Professor Glen Arnold

The key to a revival of Holders Technology (LSE:HDT) is to cut out value-destructive activities, thereby not only reducing losses but releasing cash. We have seen a decline in the amount of money tied up in inventory and receivables. Is this evidence of partial liquidation by getting out of unprofitable customer servicing? Start with the […]

Holders Technology (LSE:HDT) has a market capitalisation of only £1m but a net current asset value, NCAV, of £3.21m. There is no debt and £0.44m of cash. To calculate NCAV we add up the current assets and deduct all the liabilities (current and non-current), but we ignore any value in non-current assets. To be strict, […]

Comparing the MCap of £6.8m with cash of £5.4m (no debt) and NCAV of £7.8m I judge that there is a sufficient margin of safety on the quantitative side. Qualitative considerations Business prospects. For the NCAV portfolio we are not looking for a high quality economic franchise as we would for a Buffett-type share. Ben […]

Arden’s (LSE:ARDN) turnover has fallen 58% in six years and it is profoundly unprofitable. But staff numbers have fallen by only 31%, and directors’ remuneration by only 33%. If you include secretaries and other low-paid staff, the average salary was £107,000 in 2015 – some people are getting very well paid while shareholders lose money. […]

Arden (LSE:ARDN) was purchased in September 2015 at 42.2p. The company had a market capitalisation of £8.1m and a net current asset value of £8.86m (April 2015 BS). Since then it has reported an annual loss of £2.1m, and NCAV has fallen to £7.9m (October 2015 year-end). So, is it a hold, sell or buy? […]

Titon (LSE:TON) reported excellent profits – eps 12.6p (shares £1). But investors need reassurance it can sustain good profits over the long run – many years – not just when it benefits from first-mover advantage in Korea and rising volume of housing transactions in the UK. In other words we need to estimate earnings power, […]

This week’s Titon (LSE:TON) meeting left me both impressed and with some serious worries. As a result my mind is on a seesaw – one moment weighting the positives more heavily than the negatives, another moment doing the opposite. At least, it is on a seesaw regarding the decision of holding on to my Titon […]

I’ll be attending Titon’s AGM tomorrow. It’s been a 1.5-bagger so far – the AGM will be a good opportunity to gather information so I can make a judgement whether to hold. I’ll report back in a few days. In the meantime here is some more of the Buffett story. Buffett told his fellow investors […]

Buffett was pretty consistent in producing returns for his partners. But the person he recommended as a first-class fund manager, Bill Ruane, had shown a 50% fall in his client’s funds in 1962. In 1963 he only just broke even. In the nine months to October 1969, when Buffett recommends Ruane in a letter to […]

Buffett did not want to simply abandon his partners in 1969. He had a powerful sense of responsibility “I will not hand over their money with a ‘good luck’” (Buffett’s letter to partners, May 29th, 1969). He thus thought through recommendations on where they should put the money they were about to receive from him […]