As usual, here are a some value investing links from the past few weeks:

Alapis SA (APSHF.PK)

Long Thesis. Most investors would agree that Greece is in big trouble. However, often the best bargains appear when the rest of the market is running away.

OSV presents a nice guest writeup on Alapis SA, the leading Greek pharmaceutical company.

The business has remained profitable during the crisis despite a large debt position and receivables balance, and overall exposure to the Greek government.

The result is one of the most statistically cheap stocks I’ve ever seen, trading at a P/E of 2.7 and P/B value of 0.075!

Despite the possibilities of a complete meltdown in Greece, it is an idea worth considering.

Pulse Data, Inc. (PSD.TO)

Long Thesis. This week’s SumZero writeup and also featured on AAOI, Pulse Data is a Canadian company that controls the 2nd largest library of seismic data on much of Western Canada.

It is a great business (once the data is collected that is – it is very expensive to initially gather), employing EBITDA margins above 50% and a FCF yield north of 25%. The company recently made a decent-sized acquisition, so the old company insiders have been liquidating their new position in PSD, putting downward pressure on the stock.

As for catalysts, the company is aggressively paying off the debt balance and seems committed to paying a dividend within the next 12 months. Increased insider buying is also a good sign as well.

RadioShack (RSH)

Long Thesis. A favorite among many value investors (and featured on Weekend Values a few weeks ago), RadioShack released disappointing preliminary Q4 earnings. In addition, the press release also announced that the company’s CEO, Julian Day, would be retiring.

The stock dropped sharply on the news despite the fact that the business continues to be profitable and earns high returns on capital. The share repurchase program is one of the most aggressive I have ever seen – the company bought back roughly 20% of shares outstanding in the previous quarter alone.

Even using conservative estimates, the stock trades at approx. 4x EV/EBITDA, which is extremely cheap, especially when compared to some of the latest retail buyouts like J. Crew.

Balkrishna Industries (BOM: 502355)

Long Thesis. For those investors looking for exposure to foreign markets, this is a great writeup on India’s leading manufacturer of off-road tires, Balkrishna Industries.

BKT is a decent-sized company, with a market cap of $11.5B INR (~$250m US) and a presence in over 120 countries. The stock trades at an EV/EBITDA value of approx 5.5 despite growing at 30% per year over the past five years.

Management is putting billions into a new production plant that will expand capacity by 70% by 2014, and has a track record of producing strong returns on capital, with a pre-tax ROIC of 26%, 22.5%, 21.8%, 19.6%, and 23% over the past five years.

2009 – 2010 Spin-off & Parent Company Stats

Special Situations. The Special Situations Monitor has put together a great list of the major corporate spinoffs over the past two years. Only two spin-offs (and 3 parent companies) trailed the market since the event.

Spin-offs have been proven to beat the market in the long-run so all of these stocks are worth watching closely.

Suggestions

If you have links or suggestions to detailed analysis from other value investors, please drop me a line using the Contact Form.

I’m always open to ideas from other investors, especially for a thoughtful and well-researched investment articles.

Disclosure

No positions.

I’ve been experimenting with Quora, the new Q&A site that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. Recently, a question came up:

“Which web site gives the previous 10 years earnings of a public company?”

As value investors, looking at a company’s financials for the past ten years provides a nice overview of how the business performs during the ups and downs of the business cycle.

By using these averages, it helps smooth out one-time events and usually results in a much more conservative analysis – the hallmark of many great value investors.

My answer, reprinted from Quora:

While the SEC Edgar database is the time-consuming method, it is also the most accurate, and the only source I would trust if I was truly looking for thorough due diligence.

However, there are several other sources for historical financials:

MSN – http://moneycentral.msn.com – MSN provides 10-year financial summary information, but the summary is missing many key pieces (such as cash flow information).

SmartMoney – http://www.smartmoney.com/quote/… – Enter stock quote, click on financials, then change to the annual option (income statement, balance sheet, or cash flow statement). Must toggle between 5 years at a time and can’t export.

ADVFN – http://www.advfn.com – One of the most comprehensive sources of information, ADVFN provides financial statements that often cover a date range as far back as the EDGAR filings (1993 for many stocks). Search for a stock, then click on company information to find a host of ratios, charts, and links to the annual reports. However, you are limited to seeing a 5 year period at one time.

GuruFocus – http://www.gurufocus.com – Search for ticker symbol, click on 10-Year Financials. Provides single-page view of last 10 years AND last five quarters. Export to excel option is only available for premium members ($250/yr)

Morningstar – http://www.morningstar.com – Search for Ticker symbol, click on Financials. 10-year financials are only available for premium members ($185/yr). However, the export to excel option is available for the past 5 years of financial information. IMO, the cleanest and fastest export option with nicely formatted information.

SMF Excel Plug-in – http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/… – My personal favorite by far, this free excel plug-in allows you to build your own custom spreadsheets to pull updated information using over 14000 data points from various financial websites. 10-year financials, insider ownership, valuation ratios, etc. Requires some excel knowledge. For true flexibility and power, it’s hard to beat.

Personally, I spend most of my time in EDGAR but these other options can provide a provide a quick signal that further due diligence is required.

Feel free to check out the other answers to this and other questions on Quora.

P. S. – Jae’s spreadsheets from OSV pull in ten year financials automatically, in addition to performing tons of other valuable calculations. I spent weeks tweaking my own spreadsheet using the excel plug-in above – the OSV offering is so much better!

See my spreadsheet review for further details.

A few days ago, SeekingAlpha announced a premium program that would allow its contributors to get paid for writing exclusive articles for the site.

The payout is $10 per 1000 pageviews. According to SA, top posts can generate upwards of 20k visits, or a nice $200 payday under the current payout rules. I applaud the management team for taking a bold step and paying well-above the reported market rate for similar programs.

Despite the attractive lure of cash, the response has been mixed.

Many contributors have viewed the premium program as an opportunity to earn something for the valuable content they have created. However, in order to get this something, the author must give up exclusive rights to the article in question.

On one side of the argument, Felix Salmon writes that Seeking Alpha’s new program could actually be an unwelcome development:

“Seeking Alpha here isn’t really paying per pageview at all. (If it were, it would pay contributors of all articles, not just exclusive articles.) What’s really happening is that Seeking Alpha is buying premium content, at zero up-front cost, which it can then resell in any way it likes and for as much money as it likes, with none of those revenues being shared with the author.”

In a follow-up article, Salmon continues (note: emphasis is mine):

“Investors, in particular, tend to value the discipline involved in thinking through their thoughts clearly, and then writing them down and having a permanent record of exactly what they thought when. It’s a great way to stop deluding yourself about why you did what you did — and it’s much less valuable if you’re subconsciously trying to write a post which lots of Seeking Alpha readers will click on and comment on.”

I’m a self-taught investor.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get in the habit of writing down my investment thesis. Receiving feedback, via comments or email, is one of the most rewarding parts of this experience.

I believe that this discussion has significantly improved my investment skills.I would hate to lose the valuable debate with my readers or potentially get lost amidst the thousands of other contributors at Seeking Alpha.

Despite the potential drawbacks, there could be long-term advantages as Whopper Investments points out:

“I am pleasantly surprised by the new policy, and I think it will bring a lot of value investors out of the wood work and encourage them to write new articles. Its not hard to imagine articles on seeking alpha drastically increasing, and strong writers will likely pick up some nice pocket change. However, there will definitely be some negative side effects. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.”

Personally, I have been contributing to SeekingAlpha since July 2010 and currently have 33 articles published.

While I have a few posts that have climbed over several thousand page views, (the FIS tender offer and a writeup on APT being a few examples) the majority of my view counts come in much lower.

At the same time, Seeking Alpha has undoubtedly helped me increase my exposure and profile in the investment community. I plan to continue contributing articles when appropriate, but doubt I will join the premium program.

As you might imagine from one of the most popular investing sites,  much of the content on Seeking Alpha is oriented towards the opposite end of the spectrum compared to my personal investment philosphy, and therefore in turn, the posts here at Value Uncovered.

I enjoy writing long and detailed posts about undervalued microcaps. I spend hours digging through historical SEC filings, reviewing industry statistics, and performing valuations. This diligence results in lengthy, but hopefully detailed and valuable content.

My posts aren’t the core bread-and-butter of Seeking Alpha – but hopefully they continue to be a worthwhile read for my core audience.

Disclosure

Long APT.