My take on Weight Watchers ($WTW)

Conscious that I haven’t written a post for over a couple of weeks, and without any good prospective investments to write about, I thought I would do an article on the flip side of the coin – i.e. find a terrible company, selling at an absurd valuation and metaphorically tear it to pieces. But then I got thinking, it isn’t hard to find a rubbish investment, neither is it particularly useful to you, the reader, for me to point out that selling at 100x sales is ludicrous. You already know it (I hope).

It would be more useful for me to review a company that I believe is a poor investment, but that others may view as a value investment. When I got to thinking which company to cover, there was one that stood out in my mind that I have seen recommended on some other blogs, Weight Watchers (NYSE:WTW).

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Codan Limited ($CDA.AX)

I went over the investment thesis for Codan Limited ($CDA.AX) in one of my portfolio updates in June. Codan is a company that earned $45m in 2013 and now has a market cap of just $140m. I bought shares at $0.78 and since then shares are only slightly ahead at $0.85, so this is still a good investment opportunity in my opinion. This post isn’t to go over the investment thesis again, but to briefly highlight the recent AGM and chairman’s statement, which I think make this investment even more compelling than before.

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Berkshire Hathaway ($BRK)

I first bought Berkshire Hathaway shares 3 years ago, and a few days ago I sold the entire position. This might be a somewhat controversial decision and when I first bought shares I envisaged holding them forever. But I don’t see that much upside to Berkshire at the moment. That’s not to say I am not a fan of Buffett. I think his investment success speaks for itself and Berkshire has been a highly profitable investment over the last few decades. But there are several reasons I have exited this position, many of which are probably at odds with value investors’ opinions in general. Here is my reasoning

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