United Carpets $UCG.L

United Carpets is a small UK based retail chain that sells carpets and beds. Usually retail is highly volatile and in this case very linked to the property market which is doing quite well at the moment (and that could change). But United Carpets is different in that it franchises, and only has a handful of its own stores. But still, margins are low and administrative expenses high. Operating margin has been improving in recent years but still sits at just 7%. The hook is, it made £1.2m net profit in 2016 and the current enterprise value is £6.8m, or 5.7x. Its profits are not declining and are in fact increasing slightly.

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Craven House Capital $CRV.L sold

Yesterday was quite a dramatic day for Craven House Capital ($CRV.L), the company announced it would delist from AIM and join the Specialist Fund Segment of the London Stock Exchange, along with securing funding for $150m of new capital priced at 1.25p per share. The stock exploded from around 1p to a high of 1.8p and has now stabilised at 1.4p.

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Half year performance report H2 2015

It’s that time of year again, doesn’t time fly. I haven’t made many trades during the second half of the year, perhaps that is why it has been a good half year for my portfolio! It returned 7.5% in H2 2015 versus -3.4% for the FTSE All share tracker and -1.0% for the S&P tracker. Performance was driven mainly by my 34% holding in Craven House Capital (LSE:CRV), which was 16% up in the half year on good news that it has signed a deal to raise £30m in equity at a price of 1.25p per share. That is significant for a £6m market cap company. Excluding CRV my portfolio was up 3.6%, so still outerperformed.

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Logicamms Ltd ($LCM.ASX)

Logicamms is a company that provides consulting and engineering services to the mining, construction and oil & gas sectors in Australia. As you may expect, the market is very pessimistic about its prospects given the collapse in oil prices and the bear market now apparent in commodities. When I first looked at Logicamms I didn’t feel I could properly judge the level of profitability it could sustain going forward, but now there is a further year of accounts to peruse and also management have guided on 2016 performance. In short it expects to make $4m in the first half of the year, and claims its pipeline of work is stronger for H2 2016 than it was for H2 2015. Even if the company makes no profit for the rest of the year, it is trading at a P/E excluding cash of just 9 at this low point in the earnings cycle.

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Portfolio Changes

A lot has been happening in the markets over the last couple of months but unfortunately I haven’t found much to take advantage of. Partly I have been too busy to look for investments but also most of the carnage seems to be hitting oil companies and mining, neither of which I think are particularly attractive on aggregate at the moment. I have made some changes to my portfolio in the last week however, but these are not a reaction to macro events these are specific adjustments I have made.

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Softbank Corp (TKS:9984)

I mentioned in my portfolio half year review that I had taken a new position in Softbank and here is the full thesis. Softbank (TKS:9984) (ASE:SFT) is a Japanese telecoms company and is one of the largest in the world. Investors may know the company because of its 36.3% holding in Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and 80% ownership of US telecoms company Sprint. The investment thesis for Softbank is relatively straight-forward. It currently owns a stake in Alibaba worth ¥9.6tn, yet its market cap is only ¥8.8tn. In addition to the Alibaba stake however, you get an 80% stake in Sprint, a 43% stake in Yahoo Japan, and operating businesses with net income of ¥720m per year.

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Half year portfolio review

Time sure flies, it’s time again for a half year review. I don’t put much weight on my half year results but it’s useful to keep track of what is going on. In many ways H1 2015 was a pretty dire 6 months for my portfolio, yet I managed a respectable 8.8% return compared to 4.5% for the FTSE All share tracker and 0.2% for the S&P 500 tracker.

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Kobex Capital Corp (TSV:KXM)

Kobex Capital has net cash of $28m, a book value of $34m, yet a market cap of just $21m. The upside is obvious, but I have some reservations about whether these shares are worth an investment or not. For investors that like a wide range of net-nets this could be a decent addition to the portfolio though.

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