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.
Best performers
Strong performers were Argo Group (+28%), which liquidated some of its balance sheet and stated its intention to resume dividends, Beximco Pharma (+45%) which posted good results and strong organic growth, and Pental Ltd (+38%) on no real news.
Worst performers
There were quite a few poor performers in my portfolio this half, and it’s a bit surprising that I performed so well given how many holdings are showing big losses. Codan Ltd was down 40%, while Hornbeck Offshore and Awilco Drilling were down 52% and 38% respectively due to continued falls in the price of oil. These are small position sizes however so don’t have a large impact on performance. I do not intend to add to either of these positions given the worsened macro environment.
Trades after year end: I have sold roughly a third of my position in CRV this week, after the shares traded at roughly book value. I will look to exit the entire position at around 1.1p per share given the new deal in place. Selling at 0.65p was merely to control the size of the position, as I was no longer comfortable with such a huge holding.
Current Portfolio
Given that change, this is my current portfolio. As you can see, cash balance is now higher so I will be looking to deploy this over the next few months.
| Craven Capital | CRV:LN | 19.7% |
| Weiss Korea Opportunity | WKOF:LN | 9.1% |
| Goldplat | GDP:LN | 5.9% |
| Pental Ltd | PTL:AU | 5.3% |
| Beximco Pharma | BXP:LN | 4.7% |
| Ubiquiti Networks | UBNT:US | 4.1% |
| Texhong | 2678:HK | 3.6% |
| Oracle | ORCL:US | 2.6% |
| Apple | AAPL:US | 2.2% |
| Renn | RUG:LN | 2.0% |
| Argo | ARGO:LN | 1.6% |
| Softbank | SFT:GR | 1.5% |
| 800 Super Holdings | ESH:SP | 1.5% |
| Logicamms | LCM:AU | 1.4% |
| Codan Ltd | CDA:AU | 1.3% |
| Saga Furs | SAGCV:FH | 1.2% |
| Hornbeck Offshore | HOS:US | 0.6% |
| Russia 3x tracker | RUSL:US | 0.6% |
| Awilco Drilling | AWDR:NO | 0.5% |
| Avanagrdco | AVGR:LI | 0.5% |
| Cash | 30.0% |
Investing Sidekick
Founder of Investing Sidekick. Works as a research analyst and is an avid value investor, always searching for undervalued shares.