I haven’t written in a long time. There have been couple of changes to my holdings that I recently made. So a quick update:
Valeura Energy (VLE): This was a very large position at the start of 2018. The main reason was the run-up that occurred starting in late 2017. Through the early part of 2018, the stock ran up even more. I held on to it until recently. I sold out of it after the results of the recent Turkey elections.
A few years ago, I had invested in Harvest Natural Resources. The asset they owned in Venezuela was world class. The market was not giving it fair value due to the country risk. I thought the market was over reacting and HNR was cheap. In the end the market was right and I got my a** handed.
I don’t think Turkey will create a similar situation w/ VLE. But I can’t be certain that it won’t. So I decided to sell out completely from VLE. I didn’t want to take on a country risk, currency risk, and drilling risk (the last is very small in my opinion). Especially when I have other ideas that I know will do very well.
Aegean Marine Petroleum (ANW): I have been following ANW since 2017. I saw the activist filings and didn’t expect them to win. But they won the board seats and were able to throw out the old management team. The board that the activist has selected is top notch and a big reason why I bought a large stake in the company. I initially bought a small position after the board got rid of the old management team. Then the stock got destroyed when the company disclosed they will be writing down $200M in A/R. The market started pricing in liquidation / bankruptcy. I thought the assets were very good that even in liquidation, I could make really good returns. So I grew my position by 5x.
The board is working on getting the audited results out and fixing the debt issue. The debt situation has been resolved and I think the audited reports are not too far. I think the upside on this is huge and the market has a very strong position to grown in the next couple years.
I have been wanting to write this one but haven’t had the time. Hopefully I will put something together in the next month or so.
2 responses to “Portfolio update”
Hi, What are your position given the chapter 11 announced? Do you still think that assets are bigger than liabilities and that the activist wont screw the minority shareholders? Kind regards
This one has been a disaster. As per their filings yesterday, equity is going to 0. In a chapter 11, you will not get true value for your assets. Anyways, this one has been a big failure. I’ve learned a few lessons and will try to think through it more over the coming weeks. Will talk about it when I write my annual report.