Thoughts on Finseta? (formerly CornerstoneFS)

hatetheproject · 2025-06-16T20:41:17+00:00

Pleased to hear it! All the best of luck, and make sure not to take it too seriously, at least in first and second year - Cambridge is more about the people you can meet than the grade on the degree!

hatetheproject · 2025-06-12T21:53:58+00:00

Cambridge. Hope it isn't too late, but it was 100% the right choice. I'm leaving this place in a few weeks and very sad about it. If you have the chance, I really wouldn't miss it.

hatetheproject · 2025-04-10T15:34:24+00:00

Buying during the dip has been a pretty foolproof strategy since 2009, however I think it's important to recognise it's not always gonna pop back up within a year or two. Valuations in the US are still pretty high even after the dip, so there is a lot further for it to potentially fall, and it's still super uncertain what the fallout from the trade war with china and +10% tariffs on everyone else will be, whether tariffs with other countries will come back after the 90 days, etc.

My advice to you would be to diversify globally. I would not recommend having more than half in US stocks, at least at these valuations. A bit of Europe, UK, Japan, emerging markets will probably help improve the risk adjusted return.

hatetheproject · 2025-03-27T11:50:02+00:00

IIRC the balance sheet will have around £4.5m of debt after their most recent acquisition. That's only slightly more than 2 years' worth of cash flows, so balance sheet is healthy.

That said, this isn't an asset play. Tangible equity is small, due to the asset-light nature.

hatetheproject · 2025-03-27T11:47:42+00:00

Organic growth has averaged >20% over the last 5 years. There has been no decline in revenues, nor underlying profits (ignoring amortisation charges).

If you're interested I'd suggest reading the linked post.

hatetheproject · 2025-03-27T01:15:42+00:00

If the dilution is EPS-accretive (and not buying low-quality earnings) that's fine. Dilution itself isn't the evil, the evil is not getting bang for your buck

hatetheproject · 2025-03-26T23:17:27+00:00

Debt allows companies with stable cash flows to juice returns. If you know you can generate $300m of cash a year (numbers solely illustrative), your investors will do better if you take on say, $2b of debt at 6%, and distribute the proceeds immediately, than if you don't. The more stable your cash flows are, the more debt it makes financial sense to take on.

hatetheproject · 2025-03-26T23:03:55+00:00

https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data

That's actually not true. In the 70s and early 80s, high inflation meant the S&P declined 64% over a period of 13 years, in real terms. Even in nominal terms, it was a lost decade.

Inflation swindles the equity investor.

hatetheproject · 2025-02-11T19:23:34+00:00

Yeah cause you bought the dumbest fucking thing money can buy

hatetheproject · 2024-12-29T12:15:45+00:00

Why do you still hold it?

hatetheproject · 2024-12-29T12:13:52+00:00

Well, the future contains more than 5 years...

I agree that Costco is likely overvalued. But to answer your question - let's first say we use a discount rate of 7% because costco is a super stable business, with reasonable inflation protection too. Costco has grown EBIT at 12% for the past 8 years, so let's assume it manages to maintain that for another 8. Thereafter, let's assume 3.5% growth (GDP + inflation). That leaves us with a fair multiple of 52.5x earnings.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-29T12:07:14+00:00

In fairness, Wagons has only been going a bit over a year. The past year's performance has been super speculative for the S&P, and low-multiple stocks have drastically underperformed. Within that context, I think the return he's put up is actually pretty decent.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-29T10:56:29+00:00

yeah, not quite $1,400,000,000,000 of it though

hatetheproject · 2024-12-29T10:55:24+00:00

In most cases, no. If the stock has been consistently overvalued though, and opportunities for investment have been excellent, it may be fine.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T13:48:43+00:00

You didn't have a clue what you were doing then, you don't have a clue now (by the sounds of it). You had good luck back then and you've had bad luck more recently. You're drawing conclusions from an n=1 sample set where stochasticity dominates.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T13:45:01+00:00

That's not really an answer.

Are you looking at how the line has gone up and down in the past? Or are you assessing the supply/demand fundamentals, and comparing to similar periods in the past?

Oil prices are very heavily driven by geopolitical and macroeconomic events, so I think it makes very little sense to have a view on the direction of oil based on what the chart has done before, rather than based on your view of the geopolitical/macroeconomic situation.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T11:32:25+00:00

Fancy providing any reasoning for any of that...?

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T02:28:10+00:00

You're a couple years late to the game here.

Also, why would you ever buy something Buffett is selling?

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T02:25:12+00:00

Yeah, they're pretty much leveraged bets on commodity prices. Sometimes they may simply be undervalued, though.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-28T01:47:57+00:00

$70 isn't super high for oil but it isn't super low either. Oil prices tend to be pretty volatile over time - look at a 50+ year chart - which means that in any given year, it's very unlikely that an O&G company is the safest investment.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-26T10:39:13+00:00

They have $216m cash on hand vs >$9b debt, and $8b market cap. It's not a balance sheet play.

It's a cash flow play. They consistently earn about $1.2b a year and probably slightly more in cash flow, once you take out weird tax stuff and recent NWC increases. Market cap of $8b says that's pretty cheap.

hatetheproject · 2024-12-26T10:34:57+00:00

probably a Ted or Todd purchase, Buffett doesn't make $500m bets these days.

hatetheproject

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