James Goodwin

Firm Returns Weekly - Aviva to acquire Optiom, David Zaslav interview, Arkham trilogy switch release

Aviva to acquire Optiom On Monday (27 Nov), Aviva announced the acquisition of Optiom O2 Holdings Inc - a leading provider of vehicle replacement insurance in Canada - for total consideration of c.£100m (c.CAD$170m). This should bolster Aviva's existing Canadian operations, and move them closer to their

Firm Returns Weekly - tinyBuild (TBLD), Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), Aviva (AV), and Fuller, Smith & Turner (FSTA)

tinyBuild Broken Roads release delay Broken roads was scheduled to release on 14 November, but on the 8th they announced it would be delayed until early next year. There was still some confusion because they forgot to change the release date on Steam, which resulted in the game appearing in

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD Q3 earnings, SAG-AFTRA strike ends

Q3 earnings On Wednesday (8 Nov) WBD published their Q3 earnings, covering the period ending 30 September. Overall I came away pretty positive, but the market may have disagreed. There's been quite a lot of talk about fears of a weak advertising market in 2024, but as far as I

Portfolio changes 09/11/23

Today I purchased a further 84 shares of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for an average price of $9.64 per share, bringing my total shareholding to 757 shares. I couldn't resist adding to my position after the valuation fell to around 4x FCF. I'll be covering the Q3 earnings -

Firm Returns Weekly - TBLD, Investing Approach

tinyBuild Slime 3K On Thursday (2 Nov), Slime 3K launched in Steam early access for $4.49, including a 10% launch discount. There was also cleverly an additional 20% discount if you owned Despot's Game, which has helped to drive up sales of the original entry in the franchise (currently

Firm Returns Weekly - ECOR, TMI, TBLD

Ecora Resources Ecora Resources released their Q3 trading update this week. Portfolio contribution was down significantly at $5.8m vs $14.7m in Q2, due primarily to low production volumes at Kestrel and Voisey's Bay. The lower volumes at Kestrel were the result of operations moving outside Ecora's royalty area,

Portfolio changes 23/10/23

Today I purchased a further 236 shares of Aviva (AV) for an average price of £3.953 per share, bringing my total holding to 1,617 shares. Aviva featured in my latest Firm Returns Weekly newsletter, wherein I discussed the current takeover rumours creating a potential catalyst for >50% upside

Firm Returns Weekly - AV, TMI, WBD

Aviva Takeover rumours Aviva has been subject to some takeover rumours that sent the share price up to over 420p earlier this month (the shares have since come back down to below 400p). The following excerpt from a Shares Magazine article lists some of the companies said to be considering

Firm Returns Weekly - TBLD

Asterigos anniversary update On Wednesday (11 Oct) Asterigos received a free anniversary update and featured as a daily deal on the Steam homepage. There was also a developer Q&A livestream which got a good number of concurrent viewers - when I took the screenshot below there were 1,767.

Firm Returns Weekly - TMI, TBLD

Taylor Maritime Investments Grindrod will be carrying out a capital reduction and cash distribution of US$32.44m in two tranches: the first distribution of US$1.01598 per ordinary share will be payable on 26 October 2023, and the second distribution of US$0.63193 per ordinary share on

Firm Returns Weekly - AV, WBD, TMI, TBLD

Aviva Aviva is acquiring AIG's UK protection business for total consideration of £460m, in line with their strategy of pursuing capital light growth. AIG's UK protection business had 1.3m individual protection customers and 1.4m group protection customers as of 31 December 2022. Aviva to acquire AIG’s UK

Portfolio changes 26/09/23

Today I purchased a further 12,012 shares in tinyBuild (TBLD) at an average price of £0.08325 per share, bringing my total holding to 109,038 shares. I'll be covering the interim results in this week's Firm Returns Weekly newsletter, so look out for that.

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD, TBLD

Warner Bros. Discovery Mortal Kombat 1 Mortal Kombat 1 has got off to a strong start, achieving a peak concurrent player count of 38,129 on the day of launch - higher than the 35,147 achieved by MK11 - and holding firm with peaks in excess of 20k in

Portfolio changes 22/09/23

Today I purchased a further 6,867 shares in tinyBuild (TBLD) at an average price of £0.1325, bringing my total holding to 97,026 shares.

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD, TBLD, AV

Warner Bros. Discovery Webcasts There are a couple of new webcast recordings available on the WBD website, with commentary from both David Zaslav (CEO) and Gunnar Weidenfels (CFO). Warner Bros. Discovery - Events & PresentationsWarner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Logo The Nun II The Nun II made $32.6m in its US

Firm Returns Weekly - TBLD, ECOR, AV, WBD

tinyBuild We're expecting tinyBuild's interim results soon, so there should be a fair amount to discuss when they're released. In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of articles I read this week that could be useful for anyone trying to gauge a game's success from the publicly available

Firm Returns Weekly - TBLD, WBD, TMI

tinyBuild Streets of Rogue 2 Streets of Rogue 2 has continued to gain momentum, with the game breaking into the top-100 most wishlisted upcoming games on Steam this week. Using the internal wishlist data we've been given for recent releases (see I Am Future article below), we can make a

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD, TBLD

Warner Bros. Discovery Blue Beetle Blue Beetle topped the US box office rankings in its opening weekend with domestic ticket sales of $25m, and is currently the widest release, showing in 3,871 theatres. Performance is looking comparable to Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which released earlier this year and

Portfolio changes 25/08/23

Having replenished my cash buffers, I today purchased a further 6,593 shares of tinyBuild (TBLD) for an average price of £0.1365, bringing my total shareholding to 90,159 shares. As I outlined in a recent weekly update, the company remains the cheapest in my portfolio by a pretty

Firm Returns Weekly - AV, TBLD

Aviva This week, Aviva released their interim results for the first half of 2023. Here are some highlights: Group Level * Operating profit up 8% to £715m (1H22: £661m). On a per share basis, this rises to 10% due to share buybacks (19.9p vs 18.1p). * Cash remittances (the money

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD, TBLD, AV

Warner Bros. Discovery Films Barbie has continued its upward trajectory with another week at the top of the charts. Here in the UK it is still the film with the most showings in cinemas, and when I went to see the Meg 2 on Wednesday, there was a crowd of

Firm Returns Weekly - WBD, TBLD, FSTA, ECOR, AV

This week's newsletter is a little late because I was travelling to attend a wedding over the weekend, but there's quite a lot to discuss. Warner Bros. Discovery Barbie update Barbie continues to perform very well, and has now exceeded $1bn in worldwide box office revenue. Its steeper trajectory gives

Firm Returns Weekly - Week 1

As a way to give you ongoing coverage of the companies in the portfolio, and generally keep you informed with what I'm doing, I have decided to start this weekly updates newsletter. It's completely separate from the Stock Analysis and Portfolio Updates newsletters, so if you don't want to receive

TBLD Update

I wrote about tinyBuild back in March, and it's fair to say a lot has happened since then. This is going to be an update covering, amongst other things: recent game releases, titles currently in development, the 2022 annual report, the recent trading update and outlook for 2023, and the

Portfolio changes 03/07/23

Today I purchased a further 30,843 shares at an average price of £0.10375 per share, bringing my total holding to 83,566 shares. My recent purchases have been quite aggressive, but these prices have allowed me to build a position that would have been unattainable just a year

Portfolio changes 30/06/23

Today I sold 422 shares of Fuller's (FSTA) for an average price of £5.96, and used the proceeds to purchase 29,411 shares of tinyBuild (TBLD) for an average price of £0.085. My total shareholdings of each respective company after the change were: * 1,000 shares of Fuller's

Portfolio changes 19/06/23

Today I picked up a further 3,009 shares of tinyBuild (TBLD) at an average price of £0.33 per share, after the stock took a rather dramatic tumble, ending the day just above £0.30, which equates to a market capitalisation of around £62m ($80m) - a truly ludicrous

WBD Update

What follows is a brief update on Warner Bros. Discovery, covering the events that have taken place since I published the original write-up in February. Max Launch On 23 May, WBD released their new DTC product with the name and tag-line: Max - the one to watch. They announced and

Portfolio changes 31/05/23

I made some pretty sizeable moves in my portfolio today, with the largest being the decision to sell my entire Somero Enterprises (SOM) position - amounting to 1,408 shares sold at a price of £3.26 per share. This decision wasn't taken lightly, and I still see Somero as

Ecora Resources Stock Analysis

Business Overview Ecora Resources (ECOR) is a royalty and streaming company based in London, and listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) with a market capitalisation of ~£300m - at a share price of £1.15. It also has secondary listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in Canada and

TMI Update

This post provides an update on Taylor Maritime Investments (TMI) and the events that have taken place since my initial write-up in May last year. If you're not familiar with the company or want a refresher, take a look at that post first. The first thing to mention, is that

Bought 136 shares of WBD

This is just a quick update to tell you I bought a further 136 shares of WBD today for $12.05 per share, bringing my total position to 564 shares (worth ~£5,391 at the current price). The stock has fallen steadily over the last few weeks and fell further

Portfolio update - Q1 2023

This is your first portfolio update, summarising the recent moves I've made. I'll endeavour to put these out promptly following any changes, and this one covers the two purchases I made today. In addition to these portfolio updates, I'm going to try and put out more frequent but shorter updates

tinyBuild Stock Analysis

Business overview tinyBuild is a video game developer and publisher with global operations headquartered in the US. The company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange in March 2021 for a price of £1.69 per share, equating to a market capitalisation at the time

Fuller, Smith & Turner Stock Analysis

Business overview Fuller, Smith & Turner (Fuller's) is a hospitality business listed on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of c.£312m. The company owns and operates a portfolio of pubs and hotels located in the South of England, which are divided into Managed Inns, directly operated by Fuller's,

Warner Bros. Discovery Stock Analysis

Business overview Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is a leading global media and entertainment company with a portfolio of content and brands across film, television and streaming. It has a presence in over 220 countries and territories, and produces content in 50 different languages. An incomplete list of its iconic brands

Somero Enterprises, Inc. Stock Analysis

The size of this highly profitable and growing US industrial company makes it too small for many institutional investors, which in turn creates an attractive opportunity for individuals. Adequate margin of safety is provided by a robust balance sheet, with net cash, and a P/E of 7.1. The

Aviva Stock Analysis

This UK listed insurer currently trades at a discount to its book value and at an attractive multiple of its average cash flows of the last 15 years. Recent market volatility and the impact of divestments have clouded the numbers despite continuing strong performance from its business operations. This has

Taylor Maritime Investments Stock Analysis

Originally published on May 22, 2022 This recently listed specialist dry bulk shipping company offers an attractive opportunity to capture the upside of the supply-demand dynamics playing out in the minor bulk segment of the shipping market, whilst providing protection on the downside with a strong balance sheet, well supported