International net-net stocks

While Screener.co is still free I ran a few screens to get a nice list of net-net stocks worldwide.  I'm able to trade internationally through Fidelity so I ran a screen and got results for the following countries.

Italy: 1
Belgium: 2
UK: 74
Netherlands: 1
Hong Kong: 14
Canada: 40
Australia: 30
Portugal: 0
Norway: 0
France: 4
Germany: 35
Japan: 45

Total: 246

I did a bit of spot checking and my guess is the list will shrink pretty drastically once I start digging in, there were a few companies in Belgium that had market caps of 300k or less.  What I'm looking for is that rare diamond in the rough where the company is selling for less than NCAV and is profitable.  Not many of these companies exist, but they are out there.

A perfect example that I plan on writing up in the future is Titon Holdings (TON:LN) a solid business with 50% of market cap in cash and trading below NCAV.

Disclosure: I own shares in Titon Holdings.
Posted by Nate Tobik

8 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 25, 2011 at 1:29 PM

    This is Lenny Grover, the founder of Screener.co. You can modify your screen to look for companies with Net Income(A) > 0 (profitable for the last fiscal year) or Current Year EPS Estimate > 0 (estimated profits for this year > 0). That will leave only profitable Net-Net companies.

    In addition, you can specify that Market capitalization > XXX, where XXX is the minimum market cap that you are willing to accept, in US-dollar equivalents.

    Don't forget that all international currencies are normalized to USD in Screener.co.

    Feel free to e-mail support@screener.co if you have any other questions while building your screens. I am curious as to the full set of conditions that you are using and what the result set looks like.

    I am also a pretty value-oriented investor and built the tool, in part, because of how difficult it is to run Net-Net and similar value screens using other tools. If there are ways we can improve the tool, let me know.

    Thanks,
    Lenny Grover
    Founder/CEO
    FinToolbox/Screener.co

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nate TobikMarch 27, 2011 at 11:17 PM

    Lenny,

    Thanks for the comments. I need to rerun my screens with that added criteria. Here is the query I ran for each country/exchange

    (exchangecountry = "JPN" AND (exchangecountry) IS NOT NULL) AND
    (exchangecode = "TYO" AND (exchangecode) IS NOT NULL) AND
    (((acurast*1000000)/fincurrencyexchangerate)/pricingexchangerate - ((atl*1000000)/fincurrencyexchangerate)/pricingexchangerate > ((mktcap*1000000)/fincurrencyexchangerate)/pricingexchangerate) AND (((atotd*1000000)/fincurrencyexchangerate)/pricingexchangerate = 0)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not Only EquityMarch 28, 2011 at 5:21 AM

    Nate,

    could you point me the italian net net you found it with screener.co ?

    Thank you
    Davide

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nate TobikMarch 28, 2011 at 6:57 AM

    Pensiero,

    Here is the Italian net-net that came up on the screen: Vianini Industria SpA ticker VIN. Based on the Bloomberg blurb it looks like they are a heavy manufacturing company, they make railway sleepers and piping.

    I just went to their site, since they publish their reports in English I will put them on my list for a blog post.

    Let me know if you research them what you find out, it sounds like you're on the ground there so you might have better insight.

    Nate

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not Only EquityMarch 28, 2011 at 8:39 AM

    Nate,

    As you can see in financial report Vianini in 2010 had a decrease in revenue cause Rome Underground temporary stopped the deal in 2009 they closed.
    Vianini is too much dependant by public procurement and I see it like unstable business.
    Not my kind
    Davide

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nate TobikMarch 28, 2011 at 9:01 AM

    Davide,

    I realize I got your name wrong in my last comment to you, sorry about that. What's interesting about Vianini is that they have a marketcap of 43m but have over 70m in cash and investments and are still profitable. So it appears you can buy them for less than cash and get a business for free.
    Thanks for the information on the reason the stock is trading so depressed. Do you know if there is any hope that they'll continue the work in the future? If this company is very reliant on the government it could also be affected if Italy runs into troubles financing it's debt. I will still look into it, thank you for your insight!

    Nate

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not Only EquityMarch 28, 2011 at 9:50 AM

    Today Mark.Cap is about 43M.. Cash&Short Term Inv about 55M Long Term Investment about 33 . Agree with you it seem a bargain but they need lot of political contacts to stay alive. They won't go broke cause they belong at one of the most wealthy family of Rome (Caltagirone). They have interest in media too.
    About Vianini it seem they will close another contract with Rome for Undergroung line B
    Davide

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownApril 4, 2011 at 10:18 AM

    Nate,

    We just released several updates to Screener.co, including the ability to filter by market more easily. You can click on the Markets menu and just select the markets you are interested in (no need to do exchangecountry/exchangecode filters any more).

    Also, it looks like you were using advanced mode; there is no need to do that for the type of screen you are running and basic mode is much easier. According to the screen you posted above, you are looking for Total Debt = 0; this may be overly restrictive as some companies have (total current assets - total liabilities) > 0 but still have some debt on their balance sheets (i.e. MSFT).

    Let me know if you have any other questions.

    Thanks,
    Lenny Grover
    Founder/CEO
    FinToolbox/Screener.co

    ReplyDelete

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