Ubisoft
AJ Investments and partners are shareholder of Ubisoft we launched Open letter against current management led by Guillemot family.
Ubisoft Open letter follow up here 28.10.2024
Ubisoft
AJ Investments and partners are shareholder of Ubisoft we launched Open letter against current management led by Guillemot family.
Ubisoft Open letter follow up here 26.9.2024
Ubisoft
AJ Investments and partners are shareholder of Ubisoft we launched Open letter against current management led by Guillemot family.
Ubisoft Open letter follow up here 9.9.2024
Ongoing investments
GAM Holding AG
2023 - present
GAM Holding AG is a Swiss asset management investment company founded in 1983. It operates globally and provides active investment solutions for institutional clients, financial intermediaries and private investors. The company is headquartered in Zürich and has branches in 14 countries around the world. The total volume of assets under management is approximately CHF 20 billion.
We perceive GAM Holding AG as a long-term undervalued company and believe in its significant growth potential. The company’s recent decision to gradually allocate several hundred million dollars to a new sports fund motivated us to increase our position in this company. GAM will thus acquire new assets under management. We are proud to own almost a 3% stake in this promising company.
Our long-term cooperation and communication directly with management and other shareholders allows us to thoroughly understand their vision and strategies, which strengthens our confidence in this investment.
As part of this collaboration, our founder and CEO Juraj Krúpa established an important contact with the renowned American investor Marc Lasry. They met at the headquarters of the GAM company in Zurich in May 2024. Lasry is launching the mentioned GAM sports fund, which promises up to several times the valuation.
Marc Lasry is an American billionaire, icon of the hedge fund business and co-founder of Avenue Capital Group. Last year, he successfully sold the Milwaukee Bucks NBA basketball club for $3.5 billion, making this investment worth almost seven times its original value. With his sister, he founded Avenue Capital Management, which manages approximately $13 billion in assets. We are very happy that Marc Lasry is cooperating with GAM Holding AG.
Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. - 2023 - present
Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based company engaged in the distribution and transportation of natural gas in Arizona, Nevada and California.
In 2022, the company reported worse results than in previous years. Its consolidated net loss for 2022 was $203.3 million. This affected the share price so much that it fell as low as $57/per share. However, our company followed in the footsteps of successful investor Carl Icahn, who bought shares at a much higher price, approximately 80 USD per share. Thanks to this, we saw the potential in this purchase.
We bought shares below 60 USD. Their price is increasing and currently the value of the shares is around 64 USD with 4.5% p.a. dividend. We continue to hold the shares because we believe that the company will continue to execute its plan and show positive financial results.
Closed investments
Tower Semiconductor
2023 - 2024
Tower Semiconductor is an Israeli company that specializes in the production of semiconductor components. It is known for its integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing services and offers various technology platforms.
Its shares fell significantly in the summer of 2023 from $45 to $30 per share. The reason for the reduction was the cancellation of a planned acquisition by Intel, which intended to buy Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion. However, this deal was canceled due to lack of regulatory clearances, mainly from Chinese regulators.
Global geopolitical tensions later contributed to a further decline in the share value. The company has two factories directly in Israel, and these declines are attributed to a terrorist attack on an Israeli army base and the subsequent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Shares rose in May 2024. The company beat expectations for profit and revenue for the first quarter of 2024, which again boosted investor confidence. Analysts predicted continued revenue growth during the year, which strengthened optimism in the market.
We started buying Tower Semiconductor shares in September 2023 at prices around USD 25/per share. We knew they were undervalued precisely because the rejected Intel purchase was set at $5.4 billion, which means $54 per share, and at the same time the company is showing excellent financial results. We exited them for $36, which brought an appreciation of more than 40%.
Ubisoft Entertainment
2023
We made the investment in Ubisoft based on the know-how of the gaming sector at a time when the company presented the restructuring of its business. Ubisoft had a very tough 2022 last year as several games were not released due to delays. The operating loss was more than €500 million, which is why Ubisoft shares fell to their lowest value in years. We think that Ubisoft has a very good year ahead, as several IPs have to release new games like Assassin’s Creed, Avatar or Tommy Clancy’s Division.The prediction for this year is 400m operating profit and therefore we believe that Ubisoft shares will grow.
We started buying Ubisoft shares at the beginning of 2023 at prices around 20 USD, if Ubisoft executes as they expect, the value of the shares could be 40-45 EUR by the end of the year
SHORT GROUPON
2023
We opened a short position on Groupon in early 2023 because we think the company will struggle to survive and be solvent. Groupon is facing a going concern, when the management declared that if the business does not stabilize, they may go bankrupt within 12 months. This was also admitted by the new interim CEO Dušan Šenkypl from Pale Fire Capital, which holds a 22% stake in Groupone. We closed our position at the end of May 2023.
We started shorting the stock at $10 and closed the position at $4.5.
Activision Blizzard
2022 - 2023
Microsoft announced in January 2022 that it would buy Activision Blizzard for $95 per share, the stock jumped and is currently trading near $95 per share. AJ Investments began buying shares in Activision Blizzard following the outbreak of a sexual harassment scandal among employees at the turn of 2021/22. At the time, the stock was trading at $60 per share.
Our investment appreciated by more than 30% in the period 1/2022-3/2023, we are currently still waiting for the closing of the acquisition with Microsoft until the end of 2023, where we could achieve a return of another 20%.
MANCHESTER UNITED
2020 - 2022
We invested in Manchester United shares for the first time in 2020. The brand and overall awareness of the club is incredible and Manchester is one of the top sports franchises in the world. Our bet was that someone would definitely buy the club, because now the trend is that Arabs in particular are buying English clubs. Recently the owners of ManU announced the sale of the club and it looks like a consortium of investors from Qatar will pay more than 5 billion pounds. The shares were trading around 10-12 USD when we bought them, today they are trading at more than 25 USD.
This investment has appreciated by more than 100% in 2.5 years.
AMTRUST FINANCIAL SERVICES - 2017 - 2018
We started buying Amtrust shares in 2017/18, when the company’s shares fell to historic lows after a series of inexplicable events. The company was controlled by the Karfunkel family and these events seemed purposeful to us. After a few months, the Stone Point Capital fund ran out, which made an offer to buy the entire company at a premium of 20%. According to our analysis, the valuation of this company was much higher than the offer from the fund. That’s why we contacted a few big investors in New York to see if they want to join our side and fight against the higher purchase price. After longer negotiations, we were joined by the legendary investor Carl Icahn, who bought almost a 10% stake in the company, and together we managed to get the purchase price 20% higher.
We subsequently ran out of money from the court settlement when we sought damages.
This investment appreciated by more than 30% over the course of a year and a half.