Balwin properties. A thread.

Balwin has just bought a head office building for over R100mn, eliciting lots of comments on fintwit. Given that one of the key tasks of any management team is capital allocation, what does this action tell us about Balwin's management? To answer this, we need to examine what management's options were for deploying such a substantial amount of capital.

The first and best investment option for management is generally to invest to expand the business.

A thread on the investment opportunity in SA
Today, many assets outside of the USA are cheap. Low interest rates have inflated the value of “capital-light” businesses with stable or growing income streams. The rest have been left behind. The really cheap markets are those that are politically unstable and reliant on resource extraction.

The JSE is one of those. Insiders are taking companies private at a record pace, proving their cheapness. Small companies are ignored and offer huge potential.

Thank you for asking, I had hoped someone would. We are in a similar (albeit much, MUCH smaller) situation, so we have thought about it. A lot. Here follows a thread.

https://twitter.com/paul_vestact/status/1219924975743881216

1. Firstly, one has to recognize that the market is generally right about things, and it pays to listen to it. So what is the market saying when an investment holding company trades at a big discount to its core asset.?

Brait. Easy come, easy go. The biggest shocker in Braits results is not the unrealistic valuation of their assets (over a long period of time) but the absolute level of operating expenses. Over R250mn p.a. to manage what was effectively 5 assets.