Retail Holdings sells majority stake in Singer Sri Lanka

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Retail Holdings announced today that they have sold 61.7% of their stake in Singer Sri Lanka for a total consideration of $69.0 million. Because the stock was owned through Sewko Holdings in which the company has a 54.1% stake the consideration attributable to Retail Holdings shareholders will be $37.3 million. This is pretty significant news since Singer Sri Lanka was one of the last remaining big position besides Singer Bangladesh. According to the press release Retail Holdings hasn’t yet determined what the cash will be used for, but based on their history of paying out (large) dividends another one of those is a safe bet. With 4.65 million shares outstanding the $37.3 million payment would enable a dividend of a little more than $8/share, in addition to the $1 dividend that already has been announced for November.

For some reason the company didn’t sell their whole stake in Singer Sri Lanka, but they are keeping a 9.5% stake with the option to sell it to the acquiring party within 12 to 15 months. I have no idea why they have structured the transaction in such a way, but my guess is that it has to do with taxes or other rules that make disposing of the whole stake in one go less attractive. Following the transaction the acquiring party is obligated to launch a tender offer for all shares so presumably they want to acquire everything, while Retail Holdings wants to exit. No reason to think that the remaining position won’t be sold in the time frame of the option.

While Retail Holdings is up a bit based on this news I think the stock is still cheap. It is currently trading at a discount of 25% to underlying asset value, which is not that huge, but if you take into account that shareholders will most likely receive $9/share in dividends the discount on the remaining holdings rises to 37%.

Disclosure

Author is long Retail Holdings

Locus Capital starting activist campaign on Tejoori

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Earlier this year I bought a small position in Tejoori. After selling substantially all its assets the company consists solely of cash, and cash like instruments. My thesis at the time was that the Tejoori would eventually fully liquidate, and distribute the cash to shareholders. Since then nothing has really happened, and the company has remained noncommittal in distributing the cash. In the latest interim report the same language as in the previous report was used that promised that there is the intention “to return to shareholders a certain proportion of the cash generated from the sale of the Arjan Plots”.

Locus Capital has decided that things have taken long enough, and is trying to start an activist campaign with the intention to get management to return all shareholder capital. In order to get this kick-started they have created a Google Sheet to collect the information of fellow shareholders who have a similar goal. I suggest you fill it out here if you are a shareholder.

Disclosure

Author is long Tejoori

Black Earth Farming merger arbitrage update

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I wrote about the Black Earth Farming merger slash liquidation in April. At that time the company expected to distribute between $185 and $193 million to shareholders at the end of June. Due to some delays in regulatory approvals that date has been pushed backwards to early September, and the amount of the distribution has been adjusted downwards as well. Shareholders are now expected to receive between $180 and $182 million which translates to SEK 6.68 and SEK 6.76/share, significantly lower than the initial company estimate that was between SEK 7.2 and SEK 7.5/share. In dollars the new estimate is just marginally lower than the bottom of the old range, but in Swedish krona the difference is a lot bigger so it seems that the biggest reason is simply a change in exchange rates (even though the company was partially hedged). Other contributing factors were lower crop prices, and some additional money that is being retained to fund litigation in the US.

I exited my position in Black Earth Farming a couple of weeks ago, because the spread at that time was negative if you would take into account the change in exchange rates. With the stock now trading at SEK 6.50 the merger is once again becoming marginally attractive. It’s a spread of just 2.8% compared to the bottom of the estimated range, but with the payment expected to arrive the 6th of September the annualized return of a long position is pretty solid 23%. With no real risks remaining I think that that is not bad, so I initiated a small position again today.

Disclosure

Author is long Black Earth Farming again

Half-year portfolio review, 2017 edition

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With the first half of 2017 behind us it is once again time for the obligatory performance review. As can be seen in the table below my performance was more than satisfactory. While the benchmark eked out a small gain of 3.09% my portfolio returned almost seven times as much. I think by now I can be pretty confident that I have some edge on the market, although it remains to be seen how big it is. In almost every past performance review I have written that I don’t expect that I’ll be able to continue to repeat these returns going forward, and I still think that is the case. But who knows. Maybe, just maybe, I can keep this going for a couple of more years.

YearReturn*Benchmark**Difference
201218.53%14.34%4.19%
201353.04%17.49%35.55%
201427.72%18.61%9.11%
201520.23%8.76%11.47%
201643.58%11.09%32.49%
2017-H120.46%3.09%17.37%
Cumulative381.77%98.46%283.31%
CAGR33.09%13.27%19.82%

* Return in euro’s after transaction costs, dividend withholding taxes and other expenses
** Benchmark is the MSCI ACWI (All Country World Index) net total return index in euro’s

While my result for the first half of 2017 is pretty good I’m actually not that happy about it. I have reflected a bit upon why that is the case, and I think it’s because the good performance is mainly driven by just a couple of lucky outliers while I also had plenty of idea’s this year that didn’t work out or had a lot more potential than what I realized. It’s not very visible in the graph below because most of the variance is hidden in the “special situations” bucket, but Sapec is for example responsible for 795bps of the performance while “undisclosed merger A” added another 454bps. While Sapec was a great idea, the fact that I was able to buy a large position at almost the low of the day after the going private transaction was announced was just luck. That luck is partially being offset by other trades such as Destination Maternity (my biggest loser with a minus 172bps contribution) while “undisclosed merger B and C” subtracted respectively 152bps and 52bps from the result. I’m often attracted to deals where it is hard or impossible to hedge out company specific risk, and as a result I will have to accept some variance.Also very visible is that in the first half of this year my portfolio faced a large headwind from currency movements, mainly caused by the US dollar losing value versus the euro. In previous years this movement was often in the other direction, and I expect that in the long run these gains and losses will roughly even out. The MSCI ACWI benchmark faced a similar currency headwind. It was up 8.95% in local currency, but just 3.09% in euro’s. While I don’t really own any stocks that are part of that index this is one of the reasons why it’s still a useful comparison.

As you can see my portfolio is in broad strokes looking like it usually does with a large allocation to various special situations complemented with a few dozen value stocks. New is the large position labeled “various receivables”. I often participate in special situations that result in a cash outflow while my broker doesn’t recognize the asset that I receive. If the cash outflow is small relative to my portfolio I usually just value these assets at zero, but for larger transactions it would skew my results too much. A large part of these receivables are the tax assets created in the Sapec transaction, but they also contain the DNIB Unwind (liquidation trust) shares at cost and the remaining Primo Water shares held in escrow at market value.

Another change that warrants a mention is that I finally sold my position in Berkshire Hathaway this year. I bought my first shares in 2010, and since then the stock has performed pretty well. At the same time, I don’t expect miracles from it and it’s probably going to perform roughly in line with the US stock market. Since I had more ideas than money on multiple occasions this year I thought it was a good time to say goodbye to this stock.

Disclosure

Author is long everything in the portfolio overview

Sapec announces plan to go private at €60/share

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Yesterday at the end of the evening the story broke that the family controlling Sapec want to take the company private at €60/share after the payment of the €150 special dividend. This is great news, because I would have happily sold my shares for a lot less after receiving the dividend. Sapec has a book value per share of €41.60, and as you can see here I was doing my math with €30/share valuation for the stub. The book value doesn’t ascribe any value to the €36 million Sapec has provided for the Novo Bank guarantee. While the market has been skeptical about a recovery of this it could be worth up to €27/share, so the offer price of €60/share seems pretty fair. I think there is a very low risk that this deal will fall through. After the special dividend the family obviously has the liquidity to buy out minority shareholders, the fund that controls 15% of the outstanding shares has agreed to tender at €60/share and the family already controls 55% of the outstanding shares.

The timing of the announcement is a little bit unfortunate for me. The stock is scheduled to trade ex-dividend tomorrow with the payable date being Friday at the end of the week, and I thought it would be a good idea to substantially increase my position. With the majority of the cash coming back super fast the internal rate of return is pretty good, even when it would take five or six years to utilize the tax deductible this trade would generate. Yesterday the stock was halted, and today the price is of course up significantly. Luckily the math still works for me, and while it hurts to buy the stock so much higher I did execute the plan and increased my position from 5% to almost 50%!

It’s a big bet, but in my mind not as big as it sounds. I see it more as a roughly 15% position in the stub and a 5% position in a Belgium tax receivable while the Dutch tax credits provide lots of almost free upside. After the special dividend I think the stub should trade close to €60/share so I would be able to close out that part of the trade fast as well, and if it doesn’t it will probably be an attractive merger arb play.

Disclosure

Author is massively long Sapec