Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
“Factfulness,” by the late Hans Rosling, is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It’s a great guide to thinking clearly about the world. Here are some of my favorite tips… pic.twitter.com/0TfEtVqNof
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
Before starting The Journal, I have two updates. Firstly, I wrote an article on a company that I admire Zooplus – Growing Moat on my blog. If you have the time, please read it and give me your opinions about my thesis. Secondly, from now on, The Journal will be posted on every Thursday of the week.
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
The Efficient Markets Hypothesis fails because humans are herd animals, not independent rational actors. Thus the best investors tend to be antisocial and contrarian.
zooplus will benefit form the shift from offline to online.
zooplus will benefit from the premiumization and humanization of pet food.
zooplus operates in 30 countries across Europe.
zooplus has a 94 percent retention rate among consumer.
Last month, I read two of my favourite books: Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, and I have been fascinated by the history of the human race and the world around us;
While reading the books, I was fascinated by the phenomenon of domestication of animals.
As an investor, I am always looking for opportunities to become an owner in companies that can improve customer’s life or bring benefit to the world.
zooplus (OCT: ZLPSF) (OTC: ZOPLY) (ETR: ZO1) is the market leader in online pet supplies in Europe with customers across 30 different countries. It has roughly 8 000 different foods and accessories for dogs, cats, small pets, fishes and horses.
Here are the reasons why I believe zooplus is an incredible business:
The shift to online
Although zooplus is the market leader in online pet supplies in Europe, it still has a lot of room for growth. zooplus has achieved 50% market share in the online retail segment which compromises about 7 to 8% of the total market. I believe the online market penetration will continue to grow in the future and zooplus will benefit from this trend. I believe that pet owners will use zooplus and other online pet food suppliers to streamline their purchases of food for their pets. Because pet food is something that doesn’t change, streamlining the process will be an advantage for the owners since it takes less time to order the food online than going to a brick and mortar store.
As you can see from the graph, more and more of the European Union population are buying goods and services online. This is wonderful for zooplus that more people are buying online because it helps them increase their market share.
Not only more purchases are made online for pet supplies in the recent years, but also the market value of pet care has been growing year by year in Europe.
Fulfillment centres
zooplus operates in 30 countries across Europe and has seven fulfillment centres located in the centre of Europe which enables the company to be fast and efficient when delivering products to its customers. zooplus has this fulfillment centre located in four of its biggest market and one located in the United Kingdom which is a big market for pet supplies. I believe it will be hard for the competing companies to compete with zooplus especially brick and mortar, notional operators, and regional operators because opening a fulfillment centre requires a lot of capital investment. Plus, zooplus offers a wider variety of product compared to its competitions. According to the company, large-scale supermarket and discounters usually limit themselves to a product rage of approximately 150 – 200. This is nothing to the roughly 8 000 different foods and accessories offered by zooplus.
Costumer
One of the biggest advantage zooplus has over its competitor is their customers. zooplus, as of November 15th, 2017, has around 6 million active customers and has been adding more customers every year. Repeat customers sales during the first nine months of 2017 have been 94% of their sales. It is incredible that the company can maintain customers at a rate of over 90% since 2014. According to the company, their customers helped to acquire new customers through word-of-mouth recommendations. And, I believe there is nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth advertisement.
zooplus has much competition from the mom and pop stores, regional retailers, national retailers, and the Goliath Amazon which also sells pet food and pet accessories. Amazon has recently entered Spain and Italy with full pet supplies assortments. These two markets are very important to zooplus because they are one of the biggest markets in Europe.
My Two Cents
I believe zooplus is an excellent company and has a great future ahead if it continues to grow its market share and if it can maintain the high percentage retention rate among consumer.
I do not currently own shares of zooplus for two simple reasons: I do not know if I should hedge the currency when I am buying shares of the company and if I should buy it over-the-counter in the US market or directly from the German stock exchange.
Disclaimer
All stock recommendations and comments are my opinions.
Investors should be cautious about any and all stock recommendations. All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into individual stocks before making a purchase decision. In addition, investors are advised that past stock performance is no guarantee of future price appreciation.
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
I watched this week Netflix new series Dirty Money. It’s a Netflix Original Documentary Series exposing the greed, corruption, and crime spreading through our global economy. I found the series fascinating especially the episode about Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Donald Trump and HSBC. It’s probably one of the best documentaries I watched in the past few years.
The Warren Buffet series
I am a big fan of Warren Buffet and a big fan of Infographic, and this is the best of both worlds.
Last year, I read 21 books and here are the four best books I read in 2017.
Here are my top four books:
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
I read Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, a Swedish-American cosmologist, after reading a tweet by Elon Musk. Life 3.0 is a book that talks about AI. By reading this book, I learned the pros and the cons of AI, the need to have something like a Geneva Convention for regulating AI, why something like universal income will be mandatory in the future because of the loss of jobs to machines, and the evolution of humans with AI.
The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai
The Dhandho InvestorbyMohnish Pabrai is the best Investing book I read last year. I read the book last month, and I have been a big fan of Mohnish Pabrai. The Dhandho Investor is very interesting and filled with useful information about how to invest in the stock market or in businesses without losing money and obtaining a high return on your investment. I love the mantra that Mohnish gives in the book “Heads; I win; tails, I don’t lose much!” I will be following this mantra in the future whenever I am investing in a company to reduce my risk of losing money.
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
I heard about Sam Zemurray when I was reading The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. The Fish That Ate the Whale tells the story of Sam Zemurray from his arrival in America in 1891 to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. By reading this book, I learned a lot about business, history, and the incredible journey of Sam Zemurray for running one of the biggest company and becoming a threat to foreign nations.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius is named as one of the Good Emperors. Meditations is filled with a lot of wisdom. It will probably not be the last time I will be reading this book. In fact, I intend to read Meditations once every year because I don’t think reading the book once gives justice to the incredible notes of Marcus Aurelius.
Welcome to the second issue of The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting. Here is what I found interesting this week:
I am currently reading Principles by Ray Dalio. I heard about Ray Dalio a couple of years ago by watching How The Economic Machine Works, a fascinating video. Since He is a private person, I was very excited when I heard that he has a book coming this year. Principles is a three-part book. The first part talks about Ray Dalio’s Career and what it took him to overcome his failure. The second part is Ray Dalio’s Life Principles, which is what I am currently reading, and the final part is Ray Dalio’s Work Principles.
Here are some interviews about the book with Ray Dalio:
How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio – 31 min
Here is an excerpt from the book that made me think about the size of the universe :
“Through our own eyes, we are everything – e.g., when we die, the whole world disappears. So to most people (and to other species) dying is the worst thing possible, and it is of paramount importance that we have the best life possible. However, when we look down on ourselves through the eyes of nature we are of absolutely no significance. It is a reality that each one of us is only one of about seven billion of our species alive today and that our species is only one of about ten million species on our planet. Earth is just one of about 100 billion planets in our galaxy, which is just one of about two trillion galaxies in the universe. And our lifetimes are only about 1/3,000 of humanity’s existence, which itself is only 1/20,000 of the Earth’s existence. In other words, we are unbelievably tiny and short-lived and no matter what we accomplish, our impact will be insignificant.” – p. 149
Thanks for reading, happy new year and see you next week!
A Conversation with Charlie Munger and Michigan Ross – 2017 – 56 min
Mohnish Pabrai Lecture at Boston College (Carroll School of Mgmt) – Nov 30, 2017 – 140 min
Making a Flipbook Machine – 10 min
Vertical Farming
Last year for the first time, I grew vegetable plants in my backyard, and I found fascinating seeing the plants grow and eating fresh plants whenever I want. Now that it is winter, I am looking for a way to grow plants indoors, and I found out about The Smart Farm by Click And Grow. It is a ridiculous 9 900$ indoor farm that can grow 288 plants. When I was doing some research to look at commercial uses of vertical framing and their benefits, I found these two videos very interesting.
For about two weeks, I have been listening to The Investor Podcast. I used to listen to some of their podcasts and now, that I am more interested in value investing, I have listened to all their episodes until episode 123. I have learned a lot from listening to their podcasts, and I would recommend them to everybody who wants to learn more about value investing.
The Dhandho Investor
I finished reading this week The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabra. The book is very interesting and filled with useful information about how to invest in the stock market or a business without losing money and obtaining a high return on your investment. I would recommend the book, like the podcasts, to everybody who wants to learn more about value investing.
SeekingAlpha
For about three years, I have have been very passionate about the stock market and all things business. After acquiring a pretty good knowledge about the stock market, by any mean, I am not an expert I decided to become a contributor to seekingalpha.com. I wrote two articles, one last month and one this week. Please, check it out and any feedback will be really appreciated.
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
1 to learn 2 to escape 3 to validate beliefs 4 to know we are not alone 5 to find new ideas 6 to be inspired 7 to learn to think 8 to stay teachable 9 to dare to dream 10 to gain courage 11 to hope 12 to strengthen convictions 13 to learn to write 14 to fall in love pic.twitter.com/uhUw1X8lg9
Before starting The Journal, I have two updates. Firstly, I wrote an article on a company that I admire Zooplus – Growing Moat on my blog. If you have the time, please read it and give me your opinions about my thesis. Secondly, from now on, The Journal will be posted on every Thursday of the week.
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
Shot on Pixel 2 from a helicopter window. Looking like a wallpaper already, no filters or edits needed. If Galaxy S9 or Pixel 3 top this, I would be sooooooo happy. pic.twitter.com/CqP5n4dOrP
There may be no bigger technology prize yet to be seized than a globally-dominant mobile-payments app. With a domestic ecosystem so fractured, can U.S. stakeholders compete with Chinese tech giants in a market clearly defined by network effects? pic.twitter.com/R1LBsH6hrp
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
Falcon Heavy
This week was an incredible week for SpaceX. On February 6, 2018, at 3:45 p.m. EST, they launched their most powerful rocket. Watching the live stream of the rocket was incredible and I was very lucky to watch it in real time. This was like the moon landing for me, an absolute historical movement. As a Tesla Shareholder, for me, the cherry on top of the cake was that the dummy payload on the flight was Elon Musk’s midnight cherry Tesla Roadster.
This is one of the best infographics about investing I have seen this year. I knew that, if you invested in a company paying a dividend, you would have a better return than a company that doesn’t pay dividends. This infographic opened my eyes about the power of investing.
Welcome to The Journal. My goal with The Journal is to post once a week a list of everything that I found interesting from investing, design, architecture, and much more. Here is what I found interesting this week:
This week I didn’t have a not of time reading articles and funding cool stuff since I am working on a new article that I am writing for Seeking Alpha.
3 largest ETF managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, & SSGA) manage 82% of ETF assets. Top 5 manage 89%, & the top 10 account for 95% of assets. As Jack Bogle has said: “Too much money is in too few hands.” pic.twitter.com/ihrQsplAtc
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