VP Productivity 2.0: Emerging Moat Deep-Dive Template - Processors

[Donald]

Guys/Gals,

This is a CALL for Volunteers/Deep-Dive Interested learners and practitioners to raise their hands for collaborative deep-dives into emerging businesses! To make this learning effort more transferable (I know NOT everyone is UP for it ) and scalable for VP community members.

Enclosed is a deep-dive exercise that I conducted with @rupeshtatiya and captured his take on Axtel Industries business - a small 110 Cr Sales business, seemingly strongly differentiated business - something that we all know he has worked on, has been tracking developments, and is pondering over growth and scalability puzzles.

Now before everyone starts saying here we go again. Donald has come up with another complex picture . Nope, this is avery nice Template, Yes Sir, for those interested in trying to investigate a business form all known angles, as much as possible, and trying to form a FEEL for the business, where it can go from here!!

This time some of the skeptics are converts too!!

1. last time there was an issue, that we tried to present an Unified view on our Success Stories. This time we are NOT presenting successful stories with perfect hindsight . This time focus is on emerging winners.
2. This time ONLY individual views are captured. I am the facilitator for deep-dive expeditions. I am NOT the influencer. So my biases are not captured here…ha ha.
3. We will try to inspire 5 different folks for every such business that holds high potential puzzle- to be solved cases. There are other Axtel guys whose (may be) different takes will be presented here. Maybe I will present mine too. I am allowed to have my own individual take, right

That way individual biases, if any, should get exposed. Holes in popular narrative-led arguments should get exposed. We will get guidance to a much better job on our weak areas - e.g. Business model vulnerability scrutiny.

Besides the information/analysis EDGE for investors is over!! Everyone is/become good at this. If you can do scuttlebutt so can the next guy. If you have access to industry/competition data, so does the next guy. You can remain ahead in the investing game now, ONLY if you work very hard to develop INSIGHTS into the business.

I am excited, that IF enough serious students of the ART of Investing take this up earnestly I am pretty sure I can get Prof Bakshi excited again to come and help us do a more transferable simple exercise, that everyone will benefit from - especially the newbies who will be exposed to more complete ways of emerging business analysis/scrutiny.

But I am sure us practitioners have actually to gain the most. Our decision-making will be better because our scrutiny quality will be better and more well-rounded. And I am sure we will be able to attract the best minds/domain experts to collaborate with in this beautiful journey !!

Anyone volunteering/participating in this thread needs to

1. Update “About Me” section on his/her profile page - to bolster chances of getting slotted-in on key assignments
2. Also participate in the Mental Models for Emerging Moats thread, in order to better appreciate the accelerated learning requirements.

[sohamdas]

Count me in,good sir!

[Donald]

What is required of the Volunteers?

We plan to conduct such exercises very frequently - 2-3 in a week on businesses where someone/anyone in TopContributor group has a good grip on, maybe is invested, has good insights, and can help transfer his view to us in a much more structured manner. NOT a narrative-led story, but data/insights driven viewpoints.

Transcribing these properly is a MUST for better readability, comprehension and transfer. We need volunteers to help us transcribe these on a regular basis. We can walk the volunteers through the exercise once or twice as needed. Then they will get the hang of it, and our productivity soars.

Because then we seniors can be free to deliver on the next Template planned - dedicated template for deep-dive into Financials/NBFCs. How many would like that??

What’s in it for Volunteers?
Everything. I can guarantee you do 4-5 such transcribing efforts guided by us, this way of structured dissection will get imprinted in your head. These patterns are invaluable to be exposed to right at the start of the investing journey; though seasoned guys will also benefit. 2 years down the line Prof Bakshi will invite you to his MBA class to take a session on deep-dives!!!

How cool is that?

I am done selling. let’s see how much the community values deep-dive work…ha ha

[bargainHunter]

I’m in.

Would be great if I would be able to select the company from what is being worked on. That will help me align better and add more value.

[Donald]

Could be done at a later stage as & when this activity picks up.
Initially its a good idea to keep it open-ended and like have a surprise element. But be assured that these are prioritised by Senior members in our own wisdom/bias if you will - so we see strong conviction and undervaluation possibilities. These days everything is getting to undervalued terrritory! And more by the day/week.

Also the list is pretty much following the Stock Story thread list pattern So big hint there on what is being prioritised in general. What we activate depends on availability of the analysts, how much value they see in such exercises (some may NOT even now), and willingness to go under the arc-lights ; So you can align better for sure from day one; We will help you establish one-on-one relationship with the main stock story lead; but you gotta make his job easier, work hard to win his confidence, and help influence/align his priorities with yours. It can certainly be done by the sincere learner; all of us are learning from each other all the time!

We are after exposing our own weaknesses, so we can do a better job on the next one, and the next. So we can get great minds like Prof Bakshi enthused to HELP us by the sheer dint of our hard work/sincerity in knowing the business truly better.

[YachnaBhatia]

Count me in Donald…

[jamit05]

Count me in sir.
I could do some scuttlebutt, if needed.

We could form teams. Like a group leader, and three others, updates be posted every weekend. And another team could find loop holes in the theory.

[Donald]

NOT sure if I have communicated properly.
Right now the Call is for Volunteers who will manually transcribe what has been captured in the sheet in expanded text form, so everyone can understand what is being communicated.

We will explain to the volunteers - more on each aspect, elaborate on a point as necessary so that a more structured story is written on the business that covers all aspects of investigation as much as possible. To an extent the initial scuttlebutt, digging work is already done as the person has reasonable understanding of the data points publicly available/thru scuttlebutt.

The idea is to expose what is left uncovered, in analysis of available information - which will never be complete. In the face of insufficient information, what can you infer on the business attractiveness and or vulnerability, Management Quality, Valuation, Risks etc - to make better-informed insights-driven investment decision.

Once the story is written - from multiple individual perspectives, a unified stock story will be written. Post that, one can look at how we update current information-set on the business

Hope I have communicated the objective better this time.

[mrai74]

Yes Donald, it makes sense… I am in as a learner cum contributor

[doniv]

Hi Donald… I would be interested

[mayekar]

Hello Donad

Please give me some task relating to manually transcribing information obtained and converting into an expanded format.

Hope this works out . I may get to grow a bit .

Thank you
-Ritul

[Donald]

@doniv - Welcome. Good to see you post for the first time at VP, Better to see that you are raising your hand for an important community learning project.
@mayekar - surely we will try to accommodate the early birds. We got to acknowledge the encouragement/support pouring in from all of you.
@mrai74 @jamit05 @YachnaBhatia @bargainHunter Thanks for volunteering
@sohamdas - Special thank you for the most spontaneous/immediate show of support

Let’s wait a couple of days and see how many more folks can be readied for this important initiative. Meanwhile I will go through your posts/activity at VP and get a better idea on your strengths/skills and how best to utilise. For the absolute newbies with no activity/no posts - NOT to worry I will PM you and get in touch to understand more

Thank you all. Stay safe.

[ashkrithik]

Great initiative, @Donald Will be happy to contribute. And pretty excited to learn through the thought process and structure of the Top Contributor’s too.

[Abhishek16]

What a coincidence, I was looking at this same company- Axtel Industries this past week, however I passed over it and invested in another. Nothing too much against Axtel though, just that I liked the other one more and felt I need to understand more about Axtel before investing.

I liked the template/sheets you posted, that is how I also write , but yours is obviously far more in-depth and covers many points. For not too much experienced investors like me, it tells us vividly about how many angles to explore, when reading/researching about a company.

I would love to be a volunteer to this exercise. Just transcribing those things will not only enable us to learn more about those companies, it will also teach us about how to go learning about new companies. After all, it is one thing to just read annual and analysts reports, but completely another to gain insights from those reports. Some of these I believe can only come with experience but this project can be an accelerated learning process. Time, however will be a big constraint as professionally, March-July period is the most hectic to me. So I’d rather some other participant take my spot if its too time consuming. I will be closely following this thread though.

[AnoopJ]

Hi Donald, I am interested to participate.

Thanks in advance

[stockjobinvest]

Hi Donald,
I am interested to participate in this -Please try to accommodate me in this activity.
Thanks in advance.

[raviraj2018]

Hi Donald,

Please count me in as volunteer for the activity. I am an avid follower of the forum and would like be part of the process.

[hrushik2]

It’s a great initiative. Consider me in.
Thanks

[paramjeetsingh]

If there is no prerequisite except hunger for knowledge, please count me in.
I am newbie, haven’t invested in any company yet. Reading and figuring things out for the time being

[tkmagesh]

Hi,

I am a novice investor and an avid reader of this forum. Please count me in if I can contribute in any way!!