I bought Noble stock at the earliest date of, according to
my record, early 2010 at a price of $1.69 (price quoted pre-10 to 1 share
consolidation from here on). I traded a few rounds of Noble after that, with
the highest buy price at $2.02 and lowest at $0.845. Details were sketchy as I
just started investing back then and didn’t keep proper transaction records.
And what is the current price of Noble on 7 June 2017? $0.033.
That is a whopping 98.4% plunge in from the highest price I ever paid for it.
For the record, I held my Noble shares from 2010, and just recently sold in Mar
this year at $0.195. In other words, I witnessed its share price dropped, and
dropped, and dropped further. I lost around $13k on this share.
It is the most epic, disastrous and horrendous investing
experience I ever had.
Investors usually have a short memory and I believe many
would not recall that Noble was once trading at $2.2, and perhaps I am one of
the very few investors who held Noble for this long, and still bother to
calculate the amount of loss and do a post mortem on this?
While there are many analysis now looking back at Noble and concluded
that it inflated its assets, had questionable accounting principles and
unsustainable business models, they don’t matter to me because these are with
hindsight benefit. I am interested to
know whether I could have avoided Noble, or rather, sold off before Iceberg and
Muddy Waters shorted it using basic Fundamental Analysis which I usually employ
for other share investment?
So, this exercise would look at Noble’s business quality
using basic fundamental indicators, which are gross profit margin, net profit
margin (pre tax), debt/equity ratio, pre tax operations cashflow, free
cashflow, pre tax operations cashflow to net earnings ratio. I pick these
because I think they function quite well as filtering criteria that remove companies
that one should not invest in, and represent the qualities I look for: healthy
margins and good earnings backed by strong cashflow with conservative amount of
debts.
Iceberg released its research report in Feb 2015, with Muddy
Waters followed suit two months later. So the period of this study will be the
5 FYs from 2010 to 2014. Without further ado, lets start.
*I extracted the figures from paid service of ShareInvestor
portal
SN
|
Indicator/FY
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
1
|
Gross Profit Margin
|
2.88%
|
1.83%
|
1.60%
|
1.45%
|
1.74%
|
2
|
Net Profit Margin
|
1.28%
|
0.62%
|
0.46%
|
0.25%
|
0.20%
|
3
|
Debt/Equity
|
3.25
|
3.17
|
1.10
|
2.82
|
2.95
|
4
|
Cashflow from Ops (Pre tax)
|
-1695455
|
2562976
|
869698
|
876124
|
-1433747
|
5
|
Free Cashflow (SN4 - Capex)
|
-2307937
|
2090689
|
-85037
|
250269
|
-1995211
|
6
|
Cashflow from Ops (SN4) /Net Earnings
before Tax
|
-1.82
|
3.91
|
1.63
|
2.82
|
-6.45
|
Would the numbers have made me reject Noble? – Yes,
Probably, Not Sure, No
·
Gross Profit Margin – Yes. Extremely low margin
of 1 plus percent which had been deteriorating from FY10 to FY14, albeit with a
small improvement in the last year.
·
Net Profit Margin – Yes. A super big turn off
with a company that earn less than 1% net on its revenue.
·
Cashflow from Ops – Not sure. While Noble had 2
years of negative cashflow out of the 5, it did have 3 straight years of
positive cashflow. I may need further digging to find out how does this compare
to its earnings, revenue, and what caused the large positive cashflow in FY11.
·
Free cashflow – Probably. Noble had only 2 years
with positive free cashflow out of the 5. It showed huge volatility here, with
free cashflow swinging from big negative to big positive annually. Such inconsistent
free cashflow would probably deterred me from buying the share.
·
Ops Cashflow/Net Earnings Pre Tax Ratio – Not
sure. Same as SN4, Noble did have 3 positive years from FY11 to FY14, and the
numbers looked good too: with at least 1.6 times, and highest of 3.9 times ops
cashflow backing up its net earnings. But I would probably seek more clarity on
the -6.45 ratio in FY14.
Based on these very top-line, fundamental numbers, I deduced
that Noble had extremely weak earnings margin and
balance sheet strength. As for cashflow, it had questionable, or less-than-desired
cashflow generation ability.
But could these numbers have prevented me from buying its
shares?
I shall say that if I were thinking of buying it for the
first time, these numbers would have turned me away, simply due to its
appalling earnings margin and extremely high level of debts.
But if I already had a position in it, the chances of me
selling out would be much lower. It would have riled some suspicion in me,
prompted me to study the numbers more in depth. But the complex financial
statements meant that I would probably give up halfway before gleaning anything
conclusive. There could also be many other psychological factors and noises at
play: buying into Noble’s past glory of ever-increasing share price, swayed by
news or analysts report on commodity bull run, Noble’s size and blue chip
status, mental reluctance of cutting loss etc.
But one thing I will remember by heart is that you have to
scrutinise the financial statements before investing. This is the most basic of
company research to be done religiously. And when there are numbers similar to
above, avoid and look for others. It would be better to miss out profiting than
losing money on it.
The share purchase happened long time ago in 2010. But looking
back at old experiences can usually provide golden lessons too. Let this be a
costly lesson to remember for life.
Readers, any experience, stories or opinions to share?
TA would have alerted you too.
ReplyDeleteyea you are right. cut loss after it breached certain long term MA
DeleteI don't quite think its your fault. Every bad company has a price/valuation too, and at a certain point, it could had been too cheap. There were also expectations and guidance of turnaround stories. And value investors tend to buy when the fear is the highest. Plus, they constantly had asset sales and rumours of takeover, so it as a punt, it could have gone the other way either. Finally, because of all the multiple asset sales too, it would had been rather difficult to analyse the prior year financials.
ReplyDeleteI just thought the management had been a little dodgy and in the end, they seem to have lost the faith of the banks and other creditors. They also kind of misled people, failing to give proper guidance, announce a profit warning 2 days before earnings and before a public holiday.
I thought cut loss discipline would be the biggest takeaway, and I am also very much guilty of this.
true. cut loss is still an important art i am learning..
DeletePosition sizing, trailing stop loss, and stop over-thinking or over -analyzing things.
ReplyDeleteBut never pre-enter your stops into trading system beforehand.