit the Stock Dividends page which has now been updated.

End of year overview 2015

For the third time I will now make an end of the year summary regarding my current holdings. Some companies have been with me for a long time and others have during this year parted ways. Two companies left the portfolio this year; Asian Bamboo and MüRe and in a third one, Kernel, I decreased my holding. Plenty of companies (too many?) entered the portfolio: Adidas, RWE, Avtovaz, Gerry Weber, TJX, VW, Deere and Fast Retailing (while writing this I am wearing a turtleneck sweater from Uniqlo). To me the generated value is (share price * shares + dividend - trading fees).

Analysis of Aareal Bank 2015

Company: Aareal Bank

ISIN DE0005408116 | WKN 540811

Business: A German bank specialising in property. They have two larger segments: Structured Property Financing (offers financing concepts for hotels and retail etc.) and secondly Consulting/Services (services for housing, commercial property as well as waste disposal and energy markets in terms of electronic banking and mass payment transactions).

Active: They have three regions: Europe, North America and Asia in total they are present in 25 countries when including the Baltic States.

P/E: 5.9 (P/E5: 14.2 though!)

Analysis of Loews 2015

Company: Loews Corporation

ISIN US5404241086 | WKN 851615

Business: An American conglomerate run by the Tisch family. They now hold four principal subsidiaries: CNA Financial Corporation, Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc., Boardwalk Pipeline Partners and Loews Hotels & Resorts. Loews are a bit similar to Berkshire Hathaway and their biggest earnings source right now is the insurance subsidiary CNA. The rest of the group is doing fairly poorly.

Active: Main focus is the US.

P/E: 24.61

Comment: Due to the general oil crisis I wanted to go back to take another look at this conglomerate hoping that the price had gone down to a more acceptable level.

Extra stock bought December 2015: Coba

Based on what I wrote yesterday regarding European banks this investment decision should not be a big surprise to any of you because also Commerzbank is traded at a P/B of 0.44 at this very moment. That is, frankly put, silly. It has taken a long time and obviously it will take even longer but I have no fear to be heavy into the German banks. The only thing is... missed opportunities that one have while waiting for the turn-arounds to turn around. Can one calculate that? Should one calculate that?

This then also finishes the investment round for the year 2015 since now we must wait for the final salary of the year from which we will then by stocks in January 2016. During the year around 22k € was pushed into stocks which is 10k more than my running plan but I guess I will speak more of that in another article now in the end of the year.

An additional 100 shares were bought at a total cost of 1,035 € including fees. This then gives me a total of 522 shares at a total cost of 6,362 € including fees or 12.19 € per share.

To find out more regarding Coba please visit analysis of Coba 2015.

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

Stock bought December 2015: Deutsche Bank

I read an article not that long ago concerning European banks. Unfortunately I did not save the link but what they mentioned were that European banks have for the last 30 years, on average, been trading at a P/B of 1.87. The Swedish banks that have done very well in the past and are currently doing ok are traded at around that level. So it makes sense to and I accepted the article as if it was correct what they stated. 

If I accept that that is correct then on the other hand how can I accept that Deutsche Bank is being traded at a P/B of 0.44 today? Especially considering that the two CEO crooks have been kicked out and a news captain is running the show with, by the look of it, an iron fist of justice.

I therefore decided to build up my DB holding and I bought 39 fresh shares at a total cost of 932.2 € which today gives me a total of 280 shares with a full investment of 7,843 € including fees or 28.01 € per share.

To find out more about DB then visit DB analysis 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.

Dividend from TJX: December 2015

TJX once again paid out dividend to me as the excellent shareholder that I am. Since I lately go more and more often to do my shopping there + the dividend payments are not very high I am still at a loss compared to what I have bought. Hopefully one day that it will be the inverse! Hmmm... that would be a funny target to have: Getting more in dividends from the companies which products you use than what you spend on their products.

For my 32 shares I received 6.72 USD which got converted to 6.35 €. From this 1.62 € was taken as away as taxes and I ended up with 4.73 € on my broker account as cash.

To find out more about TJX then please visit analysis of TJX.

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

TJX report Q3 2015

One of my latest American retail investments a la Peter Lynch arrived with their Q3 report. Since I am a couple of days late I now longer knows the market response but at least I find the report good.

Dividend from Intel: December 2015

The fourth quarter payment of dividend from Intel arrived on my broker account. Once again I received 24 USD for my 100 shares which this time due to a weaker EUR I ended up getting 22.58 € in total. From this I had to pay taxes in the size of 5.77 € and I ended up with 16.81 € on my broker account as cash.

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

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

Stocks of Interest: December 2015

Since the previous month had been so busy I was a bit more relaxed during November. The only addition became RWE which was to a certain extent due to that my order, of another company, did not go through. I decided to build up my 1k buffer on the broker account again and on top of things I had to shuffle over the final part of the debt to my brother to Sweden so the month was pretty strained. Each month I have shuffled over money and here in November I had to push over the final part to be able to pay that off. It will not be 100% correctly settled according to what was agreed but I wanted the bulk to be finished and with the payment that will be made now in December that bulk is gone. This should release some cash for for buying even more stocks but I have decided to monthly start building up a private cash buffer that I can use if I get into to much trouble of finding a new job. I will not be paid any unemployment money here in Germany so for this reason I have been previously foolish by not building up such a pile of cash. I will build up around six months of expenses which in combination with my current buffer would give me around eight months to find a new job without having any other incomes. If it in the end will not be needed then well... you all know where that cash pile will go!

Summary of November 2015

The picture above is the greeting that I had from my wonderful wife this morning when getting out of bed. It is a German advents calendar and for each day until Christmas there is a little bag with some added content. It is a very nice concept that you can personalize as much or little as you want based on what you put inside the bags. I like the concept!

Since I am 1. Less organized and 2. Swedish. I had of course nothing even remotely similar to this for my wife but at least I got her a calendar of sort so that saved me.

German inside trading: November 2015

The share prices have kept running higher and higher during the month and the bad news is that it is not based on the companies publishing excellent results for Q3... well... at least my companies have not shown anything to be happy about. The mangers might however see things differently. They know that their savings program will start working during the fourth quarter etc.

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

The trades were: