Another structural decline casualty
In April 2016 I wrote an article on Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI), a company the Montaka Global Fund was short. The premise of the article was to highlight a key component of the Montaka short framework: Thematics / Structural Declines. This article will provide an update on how our short thesis panned out, with the […]
When the monopolist can’t make money
In a business context, the word “monopoly” typically brings to mind notions of market dominance, barriers to entry, and above all, profitability. It is perhaps interesting that Gogo (Nasdaq: GOGO), a provider of in-flight Wi-Fi for airplanes, had a monopoly in North America for the best part of the last decade, yet failed to produce […]
Chinese box office too good to be true
As active investors in public equity markets, we are continually reverse-engineering the expectations built into stock prices and evaluating the reasonableness (or otherwise) of these expectations. Our analytical journey recently led us into the world of Chinese movie cinemas.
Self-help success for The Children’s Place
The Children’s Place (Nasdaq: PLCE) is the largest children’s specialty apparel retailer in North America, selling apparel, footwear and accessories for newborns up to teenagers. It also happens to be one of the most shorted apparel retail stocks in the US, with 29% of its free float sold short. So far, management’s investments in a […]
ACCO Brands: A Case of Misperceived Growth
Readers may be familiar with brands such as Artline, Esselte, Marbig and Rexel. These are office product brands owned by ACCO Brands (NYSE: ACCO), a U.S.-based manufacturer of office products and accessories. ACCO has grown revenue at a 3.3% annual rate over the last 6 years. However, a closer analysis reveals that this is in […]
Synchronoss Part II: The Hangover
What do you get when you combine poor judgment, a lemon, a pinch of salt and a lot of credit? A terrible hangover the next day. And so the poor (now poorer) shareholders of Synchronoss (Nasdaq: SNCR) learned the hard way on Thursday, April 27 when they woke up to find the value of their […]
When a stock falls 65% in a day
Back in December last year, we examined a small Canadian lender called Home Capital Group (TSE: HCG). The C$1.9B business, trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 7x and a price-to-book value of 1.2x, hardly looked expensive by the conventional metrics. And this was especially so given its pre-tax return on equity was north of 20 […]
The continual decline of free-to-air TV
Spare a thought for the managers of free-to-air television businesses. In an age in which viewers can choose between Netflix, Apple TV, YouTube and a host of other video services; viewership of free-to-air television is in structural decline. The Australian free-to-air TV space is a notable example of this. Shown below are the audience numbers […]
A (related) party at Synchronoss
The last four months have been an outstanding period for Synchronoss Technologies (NASDAQ: SNCR). Not for its shareholders, who have seen the value of their stock fall from $49 to $27; but potentially for its senior executives, who, through a series of baffling transactions, may have established what Roddy Boyd at the Southern Investigative Reporting […]
Buyer beware when betting on Bendigo
If you bought shares in Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (ASX: BEN) in March 2016, you would naturally be cheering today. By mid-January, your total return on your investment was north of 70%. Not bad at all for nine months’ work – and well ahead of the 23% the ASX200 delivered over the same period. This […]
