A day will arrive (hopefully, before I leave the planet) when Greece is a more happy financial place, with the tourists at the beaches and drinking ouzo.
IMF says that......yes, you do have to pay your debt as scheduled.
Has there been any of this that is unclear to those playing this game???
a short articleOh, well.................and
we hoped our portfolio would not have a down week for the entire year. Though this has not yet happened for this week, today may be the test.Just short term profit taking, yes?
Or that the 300,000 + Bloomberg terminals
went "dark" for awhile..........................
Take care,
Catch
Comments
http://www.dolphinci.com/
Edit: OK, nevermind, I see DOLHF on the pink sheets at around 38 cents per share.
The US pink sheet foreign ordinary shares (which are not highly liquid) are 37 cents, although there is often a significant spread between bid/ask. Symbol is DOLHF.
Large US hedge fund Third Point owns 20% of shares.
Third Point LLC 129,661,538 20.18
Major shareholders:
http://www.dolphinci.com/investor-relations/shareholders/
Trades at a significant discount to NAV/book.
Discussed plans to review strategy and narrow discount in Feb.
http://www.lse.co.uk/AllNews.asp?code=l4yj0c82&headline=Dolphin_Capital_Investors_Aims_To_Narrow_Discount_Accelerate_Returns
To me it's just a very cheap play with a lot of Greek exposure at a significant discount to NAV, plus some major institutional shareholders.
I took a look at Dolphin over the weekend. Yes, it does look cheap, but there are some good reasons for this:
1) Management fees are very high: 2% management fee + 20% performance fee, although performance has been pretty abysmal.
2) The 66% discount looks cheap, but for several years the discount was above 80%. For a period in 2012, the discount was 85%!
3) The fund was started in 2005 and in spite of the huge discounts it has NEVER paid any distributions.
4) Its properties in Greek are very high-end. If Greece abandons the Euro, there may be a risk of expropriation on some of their holdings since many owners of Dolphin are wealthy foreigners (e.g. hedge funds). Syriza could also put exorbitant asset-based taxes on luxury real estate properties.
5) I read through a few of the annual reports. They are very complex and hard to decipher and the fund has a very complicated ownership structure. In earlier years, there were a lot of related party transactions, but the new board seems to have ended this lately.
Basically, this fund has been badly mismanaged since 2005 (or managed well for the managers, but not for shareholders). They have destroyed a tremendous amount of NAV.
The question is whether the new board can clean the company up, and return some money to shareholders. At a minimum, they need to generate positive cash flow and start paying out some distributions to take advantage of the large discount.
It's not been a well-managed fund and it does have issues, but as a "lottery ticket" play with Third Point owning 20% of the shares and a number of other major investors (including Fortress, Blackrock and others), it's a "comfortable small bet" that the stars line up in a way that these incredible properties can see their full potential. If it doesn't work out, it's a very small position.
"4) Its properties in Greek are very high-end. If Greece abandons the Euro, there may be a risk of expropriation on some of their holdings since many owners of Dolphin are wealthy foreigners (e.g. hedge funds). Syriza could also put exorbitant asset-based taxes on luxury real estate properties."
Certainly a risk but I'd think if they did that it would be highly discouraging to foreign investment at a time where it would be (and should be) welcomed and encouraged.
I've also pondered effectively a similar distressed situation with Sprott Resources (SCPZF.pk), a subsidiary of the well-known Canadian parent. That company, which initially did well, ran into one significant issue after another, including some very poor management choices (a ridiculous dividend policy a couple of years ago that was done away with shortly after, which just looked awful), and has basically been a disaster in recent years.
That fund has high management fees as well, basically completely unearned given the horrific performance (it's gone from $5.90 in 2010 to .95; the recent downturn in commodities hasn't helped but this hasn't been doing well for a while before that.) At least the Dolphin fund perked up after the prior Greek issues cooled off a couple of years ago - Sprott Resources has been more or less a straight line downwards in recent years. I've pondered a bet on that from the standpoint of Sprott the parent possibly buying it similar to what they did with another Sprott company, Sprott Lending, but that's not a compelling reason on its own.
I don't like doing this kind of investment that much anymore, but Dolphin remains appealing for a very small stake from the standpoint of Third Point's significant holding - you have one of the largest activist funds in the US at work - and the properties themselves as Dolphin is one of the largest private seafront landowners in Greece and Cyprus.