In the short run, the market is a voting machine.
But in the long run, it is a weighing machine.
To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are greedily buying requires the greatest fortitude but pays the greatest reward.
Latest Exits
Consumer Staples
The fifth largest brewer worldwide, Molson Coors has a 25% market share in North America, where it also controls highly strategic distribution networks. Despite stable earning power and multiple short-term catalysts—dividend reinstatement, asset sales, restructuring program, etc.—the company saw its shares priced at badly depressed multiples during the pandemic, triggering our interest and most sizeable—albeit short-lived—investment in recent years.
Advertising
As the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in spring 2020, French advertising giant Publicis—which owns a number of premier franchises in the creative business, has negligible debt and can adjust its cost structure at will—saw its market capitalization shrunk to levels not even seen in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, as its shares briefly traded at just four times earnings. The rebound was quick, however, and so was our sale.
Integrated Oil & Gas
Depressed commodity prices, limited export options, bloated pipeline capacity and fears of a prolonged pandemic had sent valuations of Canadian producers spiraling down to historic lows. In spite of its fortress balance sheet and integrated model, Suncor, which owns a non-replicable refining infrastructure and decades of reserves in Alberta, was no exception. The company’s business plan stated its intention to return $21 per share to its shareholders over a five-years horizon, and astonishingly that promise came against a share price of just $18 at the time of our investment.
Aerospace
French manufacturer of military aircrafts and business jets Dassault Aviation remains firmly controlled by the Dassault family, who owns close to two-thirds of equity capital. In late 2021, at €87 per share, minus the €3bn in excess cash and 25% stake in defense group Thales valued €4bn—itself at rock-bottom levels—the company’s market capitalization assigned zero value to its core aviation business, home to its acclaimed Rafale and Falcon franchises, among others.