Updates on some holdings following financial publications
Things are moving on nicely!
When I own a company, I like to print all their publications and take notes directly on the paper version. After that, I can get started to draft my analysis. After a certain period of time you know where you have to look and what to look for. It is the sign that you are beginning to master a company.
The next step is to see if disclosure has improved or not. Do we have more information? Are the most important informations still there? What is the new information and what is the aim of this information?
In one of the holdings as time went by (but it was also linked to some current events in Europe) they have begun to disclose more on some of their subsidiaries. Through that we could get a confirmation of their importance. On the other hand, they changed the presentation of their P/L which makes harder to get the EBITDA numbers. As always, the devil is in the detail and the question why was there this change of approach?
Another holding has beefed up its press releases quite a lot (to be honest their annual report is among the best ones I have read as it is packed with interesting details and all the questions which one could ask are already answered to!). They are even like mini quarterly financial reports. Once again one has to ask himself why have these press releases been beefed up?
It takes time to master a company but once you do (and we never really completely master a company) one can focus on the big things and on the key drivers and indicators.
Without further ado, let us get into the fun stuff!