Q1 Review (-40.2% YTD): What happens when you disregard your own rules, visiting NYC/Omaha and oil producers in Kurdistan ...

Lion Rock Group Holdings update

Hello everyone!

Hope everyone had a great quarter. I will be in New York from the 28th. April to the 02nd May and in Omaha after that for the Berkshire meeting. So if anyone wants to meet up either in NY or in Omaha, I'd be happy to go for a few drinks.

Today there are quite a few topics

• Q1 Review + Current Portfolio

• Looking in detail at the Shitco Index

• Oil producers in Kurdistan

• Lion Rock Group Holdings Update

Anyway, my question for you is regarding the frequency of the articles. I mostly write what comes to my mind, with no publishing schedule. Sometimes I write a single article in a month, sometimes it's three and they come whenever.

What would you prefer? Regular articles or is the current non-existing schedule a (hopefully) welcome surprise?

Q1 Review -40.2% YTD

If there is a list of things that you shouldn't do in investing -  I did them all. As the market started to recover, I disregarded the technicals and risk management rules.

For example I had big short positions. Usually when a stock that I am short in goes up 10%, I cover 25%-50% of my position. That way, I can lose 40% on a short. That sounds a lot, but given the usual sizing of my shorts, that is not a big problem. Well I disregarded that rule completely and instead doubled down. One of Paul Tudor Jones most recognizable quotes was "Losers average losers", and boy did I increase the short position instead of decreasing it.

Additionally I practiced diworsification. I added lots of small short positions -  which was the right idea -  but did not decrease the ones that I was now concentrated in. Add some draw-downs in energy companies and the draw-down was complete. In February I changed my approach, closing 95% of my short position and paying more attention to risk and technicals. Since then my portfolio is basically flat, going up and down a few percent each week.

The reason why it took me nearly a week to write this review, is that I calculated my returns if I held myself to my usual risk management rules. And the difference was astounding. I would have had a draw-down of just 16.32%. A stark difference that shows the brutality of the market and why rules are important.

I will spare you the quotes of how it's a battle and a lesson in humility. It's neither.
It was a lesson in stupidity that now probably takes me 2-3 years to correct. Like Druckemiller in 2000 who shorted the tech stocks, and then reversed to a long position at the exact top, I knew what to do -  I did the wrong thing anyway. Emotions restricted me from doing the right thing and they switched my brain off.

Well lesson learned.

Current portfolio

As I said I reduced my short position significantly. I am still short a few companies, including Coinbase, Apple, CACC, CRM, Doordash, Digital Realty Trust, IBN,First Solar, Nvidia, Micron, Plug Power, RCL, Rivian, Sunrun, Spotify, Trupanion and Tesla - but these are all in such a small size that they could be seen as tracker position. They could 3-5x and not hurt my portfolio too much. I am patiently waiting on when to short again, but it isn't the time yet.

On the long side there has been quite a bit of movement. I closed my coal positions after the run-up after the BTU earnings. That turned out to be the right decision as they declined heavily. Thanks Emil for helping me time that one. I trimmed the Japanese basket to just two positions: Zigexn which is now one of the oldest positions in the portfolio and Z-Holdings. I am planning to go in depth for Japan in the next month, but over 3000 stocks are quite the hurdle.

I still hold Lion Rock Rock Group Holdings, which appreciated nicely after the latest results (more to that later) as well as Gravity -  whose fundamentals are finally improving. For the LATAM basket, Petrobras is still the largest position in my portfolio followed by Ecopetrol and Cresy. Glencore is also still in my portfolio.

One of the companies I sold was Kaspi. While I am optimistic regarding Kazakhstan, the continued increase to the "Buy Now - Pay Later" category made me sell it. Instead I bought AMRK, a bullion dealer. I believe that gold and silver will appreciate massively and they are in a great position to profit from that trend. It also trades at around 8x EV/EBIT, cheap as the company is nicely growing. Kingdom Capital has a great write-up on Seeking Alpha. AstridWilde has a great Twitter spaces on it. I also own a small position in ASTL.

Another new entry is an oil producer from Kurdistan (more on those later) and I still hold a small position in the Sprott Physical Uranium trust. Furthermore I own several small option hedges to protect myself from sharp downturn.

Looking at some of the worst companies in the US

The Shitco Index made by SoftwareMusings, takes some of the worst companies from SPACs and the past hype cycle and puts them in an index. I like to look at companies that have severe problems, but might be exceptionally cheap -  so I will go through them. An important factor for me is scalability, as these companies have high risks of bankruptcy or heavy dilution.

Nearly all companies are a quick pass. Either they burn through cash with no path to profitability, are expensive even assuming optimistic projections, have un-viable business models or I lack knowledge in the field. Others have comparatively low growth rates, so I pass there as well.

There are three companies that I find interesting: Doma, a real estate service company. Haemorrhaged money like most on this list, but got big insider buys. Wejo because of the insane revenue growth and MariaDB, as I have worked with those databases and find it fascinating that their market cap is only 80m. I will dive into the details of these three companies next week and then publish my findings.

Oil producers in Kurdistan

When I asked for the most obscure stocks in the world, there was also the mention of an oil producer in Kurdistan. GKP.L. However since then, Turkey stopped pumping Iraqi crude after Iraq won an arbitration case where Turkey violated a joint agreement of oil exports. As a result oil companies in that region halted production. While there was an agreement to continue oil exports, pipeline operates have yet to receive instructions to restart the flows, with Iraq waiting for a Turkish response.

That made Gulf Keystone Petroleum Limited (GKP.L) and other companies in the area a bargain. I expect the problems to be resolved rather quickly. There was some recovery in the stock price, and GKP.L is up 10% since my buy point - I still think that the companies are too cheap. So far I only bought GKP.L, as it is a name I have been following for half a year, whereas the rest are new to me. I am still looking at the other companies to potentially buy. Here is a table I made to compare the different companies in the area. I am keeping a close eye on the companies.

Lion Rock Group Holdings update

Lion Rock Group recently published their annual results. I bought the company before Christmas, finding it through the Peter Cundill screen. At the time the company traded at 3.47 EV/EBIT and at 2.81 PE paying a 10.3% dividend. My thoughts were, that as long as the company has over HKD$1700m revenues and similar costs as they did then, that they can sustain the dividend.

The results are far better than I anticipated. Revenues are up 41% to HKD$2496m and earnings are up 65% to 29.77 cents per share. Given that my cost basis is 0.91 cents, that is great news. The company increased its holdings in Quarto and closed the acquisition of Griffin press in Australia. What is better though, is the dividend. The company will pay out HKD$0.07 in dividends and additional HKD$0.03 in special dividends for a total of HKD$0.1 in dividend. Given my 0.91 cost basis, that brings me to a 10.9% dividend yield. Very nice.

I don't expect 2023 to be that great for Lion Rock Group, but I still expect the dividend to be kept stable.