Mid Year 2017 Stock Investment Review

Given that the first half of the year is behind us, Heartland Boy thinks it is apt to do a half-time health check on his stock investment portfolio. Previously, Heartland Boy had not accounted for spare cash lying around in his portfolio that had not been utilised. This was a mistake that he had made in computing his stock portfolio returns. Therefore, he has amended the mistakes and updated his past investment performances. The financial metric that is used to evaluate previous performances (Year 2014, 2015 and 2016) is Internal Rate of Return (IRR). For his mid year 2017 stock investment review, the financial metric used to measure portfolio performance is XIRR instead. Here are the investment returns that Heartland Boy has chalked up since he started his investment journey in 2014.

Mid Year 2017 Stock Investment Review

The STI is a benchmark that Heartland Boy uses to evaluate his stock investment portfolio. STI was one of the top performers in the region for 1H2017. Thankfully, Heartland Boy’s portfolio was able to match up to STI’s sizzling performance. For mid year 2017, STI’s XIRR is 31.1% while Heartland Boy’s portfolio registered 33.6%.  On first glance, Heartland Boy’s active stock selection strategy is still working out well. It certainly justifies the nights that he spends on analyzing equity counters.

While these are indeed headline grabbing numbers, the danger of using XIRR is that it assumes that the exact performance can be replicated in the second half of the year. That is a tall order to ask for both STI and Heartland Boy considering that the general market had already ran ahead of its fair value. Regardless, it is important to review what went right and wrong at the mid-year stage. Let’s examine in detail how a 33% XIRR was achieved by Heartland Boy for his stock investment portfolio for the first half of 2017.

Detailed Review Of Heartland Boy’s Stock Portfolio

Here is the summary of transactions that Heartland Boy did from January to June 2017. Specifically, he bought 3 stocks and sold 3 stocks. That works out to an average of 1 transaction in a month. This helps to keep the brokerage costs low. Note that the table does not capture the dividends paid out by the stocks.

Reasons For Buying

The reasons for buying Viva and ISOTeam had already been documented earlier in his initiation reports. More interestingly, Heartland Boy re-purchased Dutech after selling it in November 2016. The reasons for investing in Dutech again are:

• Gross margins for high security segment should be similar when compared to 2Q2016. That is because steel price, which is a large component of cost, are largely similar across the 2 periods in comparison.
• Increases in inventories and advances to suppliers in 1Q2017 may suggest revenue growth for the rest of the year.
• Management’s excellent track record in restructuring unprofitable companies suggests that shareholders should remain confident of a turnaround for Metric.

Reasons For Selling

RHT

DPU for RHT has been declining for several quarters due to India’s demontisation policy and a reduction in DPU payout. When Heartland Boy met the CEO of RHT at the 2017 REITS Symposium, the CEO confirmed that the demonization policy has delayed discretionary spending.  Unfortunately, Heartland Boy was wrong as the share price increased after he sold.  Nevertheless, Heartland Boy thinks that the valuation is too rich and the market seems happy to be paying too much premium to participate in a healthcare play.

Duty Free

Heartland Boy has only held Duty Free for less than a full quarter before he decided to sell it for a small profit. The holding period was so short that Heartland Boy did not even have time to produce an initiation report. Operationally, the business suffered for 2 consecutive quarters. This was due to the double whammy of heavy flooding at Kelantan and a temporary ban of alcohol sales as a result of the death of the Thai King.  Furthermore, the price which Heartland Boy sold at offered little or no margin of safety. It turned out to be a right decision.

2017 Mid-Year Review Reflections

While tracking his stock portfolio, Heartland Boy realized from his analysis that he had made money in every single purchase of a REIT/Business Trust. This is slowly growing to be his circle of competence and Heartland Boy will probably spend more time in this area. After all, investing within your circle of competence is something which Warren Buffett strongly recommends.

Furthermore, he probably has to find another dividend stock now that Croesus is a subject of a takeover by Blackstone. That is definitely an ongoing assignment. Fortunately, a select group of stocks have already entered Heartland Boy’s shopping list after passing the simple FA criteria examination.

Shopping List for 2017

For readers who are keen to know, several new counters have entered Heartland Boy’s shopping list. Once their entry prices have been triggered, Heartland Boy shall purchase them assuming that their respective micro-environments remain the same and that the technical analysis is positive.

Interestingly, Sunningdale has re-entered the shopping list. Selling Sunningdale for a ~20+% gain at $1.10 back in 2016 proved to be one of Heartland Boy’s worst investment decisions. Well, there is no point crying over spilt milk. But surely, he does not want to make the same mistake twice.