Welcome back to Greenbackd and happy new year for 2009. We hope that you had a good break. There have been a number of positive developments in the companies we discussed last year. Set out below is an update on those positions we had open in the Greenbackd Portfolio at the close of 2008:
- Trilogy has increased its stake in ABTL to 7.4%. ABTL is up 18.6% since our first post but we are maintaining our position because we think it’s still worth 50% more.
- BVF has endorsed the MNOV offer for AVGN. AVGN is up 20% since our first post but we are holding on because we think the merger presents an opportunity for AVGN’s stockholders to receive around $1.20 per share in cash (almost 60% higher than AVGN’s $0.78 close Friday) and the possibility of “an extraordinary, uncapped return” if MNOV is successful post-merger.
- BRN has filed its September 10Q and we believe that its liquidation value has increased from $6.52 per share to $6.91 per share. The stock is up 41% since our initial post. We still see the liquidation value some 40% higher than BRN’s Friday close of $4.95, so we will maintain our position.
- CRC is down 6.3% from our initial post. Other than the retirement of the CFO, we have no other news to report. With CRC in a liquidity crisis, the retirement of the CFO is a worrying development. That said, we see CRC’s liquidation value at around $2.45 per share, which is more than 450% higher than its Friday close of $0.43, so we propose to maintain our position.
- A group of “high-powered executives” plan to save INFS from “New York sharks.” The stock is up 15.9% to $0.73 since our initial post. Its liquidating value is still some 58% higher at $1.15 per share and so we are maintaining the position.
- We’ve closed our position in KONA for an 88% gain in 18 days.
- A new activist investor has filed a 13D for MATH and is lobbying the company to liquidate. MATH is up 17.7% since our first post but it’s still trading at half its liquidating value and a little more than half its net cash backing, so we’re maintaining our position.
- ZLC is off 16.8% from our initial post. We’ve estimated its liquidation value at $7.63 per share, which is still 90% higher than its $4.01 close Friday, so we are maintaining our position in ZLC.
Although it is still too early to determine how Greenbackd’s strategy of investing in undervalued asset situations with a catalyst is performing, we’ve set out below a list of all the stocks we’ve included in the Greenbackd Portfolio and the absolute and relative performance of each. This is the standardized format we propose to adopt to track Greenbackd’s performance at 6-monthly intervals:
Current holdings (As at January 5, 2009)
Former holdings (As at date of our closure of the position)
The absolute total return across the current and former positions as at January 5, 2009 is 14.2%, which is 8.4% higher than the S&P500’s return over the same periods. As we discussed above, the holding periods for Greenbackd’s positions has been too short to provide any meaningful information about the likely performance of the strategy over the long term (2 to 5 years), but we believe that the strategy should outperform the market by a small margin.
We look forward to bringing you the best undervalued asset situations we can dig up in 2009.
Greenbackd 