Happy New Year to all of our readers! 2018 is now officially history and it will be remembered as a year of increased volatility that ultimately left some portfolios quite damaged. That includes Mohnish Pabrai’s Spinoff Portfolio and its (backtested) historically S&P crushing results. Pabrai is a legendary fund manager and author of The Dhando Investor. In one of… Read More »
It’s that time of year again where thanks to sites like Market Folly we mere mortals get to enjoy the vast wisdom contained in hedge fund year end letters. David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital is always a good one to read although this past year was a challenging one for the value investor. The fund returned <2% in 2017… Read More »
Lets close off the week with some happenings in the world of spinoffs: 1) Spinoffs Are Popular On The Johannesburg Exchange Every so often, a reader writes in to the site to let us know that our international coverage is weak (some use nicer language…others less nice). To which we reply thanks for reading and that volunteers are… Read More »
A few links for today Bloomberg takes a look at how HP Inc (HPQ) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are doing since their 2015 breakup and to the surprise of the afor today:uthor – and I would guess to absolutely no readers of this site – the ‘runt of the litter’ HP Inc is actually doing well. Newsflash:… Read More »
Spinoffs: Once you start, you just can’t stop. Roughly a year after breaking the famed Hewlett Packard into two pieces, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) CEO Meg Whitman is at it again. This time the structure is a bit more complex than a straight spinoff though. It’s our old friend, the Reverse Morris Trust transaction. Real veteran stuff. On… Read More »
We want to introduce a new author to the site. The Limey is a sell side equity analyst based in London and is also (more importantly) a long time reader of this site. The Limey will look at spinoff situations in Europe and elsewhere. Xerox (XRX) completed the spinoff of its business process outsourcing (BPO) division Conduent (CNDT)… Read More »
A few short hits to close off the week: The Economist had a short piece looking at some of the challenges faced by both companies following HP’s (HPQ) spinoff of its services business HP Enterprise (HPE). While both companies have scale and more focused operations, the future for each company is murky. The PC business is shrinking and… Read More »
As is often the case, this week’s spinoffs have implications for market indexes. First, Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) will be replaced by BlackRock(BLK) in the S&P 100. Hewlett-Packard will be changing its name to HP and spinning off Hewlett Packard Enterprise(HPE). Hewlett Packard Enterprise joined its former parent in the S&P 500 after the close of trading on Friday, October 30.… Read More »
It would be unfair and inaccurate to blame all of Hewlett Packard’s(HPQ) problems on Carly Fiorina. After all, her successor as chairwoman, Patty Dunn resigned after presiding over illegal spying on Board members and journalists. Mark Hurd, CEO at that time, later resigned amidst allegations of improper payments to a contractor with whom he had a personal relationship.… Read More »