Groundhog day – Investor’s Edition. Bought additional 10 shares of Kemira for 13,34 EUR per share as a maintenance purchase. These euros were essentially coming from CapMan’s freshly paid dividend (second part). Still nibbling away until price is more favourable. Kemira is quite solid and boring company with partial focus on water sector which I’ve tried to find entry into for quite some time now.
Recent Buy: Kemira Oyj
Mandatory maintenance purchase for the secondary portfolio. I’m not a huge fan of Kemira‘s current valuation but started to nibble on it anyway. Just a tiny purchase of 10 shares bought for 14,26 EUR per share. I’ll probably keep in nibbling on it with such tiny pieces until valuation is more favourable. Company itself is quite solid and boring so in that sense there’s not much to complain. Never managed to pull the trigger when it was trading our 10 EUR per share.
Recent Buy: AbbVie Inc.
It has been really hard finding anything to buy. In an attempt to increase my pharma exposure I bought an entry position in AbbVie Inc. in the from of 20 shares bought for 107,99 USD per share. Let’s consider this as a maintenance purchase while waiting for better market conditions. Good enough company in good enough position with good enough valuation. Good enough in these markets.
Q2/2021 & H1/2021 Results
Second quarter and first half of the year was still very much aftermath of the pandemic. Stocks have soared as the monetary policies have been adjusted to support economic recovery. Chances are that those monetary policies are too loose and late in general but size of the balloon remains to be seen. It’s hard to consider current stock valuations as a whole representative of the underlying economy. Therefore it has been very difficult to find anything to buy. As a compromise I’ve tried to nibble on existing positions with smaller maintenance purchases.
Pre tax dividend income during second quarter was 2684.31 EUR and 3874.46 EUR during first half. Quite solid rebound in progress from last year. It remains to be seen if finance sector is allowed pending dividends this year. Nordea’s dividends for two years are pending on ECB permission. Assuming that permission is granted during Q3 and dividends are paid during Q4 at latest, remaining dividend rebound would then be mainly about few REIT dividends.
Otherwise there were few major news except for the ever ongoing pandemic. Still few will have impact on my portfolio. AT&T will spin off Warner Media. It’s almost guaranteed that dividend will be cut as a whole. I’m a bit torn with this but probably will hold on and see how it plays out eventually. Most annoying thing with these spin offs is the eventual impact on taxation as handling will be a bit more complicated. Second news was Realty Income‘s plan to buy VEREIT. Owning both I don’t really mind but going forward this is positive news.
Plan for the next two quarters? Probably wait and see is the way to go. I’ll do small maintenance purchases and pretty much try to reinvest received dividends. Should there be major correction, I have plenty of cash waiting to be deployed.
Recent Buy: Pfizer Inc
Fine. Couldn’t really find anything to buy but had eye on Pfizer for few months so I bought 50 shares for 38.50 USD per share. Previous exit wasn’t exactly a good move if possible problems with spin off taxation are excluded. Solid company and solid operating environment with the ever ongoing COVID-19 situation, increased vaccine production capacity and all the other product lines. I’ll probably add on this gradually and also look into entering Abbvie position as well since this is a sector I’d like to increase my exposure in.
Recent Buy: CapMan Plc
Same old story. Couldn’t find anything to buy so made another maintenance purchase and bought additional 100 shares of Capman for 2.68 EUR per share to avoid Nordea’s maintenance fee. I’ve been eying Pfizer to restore my existing position which I dropped during the spin off operation they had. That’s was mainly done due to lack of understanding the details of the spin off at the time and to avoid problematic tax reporting which usually comes with such spin offs.
Q1/2021 Results
Groundhog day – Pandemic Edition continues. Yet another boring quarter has passed and handling of the pandemic is still as poor as it has been throughout the pandemic. Speaking of Finland in many ways EU of course. As expected, US appears to bounce back like a dead cat from trampoline which makes us look even worse than usual.
This quarter was quite slow one. I made only few maintenance purchases and sold some of my NEL shares. This was mainly caused by the market situation but also by personal reasons as running & resolving my late father’s estate and associated inheritance details took quite a lot of time. This will have significant impact on second quarter as well. Timing with NEL was spot on but I’ve been holding back on buying back the shares. In general I’ve kind of moved towards reducing portfolio risk which might continue going forward. This should leave the door open for significant moves in my personal finances later. I’ll likely do just minor maintenance purchases and possibly sell some growth or non-core positions.
Dividend income during the quarter was 1284,37 EUR before taxes. Dividends have recovered quite nicely from the hit caused by pandemic. Quite a few REIT are still to restore the dividends and ECB is pushing back bank dividends but these will hopefully resolve themselves before the year ends.
Recent Buy: CapMan Plc
Yet another boring maintenance purchase with 54 shares bought for 2,72 EUR per share. Nothing special here but sector in general is starting to show some signs of increasing M&A activity. My thesis is intact and I expect CapMan to be a part of M&A move soon enough. Working thesis contains timeframe of two years.
Trimmed: NEL ASA
This is once again something I might regret later but I trimmed my NEL ASA position today and sold 1000 shares for 33,63 NOK per share. Cost basis for these was 4.6 NOK per share. Quite nice profit in that sense. There’s really no specific reason for this. I just decided to take some of the profits now. My long term view really hasn’t changed as I still consider NEL to be a buyout target for bigger players. In current environment it’s really difficult to say when that might happen – if it will happen at all – but the sector in general is likely to boom for years to come. I would also be amazed if there’s no significant pullback in the near future. Some of the sector plays have gone through the roof lately and correction there would probably pull NEL down as well. I might buy back these shares (and then some) should that happen but let’s see. For now don’t mind holding some cash.
Q4/20 and FY2020 Results
Everything comes to an end eventually. Probably 2020 will not be missed by many. Pandemic is still ongoing concern even though vaccinations are in progress. Even in developed countries the progress seems to be a bit asymmetric and EU in general seems to be lagging behind a bit. US elections were held and results can be considered final even though some aftershocks are still coming. Brexit was also “finalised” but it seems to be a gift that keeps on giving for years to come. In general pandemic together with brexit revealed something fundamental about EU community. As a result of those events I’m slightly more convinced that EU and Euro as currency will start to break down sooner than later. I don’t anticipate it to happen very quickly but quicker than I thought before. This kind of uncontrolled step towards federalization without a real mandate – and for fundamentally incompatible national economies – will eventually bite us in the ass. I’m guesstimating a timeframe of 8-15 years until this really starts to hit us.
Fourth quarter was somewhat expected kind of quarter. Dividend income compared to previous year was impacted negatively by the pandemic and reduced, eliminated or postponed dividends. Fourth quarter dividend income was 1078,82 EUR before taxes compared to 1 343,74 EUR in 2019. ECB also continued the dividend ban for banks and other financial companies so previously postponed dividends were not paid during this quarter. It is possible that some of those will be paid during 2021 but it’s likely that those and additional since then cumulated profits – buffered dividends if you will – will be heavily capped by ECB. I fear that this ECB decision will be as effective as pissing in your pants in freezing temperatures. FY2020 dividends before taxes were 5040,06 EUR compared to 6769 EUR in FY2019. Primary portfolio market value was hit very hard during the pandemic due to heavy REIT allocation for which recovery is still in progress: 12 month change in dividend portfolio value was −16,43%, fourth quarter change was +6,08% but this paper loss was partially compensated by the secondary growth portfolio.
FY2020 was still a success in personal finances. I tracked my overall savings rate for the whole year and managed to save 73,7% off all my income. That’s a figure which would be hard to beat consistently. I also end the year with portfolio debt to equity ratio of 0,004 which significantly below the 0,1 target average. Plenty of liquidity available for 2021 but in current environment it’s difficult to make any moves. Plan is to keep adding consistently with focus at least on healthcare sector and Swedish dividend stocks. It’s likely that I’ll let cash to to build up a bit but let’s see how the first quarter unfolds.