GlobalSpeculation.com
Bargain hunting for the sport

By

Glen Bradford

Welcome to the 2^nd part of a 5 part series that I’d like to call the “companies of life in China.” We are now entering childhood. At this point, I’d like to point out that this and all of my writings are intended to only be read by investors out there that are interested in not losing money. Mostly, I talk about things worth owning — and own them myself.

Put on your ear muffs. 35 years ago, Warren Buffett mentioned that he felt like an oversexed guy in a whorehouse. Ear muffs off. 3.5 months ago, I felt like a Toys ‘R Us kid left alone in the store after dark. Granted, Warren’s track record over the last 35 years is greater than mine over the past 3.5 months, but triple digit gains are undeniably “above average.” In the heat of March, I was offering to pay people if they gave me money and I lost it. I guess that’s what market bottoming makes someone like me feel like doing.

Instead of being boyishly optimistic and carefree, now I’m optimistically cautious. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong. There are multiple problems still floating in the air in Eastern Europe, not to mention the great potential for CMBS to crash the boards harder and longer than the Subprimes. That said, I still can’t control myself when I see opportunities that make me feel like I did when I opened my 12-year old Christmas present, a TYCO 6 wheeling remote control car that I proceeded to drive up and down the hotel hallways to my parents’ dismay and embarrassment.

1. 1. I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R Us kid. China Digital Communication Group (OTC:CHID) is unbearably cheap as it is, not to mention they just captured a Veteran Electronics CEO who founded a 3C electronic products manufacturing firm and grew it to hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues. China Digital, however, is trading at less than $10 Million dollars. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I just love electronics right now after the sector got crushed this last Christmas season. From me to you, I think you are crazy if you miss this opportunity.
2. 2. There’s a million toys at Toys ‘R Us that I can play with.  The second company I’ll advise taking a look at is the one that I think may have the most upside in the long run, but is more of a gamble. China Clean Energy (OTC:CCGY) is in the biodiesel and specialty chemical products business. Rumors are that this company is increasing capacity to bring on $14M of net income annually. Not bad for a company at $10M.It’s less of a rumor now, as they just put up new pictures of their expansion plant in construction. A word of warning, look into potential tax problems that I have seen in the Fujian Province with Gushan (NYSE: GU).
3. 3. From bikes to trains to video games at the biggest toy store there is. Somehow, we ended up in the electronics isle and it’s only suitable that I disclose my fully integrated information and entertainment service provider stock: MystarU.com (OTC: MYST). My estimate puts 2009E earnings at $10M plus or minus $5M. That said, my estimate could be hugely understated, as growth rates are in the triple digits. Did I mention their subsidiary Subaye.com is working with Google (NYSE: GOOG)? Nuff said.
4. 4. I don’t wanna grow up cause if I did, I couldn’t be a Toys ‘R Us kid. To stick with the theme of electronics, because I don’t want to grow up, I present to you a company that has been laughed by investors down 40% since their last conference call, China 3C Group (OTC: CHCG). They just acquired their logistics company to increase efficiencies. They’ve been trying to uplist for over a year, getting unfairly punished by investors; and for $38M you can catch this company that made $26.8M last year.

Lastly, I did look into Toys ‘R Us. It’s owned by Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), which according to google has a P/E of over 1000. It comes with a *yield* of 8.5% and their P/E is actually around 10. I say *yield* because their dividend is not all cash anymore but shares of Vornado stock as well. I’m not confident in valuing Vornado (VNO), and I’ll leave it at that.

It has been said that when it comes to markets, markets are never wrong, opinions often are. I disagree. Markets can persist to incorrectly value companies for an incredibly long time and value. Give them enough time, and they still may be wrong. My opinion is that if you have a company that makes $10M carrying a price tag of less than $50M and has the growth potential to grow income to $100M, there is a lot of money to be made.

Glen and his investors own China Digital Communication Group, China Clean Energy, MystarU.com, and China 3C group.

This guy at Invest Place has great ideas too. I just don’t like SPNG… and since I wouldn’t own it, it’s a sell.

http://investplace.wordpress.com/

My take: The new management team is providing a lot of good positive feedback to the lenders and the lenders have agreed to reduce the financial test and are willing to accept a much more simple. Cash in the bank kind of test.

SRZ management will continue to keep the lenders in confidence and will share their cash flow projections making the situation more manageable. The original cash in the bank policy was 50 million(with all the financial tests) now its 5 million (with no financial test!!) just additional cash projection sharing.. So a great big Thumbs up to the new management team.

There is additional 17 million asset sale which has been disclosed already.

SRZ will be sharing their plans with regards to Cash flows with the lenders by June 1,2009. (I dont think these projections will be made public as the company no longer needs to disclose all this as the agreement is stable till Dec 2,2009 and had been mentioned specifically in previous SEC filings.)

There is a mention that anything more than 35 million of unrestricted cash flow by end of the year will be used to payback the lenders so we can expect net cash balances to be atleast 35 million by end of year (Dec 2008 quarter number is 29.5 million)

All said and done the tight restrictions leave no chance for the management to wiggle and hence the rights of the shareholders and the bond holders will be protected and enhanced.

A strong buy considering the fact that SRZ has a market cap of 94 million and BKD is about 1 billion while their sales figures are comparable (before the sale of Greystone). SRZ is no longer in default with its loan covenants.

http://www.whatsup-stockideas.blogspot.com/

csgh – prefer this to iclk
sutr – waiting on Q2 to come out… Q1 was down
cpsl – p/e of around 8 or so. steel in china is HOT … makes me want to look at GSI
GSI – $39M in cash. haha, still … too expensive for me with a p/e of 6,
ddr – still a buy in my book, especially since they paid a dividend of 20 cents in june. that puts a yield over 10%
ish – oh wow. looks like a great day-trade stock, swing this baby.
iclk – 2009 revenue over $40M, sounds reasonable, so let’s use that, growth rate of 30%, i’d put net income at around $4M as far as an estimate goes, and that’s optimistic. 40M shares outstanding $4/40 = EPS 0.10, puts the P/E at about 11 right now, too expensive for me, but the upside based on that analysis is around 200% in the next year, but the growth could easily be higher than 30% YOY for a couple years explains why it was around $6.
cvvt – appears expensive.. but it’s a play on nuclear china, i’ve got a better play though
rz – not profitable

Hi,

This blog is under serious construction, but hopefully I’ll get everything up and running soon.

Glen Bradford

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Yeah, I was actually strategizing if I was going to blog about my findings anymore since I’m running a hedge fund. bottom line, it’s something I like to do… and I also like to write for thestreet and seekingalpha and run around on ihub.

so, i’m going to keep doing what I like to do.

apwr- yuck
holi- yuck
cpst – yuck
ceua – 30% growth rate, p/e of 9, 2x book value
llfh – 25% growth rate, p/e of 8, 2.5x book value
anrgf – no clue
sutr – 30% growth clouded by recession, P/E of 5
wemu – 100% growth this year, 30% into the future prolly, P/E of 9
aemd – icky
ceua – p/e of 9, microcap for a couple years yet.
niv – growth of 20%, P/E of 10
bhrt – icky
qgp – yoink, yuck
blsw – icky
xsnx – nope
lege – nope
etak – nope
rxii – nope
npws – hype + potential? i don’t care… waiting on this one.
gsi – looking into this one
csgh news
cphi news
yhgg – big potential pinkie, better than SIAF in my opinion
ciwt – expensive for my taste
chio – expensive for my taste
sutr – dip in fundies and already on the nasdaq
ors – still a/r hurting
caei – lots of upside, but still not cheap
mbrx – not profitable
cheh – not a stock
cga – expensive
cdii – expensive
ceua – expensive
rino – will likely outperform the market and probably pull 200% in the next 2 years, not enough for me seeing other opportunities
jngw – hurting, check Q2 earnings
chbo – no revenues, i just threw up in my mouth
ddr- payed out preferred dividend
inmd – too expensive for this type of investing climate
UNG – not interested
SD – not interested
HGT – looks interesting, prolly an 8% yielder. Upside is $25, not enough for me
NGLPF – dont like it
CPTC – dont like it
domr – no track record
vlov – no volume, but looks to have a p/e of around 5
pmi – and risk-o was his name-o
spng – appears to be a $100M company, price says that too, and lots of potential growth. not cheap enough right now
octi – no revenues
cagc – not cheap enough, but growth of 33% NEG CASH FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES
jngw – revisit in Q2
zolt – too expensive
zagg – wayyyy expensive

pulled the following from some crazy analytical guy that sells ideas that will in my opinion beat the market, but who cares about marginally beating the market? I don’t. Not now, not when I can make 200% in 4 months.
* Kirby Corporation (KEX): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* Diana Shipping (DSX): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* Overseas Shipping (OSG): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model; Some Interest (90%), Joseph Piotroski-based model
* TBS International (TBSI): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* International Shipholding (ISH): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model; Some Interest (83%), Motley Fool-based model
* SEACOR Holdings (CKH): Some Interest (86%), Benjamin Graham-based model; Some Interest (74%), Peter Lynch-based model

kex – not interested — too expensive + turnaround
dsx – dry bulk – interesting, but i think china is bidding these up in the short term and so i like FREE, SBLK, DAC more
osg – looks appealingly cheap with high growth, will look deeper
tbsi – not profitable last quarter, so more risky, but i picked outperform in CAPS (not real money)
ish – volatile stock price, buy below 18 and sell above 22 seems like a good gig … i might be doing it – did it with CAEI for a couple “20% in 3 day” pops
ckh – price looks a lot like the baltic drybulk index. too expensive. no way.

my thoughts on the following list, i’m only going to cover ones i havent covered.
ABAT, AKRK, BKYI, CAEI, CCTR, CHFI, CHGY, CNOA, CSGH, CYXN, ETFC, GHII, LTHU, LTUS, NWD, ORS, XING

abat – too expensive
byki – too expensive
cctr – well… scam, or deal of a life time? referenced nmkt too. looks interesting, see below
cctr – revisited immediately – 110,944,194 shares outstanding, P/E > 50. not a growth story, not interested
lthu – haha NO WAY
NMKT – revisited again, pink sheets, and they’ve got videos from this really clean cut guy in a suit with what he thinks are good mba presentation skills. i hate these people. empty suits, but maybe i’m wrong here, bottom line is i am risk averse., their lead people make $200,000+, and share dilution is out the butt, screw them
siaf – still a pink sheet, seeks quotation on the OTCBB. cool. but looks like 52M shares outstanding yields a market cap of 37M, which upts the p/E higher than 5 and P/S > 2. i’m not interested
mtxx – down huge, for a reason. not interested.. icky — but if you wanna dig deeper, let me know. prolly will go up above $5.70

aib – whoah nilly. why haven’t i looked into this sooner.
ire – whoah nilly. why haven’t i looked into this sooner.
txic – looks like a forward looking p/e of 3.58
hwd – wow – the motley fool keeps sucking less in their newsletter picks. but hell, they are getting better. this one will outperform and be a multi-bagger.

ACAS – If American Capital survives, let’s see here. They are paying out stock as a dividend. Looks like a $200M dividend ballpark. Just assume that none of this dividend is cash. So now they throw out another 50M shares. If they do this 3 times, that’s 350M shares outstanding and a current market cap of 1.361B
Still cheap in my book, but I’d take the price back in 2006 and say $35 is your high point, so with 50% dilution, $17.50 is your new high point. So, I’m saying banks are fairly valued down 50% from where they were, so I’d be out at $9 unless the market turns up big and they aren’t diluting.
Lazy analysis is better than anything an analyst can do for you.

chgi – Yeah it’s a pretty compelling story as they already have money making lines…and given the fact they’re the only company in China with the ability to produce “nuclear graphite”. The gov’t in China is currently building 40 nuclear reactors at 12 facilities throughout China by 2015. CHGI is the only publicly traded Chinese company with the technology to produce this type of graphite.
cpe
– looks cheap, but i can’t figure out

China Real Estate Opportunities SA
(Public, LON:CREO)

chump of the day
http://finance.yahoo.com/special-edition/active-investor/options-beyond-fear

philip guziec
http://www.moneyshow.com/directory/speaker.asp?speakerid=5E54BF2B5F7547959B039BA50831C736

Being the CFO for OPAI
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=208628&t=01000000000214846910

The purpose of this article is to outline my quest for the cheapest broker that lets me “do what I want” with the least amount of hassle and how the real hassle is always behind the scenes. I’ll also outline the public companies from the perspective as an investor.

I currently can trade with Firsttrade, Schwab (SCHW), Ameritrade (AMTD), E*Trade (ETFC), Merrill Lynch (BAC), and I have checking accounts with Fifth Third (FITB), and a savings account at Bank of America (BAC). So, what’s the scoop and why am I writing this article? I’ve been setting up a new E*Trade account for the past month and my patience is wearing thin. Why did I choose to open another account with E*Trade?

Merrill Lynch (BAC) won’t let me buy stocks less than $1. This is to protect me from myself, I suppose. But what happens when a company that you value over $10 goes below $1? Odds are you’d like to buy more and now your left buying it at a higher price of at least $1, whenever it surfaces back above that waterline. All for $29.95 a trade. What a great deal! Not.

Ameritrade (AMTD) has the best interface and is honestly in my opinion the best, except for that it won’t let me buy certain penny stocks because it doesn’t like the transfer agent. I fought Ameritrade on this a little bit, because if they would simply let me buy the companies that I want to buy, I’d push all my accounts to them.
Schwab lets me buy pretty much anything I want, but Schwab has proven to be a little more hands on than what I’d like them to be. I got a margin call on a $30,000 account that was over half marginable securities and we were sitting on about $1,000 of margin. That’s pretty ridiculous. Also, Schwab is more expensive than E*Trade.

So, here I am, setting up another account with E*Trade (ETFC) because I know it will be the most flexible once I get it going. I’ve been trying to set up this account for over a month now and have made a frustration timeline that you can see below. I’m still in limbo and haven’t received a phone call from E*Trade. I’ve had to take the initiative to call them up and follow up as to where exactly the money I sent them is. They still aren’t sure, so there is roughly $115,000.00 floating out there in E*Trade land.

Alright, how do these companies stack up as far as investments go? I would say that Schwab (SCHW) and Ameritrade (AMTD) are reasonably priced. Bank of America and Merrill (BAC) still appear to have over 100% upside potential within the next year and so does Fifth Third (FITB).
Lastly, I’ll note that I’ve been asked by a couple Fifth Third employees what I would consider investing in. I asked them if they had ever considered buying Fifth Third (FITB).

Disclosure: Glen and his investors own FITB and BAC.

My thoughts:
We need a bottom in the housing market, and in order to get one, US interest rates must remain low until inflation and foreign investment put a bottom into this market. Inflation will scare away foreign investors, but will help US home owners. Loans being restructured at lower interest rates will help too — but idiots will restructure with variable interest rates and get squeezed out later down the road or possibly walk if their home is worth less than their mortgage (underwater). This will potentially dry up market liquidity and hurt banks and insurers and all that jazz as well as kill global GDP in the short term. Now that that’s how I feel, let’s see how the market reacts and react accordingly. China is still the best bet. Commodities already reflect these inflationary tendencies.

“‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.’” – Albert Einstein

I wrote all of this the weekend of Sunday, June 7, 2009. I am not publishing it that weekend, but instead possibly mid-week or even later depending on how long it takes me to buy positions in some of the companies below. If you are reading this, it is public. Good luck.

llfh – my current lowball target is 71% price appreciation (and my estimates have a unreasonably strong tendancy to be conservative)
slm – will likely outperform the S&P500 by 100% over the next 12 months (if that’s what you’re interested in… i’m not, but I still may buy some)
canl – pricey but going to the nasdaq and selling around book value “A conversion to a Nasdaq listing can be completed as early as this summer,” Guo said. “We will issue $70 million worth of new shares at that time.” – i’m not interested in being diluted. that’s like 50% dilution.
ccgy – opportunity knocks only for those who listen. buying opportunity of a lifetime? hint hint, nudge, nudge. I am buying.
wemu – It could triple. They say they have a lot in the pipeline. They say they are moving into the USA and PRC markets. They say they have a monster backlog.Although this would be operating on “he said, she said, the company said” — the growth they are talking about is over 100%. This company isn’t selling less than book value or significantly off its 52-week high. It isn’t “cheap” to me. But, I feel that it is cheap to most.In the land of investing, it doesn’t matter what the company is actually worth. What matters is how much people are willing to pay for it. Solar right now is hot, and this company is getting listed.They are profitable and have an optimistic outlook. I plan on picking some up casually, but nothing extravagant.
yuii – you will likely make money and beat the market, but i’m not excited about this one
chcg – like it, and this will go up and outperform the market. +300% in the next 3 years is 90% probable
abwtq – abh – haha.. no way
jgbo – an easy double before it gets listed
myst – weak cash flows and i can get better p/s ratios elsewhere. i don’t think this is large enough to uplist. but it’s definately worth more. cloud computing is an extreme thing. not mediocristian.
siaf – don’t mess with pinks
feed – i’d rate around market perform, but it will likely beat the market.
ntes – too expensive, go with sohu instead
hrbn – probable valuation: $18.60
sina – worth more, but too expensive. Sell around a P/E of 40, or around $50 in the next 6 months if it gets there
ltus – love it.
cbak – not interested
cphi – i support this one. lots of upside
txic – looks very interesting, p/E around 4, so upside of around 200% fairly easily. the asian car market is very strong right now
acas – one of my turnaround plays
gls – this is the best airline stock i’ve found. profitable, i like this one. strong dividend, could shoot 200%.
gnk – my P/E = 4.6, at book value, should be an easy double
cno – like this one a lot.

————–Note from a fellow Blogger
You should really read some of the articles on www.blogtoamillion.com about CNO.
I have followed your picks a lot, and this stock is one of my favorites – among
ACAS, GLS, and GNK. With 13 cents of Q1 earnings x 4 = 52 cents, or a PE ratio of 5.
..not sure about their insurance reserves (mortgage backed securities, treasuries,
corporate bonds), but they did have writedowns to protect themselves. The upside
here is $10-$15/shr, IMO, but just some disclosure: I am long CNO…
———————End Note

Earn a living or earn a fortune. I want to be rich. How do I plan on doing it?
Definitions:
OPM – Other People’s Money
OPT – Other People’s Time
IQ – My intelligence

I intend to promote my IQ to control OPM to own OPT.

Since I’m lazy, I would rather not reinvent the wheel here. In fact, I don’t really want to manage other people or tell them what to do. I’ll just stick to evaluating the performance of other people who like to work hard and buy stakes in their hard work when the stakes are cheaper than they should be and capture the value over time.

Now, I’m not claiming to have the best ability to value every company in the world. But, I figure if I focus on not owning anything that seems risky and only recommend the best deals I can find — that puts me ahead of Wall Street.