Bull runs in small caps are usually fast and furious, and the cycle repeats itself every 3-4 years. Every time, retail is sold stories of business turnaround and stock charts look fantastic for meteoric wealth creation. For the class of 2020-21, here's a couple of past stars.

Every annual report tells a story.

In small companies, you can read between the lines to get a feel of the management style and business economics.

I take Fredun Pharmaceuticals Ltd (FPL) to illustrate how to go about this (it's not pretty).

Let's go 👇 (1/n)

Please note that the main objective of this review is to get a preliminary understanding without doing a thesis.

It is oriented towards a "quick and dirty" review to decide if you want to dig deeper.

Review financials on a screener website before reading further. (2/n)

Now, you can already guess Fredun Pharmaceuticals is named after Fredun Medhora. His mother, Dr Daulat Medhora and his father, Nariman Medhora, are the original promoters of the company. Interestingly, Nariman Medhora has stepped down from active involvement in June 2021. (3/n)

Then we have Dr Daulat Medhora, who seems to have the qualifications and a decent background in the pharma industry. However, she is 76 years old and unlikely to be actively involved for much longer. (4/n)

That leaves Fredun Medhora, who does not have a technical or scientific background and his primary qualification is an MBA.

The biography provided in the AR describes the CV of an MBA student, nothing on the contribution or role in the company. (5/n)

@Dinesh_Sairam @a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Questions that are only answered with time haha.

@a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Just to add - sustainable FCF is a faraway concept for most till (if) they gain scale or innovate/add value. Till then, it's generally always a struggle to manage WC and capacity addition. Wouldn't expect that to change for a while.

Paying 50-100x earnings for 'blue ocean' sectors has become normalized with promise of changing trends and immense future opportunity. Stock markets look forward, if the future opportunity is great, in most cases that 100x valuation already factors a 30x valuation in 3 years.

For investors, the question of where the buck stops is difficult to answer, because the goal post keeps changing. 30x is reasonable for one business, for another 70x is acceptable. So why not everything in between too?

Not every business captures the opportunity available. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, as my English teacher used to say. When investors have seen valuations creep from 20x to 100x in a matter of a year or two, it is easy to to keep dancing to the same music.

But like we used to play musical chairs in childhood, someone will be left standing too. And here the rules aren't that 1 person gets eliminated at a time, hundreds get crushed at the same time. In childhood, we had a 1/X chance of being caught standing when the music stopped.

The margin of safety was high till you got down to the last 3-4 people playing the game. Similarly, your margin of safety reduces dramatically when valuation becomes irrelevant. A few months of underperformance and suddenly things don't look so rosy any more.

Insolvency resolutions suck for creditors, but this one takes the cake.

Listed company gave loan to related party, defaulted along with other dues. Related party creditor acquired the listed entity via insolvency.

Only losers are operational creditors w/ 88% haircut.

Company name is Covidh Technologies Ltd - really old bankrupt company. Not a significant event, just an observation.

Correction: Listed company *took* a loan from related party (in first tweet)

@sohamdas Depends on your style, of course, but absolutely correct.

@contrarianEPS Today Wonderla ran like anything due to opening of its parks. Wonderla has one of the strongest balance sheet in tourism, travel, entertainment and hotel related space. Some unlock investment(not trade) do work if selected properly.

Biggest mistake many investors make in highly cyclical sectors like steel, sugar, metals etc.

is that...during upcycle they assume earnings to be structural and get swayed away by optically low valuation thinking it as value buy..

Result... averaging down during fall n disaster

One oft- used , but rather silly, quote used by many is "Time in Mkt is more important than Timing the Mkt".
In reality, Time in the Market is profitable ONLY when your ( broad sector & theme) Timing of the Market right.

You need both. Period.

Bull markets are a great time for fraudster promoters to make money. If you are a fraudster and also want to benefit from this bull market, here's a thread that explains how you can defraud shareholders and get rich.

1. Have a good story to catch investor's attention. Something like "only listed XYZ company" will help. Has zero value in terms of improving long-term cash flows of the business but is excellent branding for a stock. Change the name of the company to what's booming in the market

2. Draw analogies to D-Mart or other businesses that investors love (next Page Industries maybe?). Doesn't matter if your business is nothing like the ones you are comparing it with.

3. Give aggressive guidance. 15% growth is pedestrian. Talk stuff like 1 lakh cr sales/loan book or 50% growth for next 10 years. Your stock should be a potential multi-multi-bagger. Claim that there is no limit to how large you can be.

4. Start making up the numbers. Only Revenue and PAT matters. So don't worry if the Balance Sheet has all sorts of large unexplained scary stuff. No one looks at the BS in a bull market.

@Sanjay__Bakshi @katalystwealth Yes Sir. Extremely difficult to predict the top. Often top comes much before the best results. One needs to have some kind of strategy to exit. Maybe something like a multiple of replacement cost, P/B, historical upcycle margins, etc. But there is no exact science to predict top.