Grab your coffee and get over hump day with a helping of idle spinoff speculation in this edition of Odds and Ends. Who knows? Maybe these spins could be coming to your portfolios one day soon! Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas thinks GM (GM) should spin off its Cadillac business. He thinks it could be worth $15b as a… Read More »
Pentair’s (PNR) completed the spinoff of its electrical business, nVent Electric (NVT), after the close yesterday. The new company will commence trading on the NYSE today and shareholders should have received one share of NVT for every PNR share owned. Pentair CEO John Stauch wished his colleagues at nVent much ‘success’ and believes Pentair is now ‘well positioned… Read More »
Hedge fund TCI is going ‘active’ at Altaba (AABA), urging the company to liquidate if it can’t do a better job narrowing the fund’s discount to NAV. For those that don’t remember, Altaba is just a collection of assets left over from Verizon’s (VZ) 2017 purchase of Yahoo. The real value rests mainly in two pieces: a large… Read More »
That was quick. Whitbread’s (WTBCF) CEO Allison Brittain caved to activist pressure in seemingly record time, announcing the spinoff of Costa Coffee less than two weeks after Elliott Advisors unveiled a ~6% stake in the company. Of course, Whitbread doesn’t believe it caved and in the press release announcing the demerger (British for spinoff), the company notes that… Read More »
Before trade war news jumped to the front pages, China was making headlines for cracking down on its financial firms’ leverage by forcing them to unload some of their overseas holdings. Anbang and its CEO received a lot of headlines, but other companies, such as HNA, were impacted as well. A few years ago, HNA went on a… Read More »
A storm began brewing last winter for Whitbread plc (WTBCF) and its CEO Alison Brittain. Activist investor Sachem Head took a 3.4% stake in the company and began pushing for a breakup of the company. With Paul Singer’s Elliott Advisors becoming the company’s largest shareholder, it’s probably safe to upgrade that storm to hurricane status, category 5. I’m… Read More »
It’s been awhile since we last posted so lets share a few links to ease ourselves back in. We hope to be back at it in two weeks from now. Spinoffs that go bust often lead to lawsuits, in many cases by its creditors. We recently highlighted an example at Noble (NE), but it’s not the only one… Read More »
A few weeks ago we highlighted Mohnish Pabrai’s S&P crushing Spinoff Portfolio. While the historical results were merely backtested, 2018 has gotten off to a tremendous start. Despite a big decline at Adient (ADNT), the fund was boosted by General Dynamic’s (GD) ~$9.6b (including debt) takeover of government IT services provider CSRA (CSRA). The deal is actually an all cash… Read More »
IDT (IDT) is a serial spinner. Over the life of this blog alone the telecommunications company helmed by former hot dog stand operator/current billionaire Howard Jonas has spun off oil & gas assets (Genie Energy, GNE), ringtones (Zedge, ZDGE) and intellectual property/spectrum assets (Straight Path Communications). Quite an odd assortment of assets for a telecom company, but it… Read More »
Hedge funds get rich using OPM (other people’s money) so why not use OPW (other people’s work) to generate some ideas? Might be helpful if volatility is back… Clark Street Value takes a look at two upcoming real estate related spinoffs. The first is Spirit Realty Capital’s (SRC) upcoming ‘bad asset’ portfolio spinoff. It will consist of properties… Read More »
It’s a new year (relatively speaking at this point) and some readers are likely evaluating their investment strategies for 2018. If you can stomach a healthy dose of volatility then Mohnish Pabrai has just the thing for you – a concentrated portfolio of spinoffs! For those wondering, Mr. Pabrai founded both the Dhando Fund and Pabrai Investment Funds… Read More »
Last week, we noted a few examples of the ‘ugly spinoff’ phenomenon where really ugly looking spinoffs end up performing really well. These businesses often have dim growth prospects, low margins and are often initially larded up with debt or other legacy problems. Despite those challenges, the ‘bad business’ stocks often do well as the companies finally have… 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 keep the momentum going and take a look at what is going on in the world of spinoffs: Blackhawk Networks (HAWK), a 2014 spinoff from Safeway (which has since been acquired), is being acquired by private equity firms Silver Lake and P2 Capital Partners for $3.5b or $45.25 per share. P2 Capital is already a shareholder with… Read More »
Jack In The Box (JACK) will sell Qdoba, its Mexican themed restaurant brand, to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $305m cash. JACK actually acquired Qdoba for $45m back in 2003, so the company was able to do some nice things with it over the years. Unfortunately, the brand has struggled to grow recently and same store… Read More »