Professor Glen Arnold

Many people treat market prices as a guide to the value of a share. The market, in its manic-depressive fashion, often sets prices that are far from the true value of the business. Be independent, do your own valuations and exploit prices rather than being led by them. Given that the market does not always […]

The thoughtful, dedicated private investor can outperform the professional fund manager due to his/her many advantages, including the ability to concentrate a portfolio on only the top ten bargains; to take the risk of being different from the herd; to avoid institutional constraints, and; to find good companies from everyday experiences. The small investor should […]

If you don’t understand it don’t buy it. View shares as part ownership of a business, not as gambling counters in a game of chance, where you barely understand the rules. Be a business analyst (rather than a share analyst). There seems to be a virus that sweeps across the professional and private share-buying communities […]

I’ve been asked to write a chapter for a book entitled Professional Investor Rules.  I’m both flattered and somewhat intimidated – other chapter contributors include John Bogle, Niall Ferguson and Bill Gross. I thought you might be interested in my ten rules.  Today’s post is the quick-read version.  Future Newsletters will elaborate on particular rules.  Regular...

Caffyns (LSE:CFYN) has been a family-dominated firm for over 150 years, despite it now being a Premium Listed company on the LSE. The family have been accused by a bulletin board writer of running a corporate board of directors which “is grossly self-indulgent”. I need to start the process of assessing whether this is true to […]

For over 150 years the Caffyns family have followed the business model of owning land in the South East of England to sell cars, service them and sell spare parts. It prides itself on being a family company with old-fashion service values. However, this is a capital intensive business with large sums tied up in […]

Last week’s Newsletter showed that Caffyns (LSE:CFYN) share was low in price in relation to the earnings it generated over the last decade, a period that has included some horrible times for selling cars post the financial crisis, as well as times of rapidly rising sales on the back of economic recovery – pretty well a full cycle. […]

In previous Newsletters I established that Caffyns (LSE:CFYN) is not a screaming bargain in terms of its cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio, but is on the border of having a CAPE sufficient below the average for UK shares. What kept my interest is Caffyns remarkable stock of property assets in prime South East of England towns. […]

Caffyns (LSE:CFYN) published reported earnings per share figures which average 74.3p over the last ten years. With the share at 501p this gives a CAPE of 6.8 – a very low number (see yesterday’s Newsletter for details). But this analysis is somewhat crude, in that it fails to deduct major one-off income boosts that will […]

Caffyns (LSE:CFYN), a medium-sized motor dealer in the South East with 13 dealerships, suffered badly in the Great Recession, but overall has a good profit record compared with its current market capitalisation of £13.75m (share price £5.00). It also has freehold property worth three times market capitalisation – and regularly makes profits from developing land […]