Interesting insights - May edition
Welcome to my first monthly sum up of interesting stuff I happened upon this last month.
Dear subscribers.
May is the month where us Norwegians celebrate our constitution day with champagne, sausages and ice cream. Hope my Norwegian readers had a great celebration!
I’ve been happy to see that people have been interested in my posts this first month of writing. This month I’ve written three articles, these can be found here, one in English and two in Norwegian.
Interesting insights will be a monthly newsletter where I give updates on portfolio happenings, exciting company reports and thesis’ and podcasts I’ve enjoyed listning to. A monthly bouquet of tips so to speak. Enjoy!
Portfolio updates this month:
The month kicked off with MercadoLibre reporting first quarter results. Read the companies letter to shareholders here. It continues to be an awesome growth story. Q1 made the market re-rate the company back to previous levels. I’m glad I seized the opportunity on the post q1 dip to start my position.
Genmab reported their first quarter results on the same day as MercadoLibre. The company showed great growth with a 46% yoy revenue growth and almost doubling operating profit (+92,1% yoy). Darzalex continues to be a cash cow, and other drugs are starting to show strong growth. I decided to sell Genmab this month after being honest with myself about the potential for having an edge, and on how well I understand the business model of the company. It’s too complex of a medical company for my taste, and I’d rather focus my attention on other companies I understand better.
Norbit presented their Q1 numbers 15. May. Initially the share price fell around 11%, but recovered well intraday and ended being down 4.5%. Norbit had some concerning results, but in my opinion the management answered these concerns well. Read more in my deep dive on Norbit here.
LuluLemon got the boot out of the portfolio early in the month. It’s still a very good company, but there are too many possible uncertainties in their road to success. I got lucky with my exit, and was not hit by the tumble the stock took after the announcement that the chief product officer, Sun Choe, left. Management matters, and creative management matters for clothing brands. However, if I were a Lulu shareholder still, I wouldn’t be too fuzzed about the change in senior management though this is one of the reasons why I find LuluLemon to tough of an investment nut to crack. I came over this piece yesterday, and felt it summarized my thoughts on LuluLemon well.
With the departure of Genmab and LuluLemon from my portfolio two companies have taken their place: O’Reilly Auto Parts and Topicus. The latter I’ve owned earlier, but sold, as I felt the share price had gotten ahead of itself. After reporting Q1, I bit the bullet, and have reopened a 6.5% position in Topicus that I would love to grow to between 8-10% if there is any share price drops coming up.
I’ve also added to my positions in Medistim and Evolution AB (increased my EVO position by 40%), and with fresh money opened a position in SanLorenzo.
Interesting stock pitches
Investment overview of Shelly Group, a IoT company from Bulgaria that has delivered jaw-dropping returns (CAGR since IPO: 69.8% (5Yr CAGR - 109%))1:
Niche, under-followed, and growing Italian name that was very interesting to read about:
Dutch tech company that has pivoted to SaaS-business model. It provides tech that measures cows' heat, and has attractive pricing. What's not to like?
To balance out reading about smaller European growth companies, read this great article about Deere & Co from Best Anchor Stocks:
Comparison between Airbnb and Booking.com:
An investment thesis on Arista Network:
A business overview of AbbVie:
Luxury businesses are good companies to be invested in, often less cyclical and recessions. One lesser known company in this segment is SanLorenzo:
I’ve also started researching Stemmer Imaging. This post by Contrarian Cashflows provided a good starting point.
Here’s an article on a gaming developer that also have great fundamental numbers to show for:
Investment insights
A method for ranking companies that might enable you to better pick stocks:
The big technology companies have turned into entirely new beasts:
Some great rules to be able to invest in compounders and enjoy the slow and steady life:
Good reflections on patience, biases and letting your winners keep on winning:
Sidecar investing is a strategy that I’ve found more and more compelling. It plays on an important concept: Align yourself with great managers. Here’s a piece on it I enjoyed reading:
Thanks to the hype surrounding the Chinese market, I’ve looked into some Chinese companies of late, and happened upon the Substack Interconnected. Writer with some unique insight into the Chinese business world, and I enjoyed reading this piece about Wang Chuanfu:
This piece on industrial compounders from Scandinavia is a good read:
My current watchlist:
Topicus is back! 🦎 Here’s some serial acquirer content:
Serial acquirers are an excellent group of companies, where the great companies of the segment have shown a tried and tested ability to compound.
This PowerPoint is from December last year, but still well worth the read for those who are interested in serial acquirers. The presentation is made by ReqCapital and provides tons of insight into serial acquirers.
Scuttlebutts musing on serial acquirers and decentralized organisation:
Two Topicus deep dives that helped me better understand the company:
Deep dive on Topicus’ sister company, Lumine Incorporated:
Want to read about other serial acquirers than CSU? Here are some lesser known and smaller serial acquirers:
Swedish industrial serial acquirers have been a popular investing theme for a while. Redeye summarizes the first quarter for the sector here. Redeye is a great source for information regarding Swedish serial acquirers, and is a warm recommendation from me!
What are the smart investors doing?
Every now and then I like to take a peek into what moves elite investors are doing. This webpage has a great overview of transactions and what shares great investors hold.
Two managers I aspire to learn from are Chuck Akre and Francois Rochon, and I like to pay some attention to their transactions.
Here’s Akres holdings after transactions reported in Q1:
And this list show the transactions of Rochon in Q1:
Both Akre Fund (Ps. Chuck Akre himself has stepped down from leading the fund) and Rochon have had some interesting transactions. Akre noticeably opened a position in Uber and sold quite a lot of BAM, while Rochon seem to have opened a sizeable position in Starbucks.
To learn more from great investors, I recommend having a look into Luuks Substack:
.
As always, if this content has provided value to your investing journey I would be very happy if you bought me a cup of coffee as a thank you.
Podcasts I’ve listened to this month:
Multibaggers Nuggets interview with former head of investors relations at MercadoLibre and NuBank. Interesting nuggets of insight into two very interesting companies.
In this episode of StockUp, Faruq and Kenneth have a chat with Mr. Valuation himself, Chuck Carnevale! It’s a very interesting discussion with insights on (naturally) valuation, Chucks investment style and more.
One more StockUp interview this month. In this episode they chat with Compounding Tortoise about his investment style, touching on investment themes such as luxury, sauna and great retailers.
Interview with Jeremy Kokemor, founder and investment manager at Right Tail Capital. A great conversation on high-quality businesses, and investing by finding companies that do all the little things well:
More Millennial Investing content! Can you get a higher return by taking on less risk? Pim van Vliet gives a run down on how this “eat your cake and have it to”-scenario is possible (shout-out to
for including this in one of his updates this month):The excellent Terry Smith being excellent as always:
Interview with Daye Deng, a knowledgeable person on the East Asian markets. Daye discusses the Chinese sports market, with a good intro to Ante Group:
Markets are a bit hard to understand at the moment, and I got some great perspectives from relistening to this memo by Howard Marks, originally recorded back in 2021 but with insights that resonated to today’s volatile markets:
A very interesting discussion with a poker player turned fund manager. Topics they discuss are short selling, value traps, taking sizeable bets and looking at risk as a player of probability. Very interesting investing discussion with a different angle than most.
That’s it for this month: Hope you have a lovely start to the summer months, and that you find some interesting nuggets of information in this monthly update.
Thanks for sharing my Lumine Deep Dive! Looking forward to keeping up with your investing journey. Love the increase to EVO, I think its a special business
Thanks for the mention! 🙏🏻