Value Investor Insight 2 INTERVIEW: David Einhorn
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March 23, 2005 ValuThe Leading Authority on Value Investing eInvestor INSIGHT Big Misunderstandings Inside this Issue FEATURES Value investors generally seek cheap stocks and then try to understand why. David Einhorn asks why stocks might be mispriced, and then asks if they’re cheap. Investor Insight: David Einhorn Finding “special situations,” his aising money was a bit tough for now has some $3 billion in assets under bets on Freescale, M.D.C, Allied David Einhorn when he started management. Capital and more. PAGE 1 » Greenlight Capital in 1996, before Success has not diminished Einhorn’s R Investor Insight: John Lewis hedge funds were all the rage. “The indus- passion for finding mispriced securities Small-cap expert sees big oppor- try was not what it is today,” he says. and, as this issue’s interview makes clear, tunities in INVESTools, Boyds “Let’s just say people were not in big rush- holding management accountable to share- and eDiets.com. PAGE 1 » es to work with 27-year-old guys with no holders’ interests. See page 2 track record.” Behind the Numbers: LEAPS Starting small, Einhorn and his partner David Einhorn Whitney Tilson’s favorite invest- set up shop with a couple of computers in Greenlight Capital ment theme in years. PAGE 16 » 125 square feet of office space in New York Investment Focus: Seeks special City. Before long, Greenlight’s track record situations that might lead to general Uncovering Value: Nippon TV started to speak for itself. Today, after years investor misunderstanding – and mis- “You don’t see media companies of stellar returns, Einhorn is one of the pricing – of a company’s true value. trading at these levels.” PAGE 18 » Goes long or short based on the mag- hedge fund industry’s best-known and most nitude of difference between his esti- Of Sound Mind: Investor Nature successful investors. His company, from an mate of value and the market’s. People just can’t help but invest initial asset base of less than $1 million, with emotion. PAGE 19 » Editors’ Letter Adopting Market Orphans Is the imperial CEO dead? Hold the applause for now. PAGE 20 » Some 5,000 companies have market values less than $250 million, and many are ignored by the investment community. That’s music to John Lewis’s ears. INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS INVESTMENT SNAPSHOTS PAGE ohn Lewis’s timing couldn’t have been bet- ter for starting a value-oriented small-cap Allied Capital 7 Jhedge fund. He opened Osmium Partners Boyds Collection 13 in November 2002, just weeks after the begin- eDiets.com 14 ning of the current bull market, which has been Freescale Semiconductor 4 led by small-caps. “Everyone thought we were INVESTools 11 in the middle of a multi-year low and nothing Lanxess 9 was ever going to come back,” he says. “Value M.D.C. Holdings 5 was everywhere.” Osmium’s returns have far exceeded even Nippon Television 18 the rising small-cap tide, as Lewis applies his Renault 8 John Lewis “think like an owner” investing discipline Osmium Partners, LLC across an eclectic array of businesses, from Other companies in this issue: Investment Focus: With the eye of a investor education, to teddy bears, to online Anheuser-Busch, Bayer, Berkshire strategic corporate buyer, looks for com- diet programs. He leaves to others pursuit of Hathaway, Freddie Mac, Heartland panies ignored or shunned by the market Advisors, iVillage, KKR, Motorola, but with a sound core strategy and defen- the big-name glamour companies. “We focus New Century Financial, Nissan, sible niche. Many portfolio companies are on what we like to call two-stop-plane-ride STMicro, Tesco, Yahoo eventually bought out. companies.” he says. See page 10 www.valueinvestorinsight.com INTERVIEW: David Einhorn Investor Insight: David Einhorn Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn explains how to look for market mispricings, what situations drive Greenlight to activism, and what he thinks the market is missing in David Einhorn Freescale Semiconductor, M.D.C. Holdings, Allied Capital, France’s Renault and Accidental Investor Germany’s Lanxess. Growing up in Milwaukee and going to You’ve said your investing style differs a particularly good view of what the college at Cornell University, David somewhat from that of traditional prospective performance of the busi- Einhorn never expected to become a value investors. How so? ness is likely to be. It may be due to professional investor. “I studied govern- ment at Cornell, and expected to get a David Einhorn: We take the traditional how the performance had been report- PhD and teach,” he says. But graduate value investor’s process and just flip it ed when a now-independent business programs in his field of choice, eco- around a little bit. The traditional was part of a larger company. It may be nomics, had few, if any, places for value investor asks “Is this cheap?” that strategies or capabilities have those without extensive undergraduate and then “Why is it cheap?” We start changed in ways that aren’t immediate- economics training, so Einhorn joined by identifying a reason something ly apparent. DLJ as an investment banker. Not liking might be mispriced, and then if we find We also find opportunities when it much after two years, he interviewed in 1993 for a hedge-fund analyst posi- a reason why something is likely mis- there is a large upheaval or rejection of tion and the rest is history. “I worked for priced, then we make a determination a particular company – or sometimes some very smart people, who actually whether it’s cheap. an entire industry – for reasons that are took the time to help and train me,” he obviously just plain old cyclical or oth- says. “I was very, very fortunate to find Explain the distinction. erwise based on what the investment that situation.” DE: If you’re looking for something fashion of the moment is. that’s cheap, you’ll probably do a vari- An example: Investors in retail com- ety of screens – on price-to-sales, price- panies are very focused on monthly think it’s mispriced, where we have a to-earnings, price-to-book, whatever – comparable-store sales, particularly good understanding of why it’s mis- to identify stocks that appear to be during the holiday season. It seems like priced, where we think the mispricing inexpensive. Once you have that list, at least every other year, particularly in is very large and the overall risk is very then you start to research if there are January, we’re able to find a retailer that small, we take an outsized position to good reasons the stocks deserve to be we really like that had negative compa- make sure we give ourselves the chance cheap, or if maybe there’s an invest- rable-store sales during Christmas and to be well compensated for getting it ment opportunity because they’re the stock trades down to seven or eight right. cheap without a good reason. We think times earnings. The company has a You’ve also developed a reputation as that’s the way most value investors clean balance sheet and it’s a nice ongo- somewhat of an activist investor. Is approach it. ing franchise. We have no idea how the that part of your strategy? We never do screens like that. We next Christmas will go, but if it goes start by identifying situations in which okay, the earnings will be higher and we DE: Activism for us is Plan B. In cases there is a reason why something might will then get a much better multiple on where we’ve been activists, we’ve gen- be misunderstood or mispriced, why those earnings. We’ve been through that erally been passive investors for a good it’s likely investors will not have cor- before with Circuit City and Foot period of time first. But while it isn’t rectly figured out what’s going on. Locker. our goal, when something goes serious- Then we do the more traditional work ly awry, we won’t hesitate to try to You tend to make a few very big invest- to confirm whether, in fact, there’s an effect change when we feel it better ment bets, why? attractive investment to make. protects the interest of the partnership DE: We believe in constructing the than exiting. So you’re often looking for special sit- portfolio so that we put our biggest Look at a few of the situations for uations – a spin-off, or a post-bank- amount of money in our highest-con- which we’re most known for being ruptcy, say, where mispricings can be viction idea, and then we view the active: Mercer International we held for common? other ideas relative to that. We find five or six years before we had our proxy DE: Basically, yes. It happens routinely things that we think are exceptional fight. MI Developments we held for more [in such situations] that the historical only occasionally. So if we find some- than a year before we felt they went off performance of a company doesn’t give thing that is really set up, where we course and we had to start trying to March 23, 2005 www.valueinvestorinsight.com Value Investor Insight 2 INTERVIEW: David Einhorn protect value there. In all these cases, the Can you give an example? for a long time, and there have been a day we bought the shares we had no plan lot of times when the CEO has said or to be anything other than passive, happy DE: New Century Financial was a good done things that got under our skin.