Professor Glen Arnold

MS International (LSE:MSI) has such a strong balance sheet – including £14m of cash and no debt – that it qualifies for my net current asset value portfolio as well as the Warren Buffett portfolio.  This works if I’m prepared to overlook the fact that its collection of freehold property is allocated not to the […]

MS International’s (LSE:MSI) directors have done a very good job of diversifying from guns and forks. In 2010 they paid £3.53m to buy the second half of the Petrol Station Superstructures business they did not own.  And in 2015 they paid €3.4m (£2.6m) for a company which was to become their Branding Division. Both divisions […]

MS International (LSE:MSI) is comprised of four business.  Today I’ll look at two of them. Tomorrow’s newsletter will cover Petrol Station Superstructures and Corporate Branding. Defence The Defence division mostly makes naval guns, selling to 20 countries, with 300 systems already in place. It also services those guns – a source of continuing revenue in times […]

MS International (LSE:MSI), a British engineering company, is selling at a low price relative to its past earnings, its net current asset value and its earnings power. I have bought shares at an average of £1.292 for my Buffett-style portfolio (MCap = £1.292 x 16.5m shares = £21.3m). MS International has two economic franchises: (a) […]

Seven and a half years ago that I left a tenured professorship to concentrate on investment.  Back then the FTSE 100 was around 6,600. The market as a whole has not exactly moved strongly in a positive direction over that time. It is now 6,620 (although there have been dividends of around 3-4% per year). […]

Buffett, in the late 1990s, faced a dilemma common to all investors from time to time (perhaps with smaller sums): he had money to invest, billions in cash or near cash, but “prices were high for both businesses and stocks” (Warren Buffett wrote in his 1997 letter to shareholders). What to do? First, he was […]

It isn’t jumps in stock market prices of his investments that Buffett measures himself by. He focuses on  increases in intrinsic value. A very rough and ready proxy for annual changes in intrinsic value is movements in net worth (book value). For example, in just the twelve months of 1998 Berkshire’s net worth balance sheet […]

SpaceandPeople (LSE:SAL) has been one of my worst investments.  The company works with owners of high footfall spaces such as shopping centres or railway stations to use that space by charging either retailers to set up a stall/unit or promoters to advertise and promote through things like tasting or talking to potential customers. Naturally, it […]

Dewhurst (LSE:DWHA) reported its annual results to 30th September 2020 this morning. They were very pleasing. Basically, they had to adjust operations considerably during lockdown, but by dint of dedication and teamwork, overall sales were down only 1.5% and adjusted operating profit was up from £7.7m to £8.6m. If I add back exceptional costs that will not reoccur […]

Dewhurst (LSE:DWHA) has a lot of assets, and no debt, backing its 8.08m shares.  When viewing the key numbers below consider that the “A” shares (non-voting) are currently trading at £5.50 – £6.50. Market capitalisation is £66.7m with the 3.31m Ordinary shares at £11.60 and the 4.77m “A” shares at £5.94 (what I paid). Balance […]