By the way, Meyer Burger was a pearl:
The company had a 3 for 4 rights issue at 4.2 Swiss Francs at the end of April last year. Corrected for that, the price at 28 January 2013 – the date of my Knife handling post – was 7.3. Today it is 16.4 – a 125% return. For the sticklers, that compares to a 12% return of the Swiss equity market. And yes, the Swiss Franc was, and still is, at 1.2 to the euro.
Another pearl today is, I think, Ferrexpo, a company that produces iron ore pellets in Ukraine. Here is an excerpt from my presentation at the European Investing Summit organised last October by Valueconferences.com:
(By the way, at 4:50 I say that the elasticity of profits to prices is lower than to volumes. I meant higher, of course.)
The stock is quoted in London. The price in October was around 1.8 pounds and, in the middle of the Ukrainian mayhem, is now around 1.6. I think it is worth at least 3 pounds.
‘Be greedy when others are fearful’. Or, more aptly (unfortunately), ‘The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets’. But be wary of slogans, and of confident experts. And yes, the book laying horizontal on the left is called Believing Bullshit. A great book.
