We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP268: Small Cap Investing w/ David Flood (Business Podcast)
Episode Date: November 10, 2019IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: What is over the counter stocks and how to invest in them What a dark stock is, and why they are mispriced Why you should look for companies trading at a negative en...terprise value How can to build a position in companies with a market cap with less than $50M Why David Flood is using Google Satellites photos in his stock research Ask The Investors: Is passive investing a new bubble, and if it is how can you protect yourself? BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Preston and Stig’s Mastermind group discussion with David Flood David Flood’s Blog, Elementary Value The Investor’s Podcast Network forum, where David Flood is an administrator Tweet directly to David Flood David Flood’s free intrinsic value analyses on The Investor’s Podcast Network Sign up to the TIP live event in Los Angeles with Stig and David by emailing stig@theinvestorspodcast.com Join the Mastermind Group and the TIP Community for the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder’s Meeting SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Bluehost Fintool PrizePicks Vanta Onramp SimpleMining Fundrise TurboTax Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
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You're listening to TIP.
On today's show, we're interviewing a long-time friend in the value investing space, David Flood.
As you'll hear during the interview, Stig and I have been friends with David for nearly a decade
when we all used to pitch stocks to each other on the Buffett's Books Forum.
And so the reason we brought David on the show is because he's absolutely incredible at finding
great value picks.
In fact, many of the picks that Stig and I talk about during the mastermind discussions
are brought to our attention by David.
So get ready.
You're going to really enjoy this conversation.
with the one and only David Flood.
You are listening to The Investors Podcast,
where we study the financial markets
and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.
We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.
Welcome to today's show.
My name is Dick Broderson,
and as always, I'm here with my co-host, Preston Pesh.
And we are excited today
because we have our good friend, David Fluck, with us,
from Elementary Value.com.
David, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me on.
So, David, we already had you on.
There was back in episode 93.
What you really like about having you on is that you've been with The Investors Podcast
even before it was The Ambassador's Podcast.
We got to know each other back whenever we were just a handful of people discussing stocks
on our forum at Buffett's Books.
So now we're back in 2013, and we didn't have a podcast, we didn't have the Academy.
me, it was just this old forum looking like 1990s. And it was Preston and you and me talking about
Warren Buffett and value investing. And you're one of the most old school value investors, I know,
which, by the way, is a huge compliment. And you have this strategy where you invest in
so-called micro and nano-cap stocks. Many of them are only traded over the counter. And there's
very limited information whenever you invest in these companies. So please talk to us about your
investing strategy and perhaps talk to us what it means when a stock is trading over-the-counter.
Sure. So the over-the-counter markets are essentially a decentralized group of disparate
markets. You could think of them as thousands of tiny little markets that are all kind of
amalgamated together. And they're run by broker-dealers who act as market makers. And they're
will typically carry the inventory of stocks on their balance sheet and then they will use those
for over-counter investors to trade amongst one another. So these stocks that are traded on the over-the-counter
markets are their unlisted companies. They don't meet the requirements of the New York Stock
Exchange so their cap may be too small or they may have too fewer shareholders to be able to
float on the major exchanges. So these companies will be traded amongst
over-the-counter investors, and they're typically tiny little companies with low share accounts.
So my approach is to look at these tiny companies.
I use a deep value approach, which is inspired by Benjamin Graham.
I will typically start with the balance sheet, and I will look at the companies to see if I can
find if they have any kind of undervalued assets on the balance sheet.
I'm particularly interested in the current assets, like cash and equivalents, accounts
receivable inventory, things like that. But I'm also interested in undervalued real estate,
which could be over-depreciated on the balance sheet. And I will combine with that another approach,
which is to look at long-range charts, long-range price charts. I started doing this after I
found out that George Soros, Peter Lynch and Walter Schloss have all used price charts when they
were looking at companies. So I've now begun to use the price chart so I can gauge where I think a stock may
fall to because often when you when a value investor buys a stock based upon the numbers,
they can find that the stock will continue to drop. Whereas if they also combine that with
a reading of the price charts, they can notice that sometimes the stock will fall and then it will
hit a level of support and begin to form what's called a base. So I use that approach to try
and find stocks where they've kind of hit a rock bottom price and then I will buy in at that point.
Walter Slosh did something similar where he would look for.
the stocks that were selling at three, five or all-time lows, and he would buy them when they
were basically extremely depressed, and all of their investors had kind of given up with the
stock. They were no longer interested in it. So I look for tiny companies. I want them ideally
to be a market cap of $10 million or less, although I will buy some up to maybe $50 million,
hush, if they look interesting. And then I want these companies to be highly liquid, so I want the
shares outstanding to be 10 million or less ideally. And then I also want to share price on an
absolute basis to ideally be a dollar or less. Now, there's a good reason for that. That's purely
because for investor psychology, investors are far more inclined to put money into lower price
stocks than they are higher price stocks, irrespective of the intrinsic value of the stock. So you're far
more to see large price moves in stocks which trade a dollar or less.
It's a very peculiar phenomenon that you see.
It's just part of the psychology of the market that this happens.
So I try and use that to my advantage.
And then I also focus on looking at what are known as dark companies.
These are companies which don't file with the SEC.
They've deregistered, and they may only provide financials to shareholders who request them
if they email the company or they may only put them on their website.
So I use this approach because there's going to be less people looking,
at these stocks and because there's less people looking at them, there's more chance that there's
going to be mispricings in these stocks. So that's generally my approach. So David, I have a
confession here. You're one of the investors that I follow closest and I'm sure Stig will say the same
thing because you write analysis for TIP and you write on our forum here and we obviously
read your blog. And some of the stocks that are on your radar include Network One Technology Inc,
Pine Lawn Cemetery, Beaver Coal Company, and Myriad Advertising PLC.
It would be quite a stretch to call them household names, and we're kind of curious,
how do you find these companies? What are you doing?
Well, I'll use a combination of different approaches.
I'll use stock screeners sometimes, and with the stock screeners, I'll look for companies
which are selling below $50 million, and then I will also screen for negative enterprise
value. So this generally will bring me a selection of companies which may be trading below net
cash. That would be if you sold off all their assets and basically be selling for less than the
cash they have on the balance sheet. The market cap would be lower than the cash they have on the
balance sheet if you sold everything off. So I like to look for companies like that because
when the share price is so depressed, any kind of good news is likely to send the share price
going up. I will do that. I will go manually through lists of stocks. I will get hold of
stock manuals like the Walker's manuals, the Mergent manuals, and I will go on to the over-the-counter
markets and just start with the A's, as Warren Buffett did with the old Moody's manuals, and just
go stock by stop through thousands of stocks. It takes a long time, but it's really good because
you find a lot of interesting companies that are hidden. If I'm looking at things like Japan,
And I'll get the Japan company handbook, which I think Warren is, Warren Buffett's known to have on his desk, which he likes to look through from time to time.
So I will use that as well.
And I also follow a lot of investment blogs that cover these kind of obscure stocks.
There's a lot of really good investment blogs.
If you search around on the internet, you can find them.
And then I'll also look at the 13F filings of small value firms.
So most investment firms can't really look at these tiny companies, just because,
because they're too small. Their corporate charter generally prohibits them from looking at them,
but the small value firms, there could be family officers and things like that, limited partnerships.
They will sometimes look at these much smaller companies. I will then go and look up their
filings to see what they hold, and then I can look through those companies to see if I can find
anything of interest. So I'm almost coattailing. I'm using those as my analyst, much like Monash
Pabry does when he looks up the 13Fs of other value firms. And then I also network
with other investors. So over time, I've built up a really broad group of contacts,
people that I can get in touch with and I can run ideas by them on different companies
that I'm looking at or ask them for ideas. And once you start sharing ideas, you start to get
more and more ideas sent to you. And another thing is to look for a mentor. I think it's really
important to try and find someone who has a lot of experience in this area and then use them
has a mentor to teach you how you would go about investing in the over-the-counter market space.
So those are the things that I've applied to my own investment approach.
You know, David, whenever I look at some of the numbers of the companies that we just talked about here,
I mean, they look great.
But like most investors, I'm concerned about the liquidity of the stocks that I'm investing in.
This might sound a bit weird to some investors out there who are primarily investing companies like Apple or Google.
there's always liquidity in the market. I can just go in and buy these stocks, but these are
very small stocks, very liquid stocks. So could you please talk to us about how to use the
illiquidity to your advantage and how much money you can typically deploy in something like
the nanocap stock market? And whenever we're saying nanocamp, we're talking about companies that
has a marketable below $50 million and sometimes much less than that.
So a lot of investors that consider illiquidity to be a problem or an issue that they want to avoid.
Charlie Munger famously quotes Pascal who said invert, always invert.
So you can see a problem as actually something beneficial.
So the illiquidity actually puts off a lot of investors from looking at these companies,
which means that there's going to be a lot less competition and there's more likely to be mispricings.
The large firms just simply can't invest in these small companies, which means that the only
people that are going to be looking at them are going to be retail investors like myself.
So that's much less competition for me and a higher chance of the mispricings.
So I typically will build a position in a company, and it may take me several weeks, or it could
take several months, but I'm happy to wait.
I'm not in a rush.
I think patience is a virtue of value investing.
But the interesting thing with these are liquid stocks, is once you've built a position and then
some positive news emerges or some kind of catalyst occurs so that the market reprises the stock.
When the demand increases for these very illiquid companies, the share price will move up dramatically.
And then that's an opportunity for you to then sell out into heavier volume as they become
slightly more liquid when there's more sellers in the market and buyers.
And then you can profit from these rises in the share price.
So it takes a bit of patience to build a position, but then to offload a position.
can generally be easier when the share price starts to move up.
And you can typically deploy maybe between $100,000 to a million dollars in the nano-cap space
and maybe $10,000 to $100,000 per stock.
So this is a perfect strategy for the small investor, the small retail investor.
So in order to build a position in these tiny companies, I will use Good Till Cancel Limit
Orders.
So these are orders that you can put in with your broker that will just sit until they get filled.
And you may have to leave these orders sat there for months, sometimes even over a year.
But that's fine because with my approach of deep value investing, I will buy a basket of stocks.
I'm happy to have 10, 15, 20, good till cancel limit orders just sat.
And I will just wait and just be patient.
I'm not in any rush to buy these companies.
I'm happy for the market to give me the price that I want to pay for these companies.
and then I will look at the offering from the ask, which is the person's selling.
I will look at the amount of stock that they're offering, and I will keep my buying volume low
because I don't want to drive the price up.
I want the price to be at a price that I want to pay for the stock.
So I will just buy in box.
I will not try and buy my whole position in one go, because that will let other investors know
that perhaps there's some hidden value there.
So I will use a little bit of caution and just build my position over time
so that no other market participants find out.
I've discovered that there's some hidden value there.
If the stock does happen to fall down below the price that I've paid,
I'm happy to average down.
Because I'm building a position over time, I can do that.
So I can actually lower my average cost price over several weeks or several months,
if need be.
And then as I say, yes, I'll buy a basket of stocks.
I'm not looking to put all my net worth into five stocks.
I'll be buying maybe 20, 30 stocks.
So I'm happy to have multiple orders out.
And I won't chase these companies.
I'll wait for the price to come to me.
So, David, would those 20 or let's say 30 stocks be the only ones in your portfolio or
are you separating those picks from another batch that would be large-cap companies?
Yes, I only focus on small companies.
I think I've got one large-cap company left in my portfolio, which I'll be selling at some
point.
I don't really invest in ETFs or bonds or anything else.
I just focus on tiny companies.
Now, that isn't to say that I won't invest in these other companies at some point.
If the opportunity arises where there's a good price, I'll happily invest in anything
if I think there's a good deal there to be had.
But at the moment, where we are in the current market cycle, I'm finding the most value
in the nanocap space.
So that's where I'm focusing my attention.
It's interesting that we both come from this background as value investors.
And we are taught that we shouldn't look too much of the price action, but we should look
of the fundamentals, we should look at where the value really is. You previously mentioned about,
you know, looking at price action being inspired, for instance, by George Soros. Now, I'm curious to hear
whenever you do look at price action, is there a different approach or truth for over-the-counter
illiquid stocks that are more beneficial for you whenever you have to take a position, say,
in the long run, or perhaps even trade over-the-counter stocks from a technical position?
perspective? The over-the-counter markets, it tends to be predominantly retail investors that operate in this space. So there's a lot less noise in the share price movement. When you're looking at the much larger stock exchanges where all the large companies are, there's a lot more noise just simply because there's so many institutional investors participating. So with the smaller companies, I like to use price charts and observe the price action, the volume, and then the support and resistance. So I can watch a company and I can watch its share price. And I will
observe it, and then it may fall and then hit a point of support, and the stock no longer keeps
drifting down. It just basically bounces along on support, and that's known as forming a long-term
base. That indicates to me that other participants in the market are beginning to buy that
stock through accumulating a position and they're supporting the share price. It's no longer falling.
That tells me that that's a good entry point for the stock. So I will use that in combination with
the numbers that I will look at the balance sheet to try and find some kind of discount to the
tangible assets and then use that as to find a good entry point for the stock.
Also, you'll notice when a stock hits a point and begins to form one of these long-term bases,
the volume will drop off completely.
But as the stock has been drifting down, volume has been quite heavy because there's been
a number of investors that have been throwing in the towel.
They've been selling the stock because perhaps things are going badly or they've gone
elsewhere in search of value.
Once the stock hits the base, the volume dries up and that's the accumulation period
where one can then go in and begin to build a position over time without really attracting much attention.
People have forgotten about the stock.
They've essentially left it the dead.
They're ignoring it.
There's no interest there.
So in that period of quiet and darkness, you can then begin to build a position in the company without really attracting much interest.
Because the problem with buying a stock purely on the numbers is that a stock can look cheap based on the numbers, but it can keep falling.
This is a major problem for a lot of value investors when they first start.
They will buy cyclical companies that appear cheap based on some of their numbers,
but then they can get much cheaper.
They can get 50% cheaper.
And then they're sat on a 50% paper loss,
and it's going to take them a while to break even before they even make any money.
So by using the charts, one can gauge where a suitable entry point would be
for these kind of deep value players and not get caught.
out where you're going to have your purchase cut in half its value. So I like to use that approach.
I'll look for companies that are selling at multi-year lows, sometimes all-time lows.
You know when a company is selling at such a depressed price, the entire market is essentially
given up on the company. If you can then look through their companies and find ones that have
some kind of hidden value or some prospects for change, then you can really profit from that.
So I will generally go through all these deep value companies and then look for ones where there's possibly some kind of catalyst present, where there's some opportunity where I think there may be some kind of change which is going to unlock this value.
Now, value is in and of itself a catalyst.
So over time, the market will reprice these stocks if they are undervalued.
If they remain undervalued over time, the market, as Ben Graham says, is a weighing machine.
And these companies will be correct the price in time as they revert back to the mean.
Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
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All right. Back to the show. So, David, let's do a case study, be a bit more specific and come up with
examples of what you are looking at here for a specific company. So back in March, you wrote a
blog post about Pine Lawn Cemetery. The stock ticker is PLWN, and I'll make sure to link to that in our
show notes. Now, the stock was trading at $235 at a time. It paid $26 in dividend and today's training
at 270. I find that to be a very interesting case study. Not so much for finding a stock that can
be expected to compound for years and years to come, but more because of where we are in the market
cycle. Perhaps you could please talk to us about how you see a potential investment in Pine Lawn Cemetery.
So Pine Lawn Cemetery is a very interesting company. It's one that I found when I was screening
for companies which had high dividend yields. And at the time when I first initially found the company,
it's what's known as dark. So financials aren't readily available. You have to
think of a novel way to try and get hold of the financials for the company, which I eventually
managed to do. But at the time, I was just basically using the price chart and some other
information that I'd found on the company. So I was looking at the price action of the company
in relation to its dividend payments. So typically you'll find with a lot of companies that pay dividends,
their share price will rise in anticipation of the dividend payment. Investors will buy into the stock
and the share price will rise as they take a position to claim the dividend.
Once the dividend is paid, share price will drift back down as people sell off the stock
and go elsewhere in search of value or other dividends.
With a company like Pine Lawn, one can use the price charts to observe a suitable entry point.
You would wait for a post-dividend period when the stock has been sold off and it's drifted down
to form a new base.
And then you would buy at that point, and then you capture the highest dividend yield
possible because the stock is selling at its lowest amount and then you will also capture capital
appreciation as the stock goes up in value i'll put a good till cancelled low ball offer so i'll put a
really low offer that could be it could be below the bid you know i want to try and coax the price down
as far as possible and then buy it a really cheap depressed price and then i can capture a higher
yield and i can capture the capital appreciation of the stock pine lawn and beaver coal company that pay
high dividend yields. Another approach is to put in good to counsel orders which are extremely low.
And one could go back and look at the long range price charts and look at where these
companies fell to in the last financial crisis. So you can look at the price charts and go back to, say,
2008, and you can see that these companies dropped dramatically. There's absolutely no reason why
they should. Pine Lawn Cemetery is a cemetery business. The recession means nothing to the
cemetery business. The business will just continue as it has in the past.
and it did. So one could place orders to buy these stocks at extremely depressed, cheap prices,
and capture very large dividend yields and then also a capital appreciation in the stock.
So that's the approach that I will use with these companies.
So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the importance of dividends.
And in this example, we just talked about pine lawn, you know, dividend yield of call it 10%-ish.
Now, a very high dividend yield compared to what else that you see out there with the current valuations that we have.
Now, again, as value investors, we are taught that dividends are only a good thing if the management
can't reapply that capital to, say, buy back stocks at a really good price, or if they cannot,
you know, put that back into the business and make some good investments.
Now, I'm curious if high dividend payments are more important for all the counterstocks
compared to bigger companies, as it might be perceived as taking some of the risk of your
position without having to worry about the liquidity.
or does the principle behind dividend distribution still hold up for you as a value investor
looking at these small obscure stocks?
I think in some cases the dividend payment is beneficial because with some of these small
companies, you're going to be looking at limited partnerships or unit trusts, where as part
of their corporate structure, they're required to pay out the majority of their earnings
as dividends.
And I think investors can use those dividends, those large dividends, as a form of.
of cash flow, which then they can use to go and deploy into other stocks that they're interested in.
The other interesting thing with the over-the-counter market companies is often they'll have
very, very low share prices, but then they will pay special dividends. Now, sometimes these
special dividends can be 50% of the share price, or they can sometimes even be in excess of
the share price. There could be 150% of the share price. You would never get this with larger
companies. It's just the law of large numbers prohibits it. But with these much smaller companies,
they sell off some assets. They may sell some real estate or they may sell off a division.
They can then return that capital back to investors in the form of special dividends.
Now, if you hold these companies in a tax sheltered account, the fact that you're receiving
these dividends shouldn't be too much of a problem. And I think that having that kind of
stream of cash flows can be useful to then deploy that into other companies.
So the ownership structure of these companies are typically different than what we see for bigger companies.
They're typically much more concentrated, meaning that might just be one owner or a few owners
and then might own a lot more of that company than what you see for S&P 500 companies.
How do you deal with that?
What is a good ownership structure for you as an investor?
Ideally, I like to see quite a concentrated ownership by the people that run the companies,
because when insiders have skin in the game, they're generally more inclined to run the company in a manner that benefits minority shareholders.
Now, if they have majority control of the company, it can work the other way.
They may be able to pass rules where they can pay themselves egregious salaries or they can give themselves super voting rights and essentially use the company like a personal bank account for themselves.
So you have to use a bit of discretion when you're looking at these companies and look on a case-by-case basis.
But typically I do like to see companies where it's a family-controlled company or a family-owned
business because you know that they've built that business from the ground.
Their heart and soul is in the company.
And generally, they will have a lot of their own net worth in the company.
Their interests will be aligned with those of minority shareholders.
So I typically like to look for those family owner-operated businesses.
They hold a significant position in the company.
So collecting information is super hard.
I know that for one of your picks, Equitech International Corps, you even contacted the CEO about getting more financial data.
Do you have a specific approach to getting that special information edge?
Yes, I call it information arbitrage.
With the much larger companies like Apple, there are armies, thousands and thousands of analysts and PhDs looking at these companies.
So I'm deluding myself if I think I'm going to discover something about these companies that they haven't found.
So my approach is to look at companies that I know hardly anyone else is looking at.
The more hidden and opaque these companies are, the better because it requires me to put in the work to find that hidden value.
I'll use a number of different approaches, try and discover the hidden value present in these companies.
So I will contact management, I'll email them or I'll set up a call with them and I'll ring them and have a chat.
I will try and get financial statements if they can email them to me or mail them to me.
I will check their website because often with some of these dark companies that have deregistered with the SEC, they no longer file financial statements, but they will still provide them to shareholders so they may put them on their own website or they may mail them out to you if you contact them and request them.
And then I will try and get creative and do a bit of scuttlebutting, so I'll use Google Street View and I'll look up the headquarters of the company to go and see if it's still there.
I'll count how many cars are parked outside and get an idea of how many employees I think the company has.
I'll check other websites to see if I can see the company's products being sold.
I'll use land registries so I can look up to see how much they've paid for the real estate
and get an idea of whether the real estate is undervalued on their balance sheet.
I can also use Google satellite images to get an idea of what I think, the size of the land that they own and the size of the buildings.
And then I can calculate what I think the commercial real estate value of those buildings might be.
And then I'll also use state websites to look at corporate info.
So you can look up the corporate charters for the company, various things like where
address changes or changes in ownership or legal counsel, things like that.
And then I've become more interested in bankruptcies recently.
So I use a website called Payser and you can look up the court dockets for companies that are
going through bankruptcy.
So I will go through the court dockets and I'll look to see if there's any kind of hidden value where I think that the common stock may receive a payout once all the debts have been paid on the company.
And there you can sometimes find some very interesting value players that not many other people are going to be looking at.
And then finally, I'll also use stock message boards.
So I'll look at these boards where all these tiny companies are talked about.
And it's just generally a small handful of people like myself that are looking at these companies.
I can go onto these message boards and then look at the research that they've been conducting
and they're almost acting as my analysts going out there and digging up information on these
companies.
So the approach in general is I try to be like a private investigator or a detective and I will
begin to try and hump down information on these companies to see if I can find any hidden
value.
Talk to us more about this hidden value.
We previously talked about catalysts and say that you would go in and
and you will make an assessment of the value of the buildings,
which might be much higher than what you read in the financial statements right now.
But I'd imagine for that to be recognized by the market that,
oh, the buildings are listed at $10 million, but they're probably worth $45 million,
whatever it is.
It might be a catalyst that takes a long time to materialize.
And you said, yes, value in itself is a driver.
Talk to us more about which type of catalyst you see is more prevalent for these type of
stocks, how long does it take for these catalysts to materialize?
So a company I looked at recently, which is microwave filter co, which is ticker
symbol MFCO.
When I was looking through the financial statements for that company, I looked at the real
estate and it was being valued at around $70,000.
And they had pictures of the real estate on the website.
And I looked at the pictures and I thought, there's no way that this warehouse is worth
$70,000.
And then I was reading through the footnotes to the financial
statements, which I recommend all value investors pay attention to the footnotes of the financial statements.
That's often where you can find hidden value. And I found out that a bank called Key Bank had extended
credit of $500,000 against the property. Now, there's no way that the mortgage broker would
have valued that warehouse at $70,000 and then offered to extend $500,000 in credit against
it. I realized clearly that this building must be undervalued. So then I used a bit of
research on Google and figured out that the building's probably worth roughly a couple of million
dollars. So it's massively undervalued on the balance sheet. So how will that value get unlocked?
Now, there's a number of different ways that the value could become unlocked. One of those is that
small value firms may find these companies and they may find them because they read your blog
or they may find them on their own. And they may make an offer to buy out that company. So they could
buy out that company to unlock the value, they may decide to just liquidate the company,
they may decide to sell off assets, they may decide to move and then distribute the earnings,
the proceed from the sale of the warehouse back to shareholders in the form of dividends
or share buybacks. But also what can happen is there can be shareholder activism. So a number of
shareholders may get together and decide to get someone appointed on the board, which can then
push to unlock this hidden value within the company. And that's far easy to do with these much
smaller companies that are just a couple of million dollars in value. You obviously can't do this
with much larger companies because the amount of capital required is too great. But then often with
these companies as well, there will be companies that have been around for decades and decades
and their family-owned companies. And you may find that the director or the CEO is quite elderly
and they may decide to pass on the reins to someone else, their son or another member of the family.
And when they take control, they may decide to change things up.
They may decide to unlock some of that value for shareholders.
So an instance recently that I saw with the company was the son took over as CEO from the father
and he decided to sell off their warehouse and then lease it back.
And then he paid out a special dividend to shareholders, which was in excess of the share price.
So there's a lot of ways that the value can be unlocked with these companies.
Sometimes it will take years.
Other times it may literally be a few weeks or a few months.
But with a deep value approach, it doesn't really matter about the performance of an individual stock.
You're more interested in the performance of the portfolio.
So if you hold a basket of, say, 20 to 30 stocks, generally there's always going to be something happening with one of the companies that will keep you occupied with your attention focusing on that company.
there's always some kind of reversion to the mean taking place where these mispricings are correcting
themselves.
So whenever you talked about this net cash approach and how to read the balance sheet, it's a very
old-school, Benjamin Graham type of looking at a stock. So you could sell off all your assets
and you could pay off all your debt and you will still be sitting there with cash even if you
you paid the full price of the company. Now, I'm curious to hear how you've very very very
value the assets. We already talked about some of the real estate and how you can look more into that,
but how do you look at evaluation of the assets, both in the sense that some of the assets might be
worth more, which is a bit more rare. Also, that a lot of the assets call it, for instance,
inventory that might not be worth as much if you had to sell it right away. How do you value
assets, both current assets, so meaning it's typically liquidated within 12 months, but also
longer-term assets? So I like to use the Ben Graham approach. So Ben Graham would look at a company
and would look at its net cash position. It would look at its net current asset value, which would be
the value of the company minus total liabilities and all fixed assets. What do you have in value in terms
of the current assets? And can you find companies that are selling below that value? We'd also use
what's known as net networking capital. And here, he would be more aggressive with his discounts. So he would
only value the inventory at about 50% of its stated value. The accounts receivably would typically
only value at about 0.85 times its stated value. So by looking at these companies that are selling
a net networking capital or below net cash, you were essentially disregarding most of the assets
and saying they have no value whatsoever to me. And if you find companies where the market cap is
below net cash, you're essentially getting the entire business for free, all the fixed assets
and all the other current assets.
You're looking at it from a very, very conservative manner.
So it doesn't really take much positive improvement
to see the share price really move up on these companies.
So with a company like Myriad, when I bought it,
it was selling at like six, two times net cash.
Several months after I bought it,
the stock price shot up 300%
because they announced that they signed a contract with 10 cent
to implement their technology.
So with these tiny companies,
you can see huge share price moves upward.
Just because the market sentiment towards the company is so depressed,
and people have really given up on the company,
and the discount is so huge to their assets
that one positive amount of news or some catalyst emerging
can really send the share price up dramatically.
So many of our listeners have read about the NetNet approach
that you just mentioned before.
Perhaps they haven't practiced it yet.
they might have read security analysis and, you know, spent months and months of their life trying
to get through that book. It's an amazing book, but it can't be a little rough to get through.
I'm sure you read that book too, and we've talked about it and about this NetNet approach
on the forum before, David. How have you found the Foundation, you know, the NetNet Foundation,
the old school approach working today? How much is directly applicable today? How profitable is it?
What has changed, if anything?
Net net approach, I think, still works particularly with smaller companies.
I mean, you generally are not going to find net nets.
You're not going to find companies that are selling below net current asset value with larger companies.
You are going to be looking at these much smaller companies that tend to sell on the over-the-counter markets.
And because there's less people looking at these companies, mispricings generally are much greater.
Now, things have changed somewhat in the fact that many more companies now are service-based rather than product-based,
and they will have much less in terms of fixed assets.
They may be much lighter in their structure.
But there's still plenty of manufacturing firms, traditional companies
that will hold a lot of assets like inventory.
They will still have accounts receivable.
They'll still have cash on the balance sheet.
This approach with the net nets will still work today.
Now, obviously, with the net net approach,
you're looking at buying a basket of stocks.
You're not going to invest all your money in maybe two companies
because the non-market risk is too great.
So you would spread that risk over maybe 20 or 30 companies, as Ben Graham suggested that one should do.
And typically the returns on these kind of the net net approach is going to far out the general market.
My benchmark is to try and aim for a 12% return minimum because the S&P 500 returns, say, on average, long term, 9%.
And then the long range inflation rate in the United States is around 3 to 3.25%.
So I want to try and earn something that's going to be in excess of that.
Now it's going to be very difficult to try and earn those kind of market beating returns
when you're investing in very large companies.
People can do it, obviously.
I mean, momentum stocks have done very well recently, but I don't think that's going to last.
But with the kind of deep value approach, you are going to be earning returns which are probably going to be in the high teens,
maybe the low 20s or maybe higher depending on how conservative you are with your analysis of the company.
I think this approach works very well for small investors, small retail investors, and this approach
can be applied across the entire world.
This is the edge that the small investor has is that they can invest anywhere in the world
and invest in pretty much anything they want to.
So Japan is famous for having a lot of these net-net companies where they're selling
at deep discounts to their tangible assets.
South Korea is another one where you'll find some of these interesting companies.
Hong Kong, there will likely be some companies with what's the same.
going on at the minute. The share prices of these companies are falling and the over-the-counter
markets in the United States as well. And also the aim market, which is the alternative
investment market on the London Stock Exchange. A lot of these kind of net nets tend to crop up there
as well. So if you're willing to put in the work, you can find these companies and it can be a very
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All right.
Back to the show.
So, David, I really like the way that you introduce these companies and your process.
And this is very different than the vast majority of our listeners, a year.
used to hear here on the show, and I'm sure what they used to do themselves.
Now, usually whenever we invest in stocks, we always make a comparison with a competitor.
For instance, if we buy stocks in Delta Airlines, we might want to compare that to Southwest Airlines
first to learn more about the industry metrics and which company that has a competitive
advantage.
Now, it might be difficult enough to find financial statements for a company like Pine Lawn Cemetery,
for instance. And you might end up comparing that company to a competitor that is, say,
a thousand times as big because these companies are just so small. How do you conduct an appropriate
competitive analysis? I tend to approach each company on a case-by-case basis, and I will use,
I guess you would call it a microeconomic approach. So I will maybe say, figure out how many
employees does the company have? And then can I find out how much revenue the company is generally?
can I find out what earnings the company is generating?
And then I'll calculate what is it earning in terms of sales and earnings per employee?
And then I could perhaps compare that to another company that doesn't necessarily have to be
in a similar market cap range, but I can still get an idea of roughly how competitive
the company is, what its margins are going to be like.
I will also look for companies that may have geographical moats.
So these could be gravel pits.
They could be toll bridges.
They could be racing tracks.
all kinds of strange esoteric investments. Now, these companies by their very nature will have a moat
because they occupy a geographical space. So if we take maybe a quarry or a gravel pit,
the owner of that gravel pit or quarry has a geographical moat because a competitor that's
based in another county, it's not economical for them to ship over their produce, the aggregate
to a different county. Just wouldn't work out on a basic microeconomic sense. So because,
Because of that, we know that within a certain catchment area around this gravel pit or this quarry, they will have a geographical moat.
And the same could go for railways.
No one's going to spend huge amounts of money to lay down a railway track where a railway track already exists.
So by looking at these small companies, you don't necessarily have to do a direct competitor analysis because you can find those that operate with some kind of geographical moat.
or there may be some kind of niche business.
They may specialize in producing some kind of very unique product,
and they may have long-term contracts with military or the Defence Department
or various other government agencies.
These long-term contracts are locked in,
and they provide some kind of competitive advantage for the company.
Because it's a very niche product,
there's unlikely to be many competitors attracted
just because the market share is so small in terms of dollar terms.
it's not going to attract large numbers of competitors.
That acts as a barrier to entry so these companies can then build up these relationships
with the government and other private sector operators and then continue to produce
margin results over prolonged periods of time.
So David, I'm kind of curious what you think the best advice would be for somebody who's
listening to this, somebody who maybe wants to invest in a smaller company in an over-the-counter
traded business.
what would you tell that person, knowing all the things that we previously discussed,
what would be your best piece of guidance for them?
So the first thing would be to say caveat emptor by a beware.
So proceed with caution when you're investing in the over-the-counter space because you will
come across frauds there.
But if you conduct due diligence, it's very easy to spot these and to avoid them.
So personally, I will generally avoid resource stocks like miners.
the old saying is that a mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.
These things, they tend to eat up a lot of money and not really produce much of a return.
So I'll avoid those.
I'll avoid biotech, and I suggest other people do so, unless they're experts in that kind of area.
Biotech stocks tend to just burn through a lot of cash in research and development.
Crypto, I will generally avoid as well.
I have no problem with cryptocurrencies.
I think they're a good thing, but I think there's a lot of small companies that have sprung up in the crypto.
space because they think that it's a quick way to make money. I will also avoid Chinese reverse
takeover mergers. So these are companies where a Chinese company has found a United States
company, which is maybe a shell company. It doesn't have a business. And they will then merge with
that company to get access to the markets in the United States. Now, I will generally avoid
those companies because there's a much higher chance of fraud with those kind of companies. So
anything that really has operations in China where I have some suspicions, I will avoid it.
although I wouldn't avoid some of the much larger companies in China or Hong Kong,
generally the small companies I will avoid.
I will also avoid companies that have very high share counts.
If I see a company in it has billions of shares,
I'm not interested in that company because that suggests to me
that the company has to keep issuing equity to keep the lights on.
They have having to keep issuing equity,
that's a bad thing for me because I'm going to see my position diluted over time.
Whereas if I find a company that's got a share count of maybe 10 million or less
and it's been around for several decades,
that indicates to me that the company has been able to continue its operations
without having to dilute shareholders.
I would also suggest that investors diversify
so then they can limit non-market risk.
They can read about this in You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt.
He talks about how one should diversify to avoid non-market risk,
the risk that one of your stocks blows up and wipes out of your portfolio.
So don't just put all your money into like a couple of stocks like Charlie Munger.
does, his approach is very different. He's looking for companies with moats. The deep value approach
is very different to that. And then another thing I'd say is to put the work in. The more work you do,
the more likely you are to get market-beaten returns. If you work harder than everyone else,
that will pay off. I see that in all walks of life, whether it's athletics or business or
anything really. And again, I would suggest people look for a mentor, so if you can find someone
that's experienced in this area and perhaps email them, contact them and discuss ideas.
Maybe share ideas on companies you've found and ask them what their opinion is before you buy the company.
That can be very useful as well.
So I think that's a nice segue into my next question.
Aside from your own blog, what are the best resources if our listeners would like to learn more about the OTC stock market?
I would recommend that listeners can try and get hold of some over-the-counter market stock manuals.
There are a number that are around.
you can buy the merchant over-the-counter manuals and there is the walkers over-the-counter manuals.
Now you can pick these up on the cheap generally on Amazon from time to time.
I actually ended up ordering an old merchant over-the-counter manual from the United States.
I generally don't buy the most recent edition because it's nearly a thousand dollars.
So I will buy ones that are maybe a couple of years old, but generally a lot of the information is still quite relevant.
And they will also follow a number of different over-the-counter value blog.
So there's some such as no-named stocks run by Dan Shum, over-the-counter adventures, which is run by Dave Waters, Oddball Stocks, which is run by Nate Tobik.
I will follow these blogs and then look at the companies that they're talking about and use that as a kind of springboard to then go and conduct research into these companies myself.
And I think by reading through all these blogs, you start to get a knowledge of the different companies that operate within this space and you start to learn about all the different nuances.
that there are in the over-the-counter investing space.
David, thank you so much for coming here on the show.
And, yeah, I'm sure that our listeners would love to learn more about you.
As mentioned before, I'll make sure to link to episode 93,
the last time you're on a podcast where you joined a mastermind group discussion.
They can also read some of your analysis on our intrinsic value index.
It's completely free.
And they can also sign up at tipemail.com.
Whenever we have a new analysis that we send out, a lot of them are written together with David.
It will go directly to the inbox.
But aside from that, David, I know that you're on Twitter and I know you have a great blog too.
Where can the audience learn more about you?
So if people want to connect with me, they can connect to me on Twitter at elementary value.
I'm always on there generally.
So if people want to contact me or respond, that's fine.
They can do that and I'll get back to them.
You can also follow me on my blog, which is at elementary value.com.
So I generally try and post a write-up on a new company every couple of weeks to every month if I can.
I've got a lot of ideas.
There's probably going to be a lot more posts coming.
And on that website, there's also a lot of other information for value investors,
how to look for ideas and different resources that they can use.
You can find me there, and you can contact me there, and I'll get back to you.
Fantastic.
And again, David, thank you so much for taking time out to speak with Preston.
me here today. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right guys. So at this point in timely show,
we'll play a question from the audience. And this question comes from Sebastian. Hi, Preston and Stieg.
Thank you so much for this show. I'm a big fan and I've been learning a lot. My question is regarding
passive investing. Warren Buffett and a lot of other value investors recommend index funds for most people.
But this week, Bloomberg published an article that index funds have more money than actively managed funds.
And famous investor, Michael Burry, recently claimed to have identified the latest bubble, which is passive investing,
neglecting all the other stocks.
So my question is, what are your thoughts about passive investing and what else can one do to protect the downside?
Thank you.
Now, Sebastian, I think that's a great question.
So, Mangaburi, who you referred to, became famous for being the quote-unquote hero in the movie The Big Short that I'm sure many audience have already watched.
And in that movie that took place up to the crash in 2008, he made a very profitable investment betting against CDOs.
And right now he's comparing passive man's index funds, meaning if you buy, for instance, ETF tracking the SNP 500.
And he's comparing that with CDOs before the great financial crisis.
Now, if you're not too familiar with CTOs, it's short for collateralized debt obligations,
which was really a lot of bad debt bundled together and sold his high-quality debt,
and often roll into so-called subprime mortgages that blew up back in 2008.
And yes, we have tried multiple times to get Mangabur to come on the podcast,
to talk not just about what he saw back then, but also his view on passive index funds,
and he even recently took a stake in Beth Banff Beyond.
So definitely a lot of things to talk about.
And we will definitely still try to see if we can get him on.
But in the meantime, let's go back to your question here, Sebastian.
If you look closer at the S&P 500, you have as many as 266 stocks.
That was in Michael Boris count.
More than half, there was traded under $150 million.
And why that sounds like a lot, it's not a lot if you compare to the true.
trillions, trillions with a T of dollars in assets globally that are indexed to these stocks.
Now, there are many opinions on whether we are in the bubble or not, but here on the show,
we multiple times talked about that we found the stock market overvalued, and I really
haven't changed my opinion about that. But regardless, if we are in the bubble or not,
one thing is certain. If we are in a bubble, the longer it goes on, the worse it will be
whenever the music stops.
So you ask, how do we protect ourselves
if you think that Michael Berry has a point?
First, you don't buy passive index funds, of course.
Instead, you can have individual stocks,
and yes, that stock could be in the SP 500,
but also consider if you can find stocks outside of the index.
For instance, many value stocks are not included
in those power indexes.
And I know I'm talking my position,
but I'm pretty bold on value to perform well
compared to the markets the next few years.
if you agree with Michael Burry about a bubble being built on passive index funds, I think that's
worth a consideration. Now, also to your other point, Sebastian, does that mean that Warren Buffett
is wrong whenever he suggests investors to buy passive Mennon's ETFs tracking the market?
What he's saying is that unless you're qualified to make investment decisions and know how to
value both the market and individual stocks, you should just invest in the market using a cheap investment
material such as an ETF, because in the long run, whether we're in the bubble or not, you will
get the market return. And yes, the market return won't give you a fantastic Warren Buffett type of
return, but a decent return without the stress about whether we're in the bubble or not.
And also keep in mind that we had very smart people before the crash in 2008. They both said
that the market would go higher and lower. And in March 2009, when the market buttoned out,
We still had very smart people arguing that it will go in either way.
You know, it could go higher or lower.
So I still think Warren Buffett's advice is very solid for the vast majority of investors
who can't or won't make investment decisions away from the stock market overall
and who do not pay attention to what Michael Burry is saying or if we are indeed in a bubble.
Long term, you will just do fine with that investment approach that Warren Buffett suggests.
Hey, Sebastian, so I love the question.
And to be quite honest with you, I thought the same thing as you.
I was kind of, you know, kind of raising an eyebrow saying, well, that's an interesting take.
And it's not a new take.
You had a Carl Icon that was saying something similar back in 2015, I want to say.
And it was funny because the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, he came out and slammed the icon saying, you know, that's a bunch of crap.
And here's all the reasons why.
And I'm sure if you did a little bit of digging, you could uncover a few videos.
of that exchange, which happened well before Michael Berry's comment here recently.
And I just don't know that I have a good answer for you.
Where I think that there's more systematic risk with what's going on is much more in the bond
market and in the currency markets.
So my point of view is that you can continue to do quantitative easing.
You can continue to do all these things that central bankers are doing.
But where I think you start to hit a backstop and where you start to hit a wall is
in the fixed income bond market.
And so as they continue, as central banks continue to push those interest rates lower and lower
through quantitative easing.
And now they're doing it on the shorter end of the bond yield curve in the repo market.
It's all quantitative easing.
And all it's doing is it's continuing to push the yield of the bonds down to zero percent.
Now, over in Europe, over in Japan, all these different spots in the world, major economies,
you're starting to see the interest rates bottom out at zero.
They can't go any lower. They're trying to push them negative and it's not looking pretty whenever they do.
Here in the United States, you still have some positive interest rate. So where I think that this is
playing out much more so than maybe the ETF market, I think all the thing that's going to happen
with the ETFs is that you're just going to see the movements be that much more abrupt whenever they do
occur. I don't see the ETF being the cause, though. I see the central bank interaction pushing interest
rates down to zero percent and trying to make them go negative, becoming much more of the issue
because you start to hit a limitation on how much Ray Dalio calls it pushing on a string.
So when you get to a position where currencies are going to have to be devalued in a major
way in order to account for this, and that's how I see this playing out.
And you're going to have to see, and if they do that with currencies, that means interest
rates on fixed income bonds have to go up, which would then draw.
drive equities down. I think that what you're going to see the ETFs being this vehicle that
provides a massive push to that more fundamental problem or more systematic problem that's
playing out. So really hard to say. Sting and I just, we keep on trying to find good undervalued
picks, stuff that we were talking about with David today. Good undervalued picks that have good
fundamentals that would be able to weather something like that because they have a good
strong competitive advantage and they're adding value in the marketplace. We're just trying to find
those kind of companies and highlight them to all of our listeners, but then also talk about
these macro factors so that everyone's aware as to what's happening in the market. So Sebastian,
really love the question and for asking such a great question. We have an online course called our
Intrinsic Value course that we're going to give you completely for free. Additionally, we have a
filtering a momentum tool, which we call TIP Finance, we're going to give you a year-long subscription
to TIP Finance completely for free. Leave us a question at asktheinvestors.com. That's ask theinvestors.
If you're interested in these tools, simply go to our website, the investors podcast.com,
and you can see right there in our top level navigation, there's links to TIP finance and also the
TIP Academy where you'd find the intrinsic value course. All right, guys. That was all the
pressed on my hat for this week's episode of The Investors Podcast.
We see each other again next week.
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