GSP

My life in an X post. Thank you for reminding me of some of my greatest hits and misses.

$SGN.WA Q3 YTD Revenue: approx. PLN 336.3 million EBITDA: approx. PLN 102.2 million Gross profit: approx. PLN 92.8 million Net profit: approx. PLN 75.9 million

Since 2019, tennis is up 72% among kids 6–12. Golf is up 55%. Parents finally figured out which sports lead to success and can be played for life.

Wow. Asics vs Nike

Seems to depict Borr Prospector 5 sinking off Gabon this night.

So many big brain macro narratives to explain prices, when the reality is that none (very few) of the leading Chinese companies are showing good numbers into 2027, and that is the main issue. The internet names are a disaster. Baba, tencent, jd, kuaishou, tme, meituan etc etc no one has any idea what NI is next year. Plus their #1 competitor is unlisted and wealthier than the rest of them. Bad set up. The consumer names keep showing deceleration, from Xiaomi to BYD to Geely to Trip to Anta to Lining to baijiu to Labubus to Proya to pet foods etc etc. The hardware export guys keep getting hit with export restriction regulations on both sides, many are showing Q3 deceleration from Q2, and people question why pay 60x PE peaking earnings for a cyclical when memory is at 10x PE. The hardware local guys are getting margin contraction from tight end customers (many times SOEs) like for Naura or delayed tenders like with Nari in power equipment or mindray in medtech. Similar with non biotech pharma with vbp. CATL, the last of the poster boys after Tencent and Moutai, shows up this week with revenue deceleration. SOEs like renewables and telecoms under pressure from the government, tariffs down, investment up, margins down. Fintech under siege, from Futu to online lenders. HKEX at 52w lows. Real estate and solar ded. Yes, there are places to make money, biotech and pharma services is one this year, SOE banks is another, HK landlords, old school utilities, shipbuilding... Trading the AI compute names... but it is very niche to grab any real global flows, no one outside China can be bothered with that (rightly so). The US can afford to have 60% of the index 20% below 52w highs, because the rest carries the index, and the leading companies make money.

Dinner with an exec/friend at a large national property management company tonight. This person oversees ~150k apartments; access to an insane amount of data. Current multifamily market in most of the country is worse than S&L, .com bust, or the GFC. Worst they’ve seen. Class A mostly fine, decent rent growth. However: - credit scores at class A have gone down meaningfully over the past 3 years. - more people are paying rent via credit card. - average bank account balance noticeably lower than even 2 years ago - class A tenants stretched thin, living beyond their means. 20k comes in, 20k goes out every month. - starting to see these renters move down a tier Class B: - simply too many apartments, we built too much new stuff. Ripple effect is enormous. - fewer renters tomorrow than today. Same store foot traffic noticeably down year over year. Some markets down 40-50% - considering dropping rents below $700 a month on some 1beds in major southern markets. Class C: - looking at degrading NOI. Rents aren’t growing for a long time, but expenses keep creeping up - more renters are one missed paycheck away from disaster than they can remember seeing in decades - tenants aren’t paying rent because they simply don’t have it - wage growth has not kept up Lenders: - some major investment funds, household names, haven’t paid their mortgages in 2-3 years. Banks won’t foreclose because “X is a big client.” Mexican standoff. - a roof leak gets ignored, becomes water damage, then mold, then a down building. Buildings are rapidly deteriorating as some owners choose cash preservation over funding losses. - number of pre-foreclosure and REO deals is the highest as a % of total units they can recall. - data providers know it’s bad, but they’re paid to sell optimism to owners/lenders. So every forecast is “it will probably get a little better next year maybe” and that gets regurgitated at investment committees all over. I asked “how do you think this ends?” “Not sure. My gut says slowly then suddenly, and things will get really bad. Been doing this 40 years, you can feel it in the air. But, there’s a chance it’s just a decade of tolerable pain. I’m praying for that.”