Anyone got some insights on Samsung? Stock looks cheap but industry facing overcapacity and market saturation issues. Value or trap?
No idea how it has reacted, but the S7 edge was sold out everywhere I went
to me, everything about the company looks bad but it seems to be one of those resilient stocks with cultural significance that just keeps bobbing along.
The thing to understand about Samsung is that Samsung IS Korea. And so it’s basically a bet on the Korean people. The company ain’t gonna go away, because Koreans aren’t going away. Very hard working place, not much creativity (they won’t ever beat AAPL on that), but hard work and the entire nation (government and media) behind them is enough.
How did that work out for Nokia?
I don’t know anything about Nokia, I know about Samsung.
^ I checked their stock after hearing about all this Note7 bad news, hadn’t seen it since I sold awhile back, wow they really shot up!!! I should have held.
what a bum
you buy samsung you are buying Korea as PA have said above. Samsung’s revenues is q quarter of Korea’s GDP. Samsung is not only the biggest makers of cell phones and TV, but also build skyscrapers, the tallest building in the world at the time, Burj Khalifa, container ships, weapons and weapons systems, and own several professional sports teams, both in major and minor levels, department stores, grocery stores, movie theaters, and way too many to list corporate and residential buildings. They have investment and asset managers, credit card companies etc. Pretty much everything imaginable.
is samsung only listed un london and korea?
Samsung makes phenomenal products (minus ones that blow up on airplanes :X ) and their product portfolio is large and diversified, BUT do you think that great products=great company=great stock? I think the answer is: it depends. Personally, I think there are better things to invest in, both in and outside of equities.
The highlighted part, in my opinion, is concerning. I usually do not care how attractive a company is on valuation, if it is in a declining industry or one facing significant head winds, I stay away if price appreciation is the goal.
Also what does “cheap” mean? By relative measures? DCF?
Can you imagine one company with revenues that is 20% (not quarter) of the country’s GDP? We are not talking about 20% of Tibet’s or Madagascar’s. S. Korea’s GDP is ranked 11th in the world. To be 20% of that is very impressive and a sign of massive corruption. Considering how corrupt or lenient S. Korea is to Samsung and other big companies, I think going long Samsung is not a bad bet because essentially you are investing/betting on an entire country.
I read half of this and it seems like useful knowledge. What slide or slides are you referring to that correspond with what you have bolded??
margin of safety
While I do not want to get into semantics, I did use the word “usually” in my statement. If there are multiple examples of when individual companies that had attractive valuations have turned out to be great investments on average, then I would be curious to see what the circumstances were.
Generally though: secular industry decline=no firm within it is immune. That being said, I can see where OP’s indecisiveness might come from.
We took a position a year ago, recently exited, took a 70% profit.