Hi @joinjp2003, what are your thoughts on the cyclicality of this business and customer concentration risk? Also the Management expected higher growth but it wasn’t achieved (I think it 20% actual vs 25-30% which they said).

I have been following this company and built some position recently. Read your comments here and it re-enforced my confidence

I happened to have worked with the Company on an acquisition they eventually didn’t go through with. But the Management is quite aggressive in their projections and Mr. Dawar is a nice man to talk to!

For anyone trying to understand macro investing (especially the idea of changing world orders), the legendary Jim Rogers’ book “Street Smarts” is a wonderful read. My key notes below.

1. Currency black markets are a gold mine for the macro investor. The % premium in the black market over the official rate is a key metric.

2. The ease with which one can cross borders – is the process efficient or saddled with bureaucracy – is another key observation to make. The presence and quality of traffic signals, highways, roads etc. can be insightful too. (He invested in Botswana on this basis!)

3. There are cycles throughout history between periods where financiers are prominent, v/s those dominated by real good producers (farmers, manufacturers, miners etc.) Wall Street and finance have dominated in recent decades but are now on a decline.

4. 19th century belonged to London. 20th century belonged to New York. 21st century belongs to Asia.

5. Cost of an Ivy League education is a bubble, in his opinion, which leads to massive student debt. Education loans can’t be written off under US bankruptcy laws.

6. Another problem is tenure, where professors are guaranteed employment for life. This is irreversible and prevents error-correction.

Overall, a wonderful read on world orders and macro investing from one of its greatest practitioners. Doubles as a mini-biography of Mr Rogers too! 9/10

Most people know Claude Shannon – if they’ve heard of him, that is – as the father of the information age. That is, in my opinion, a big understatement.

Here are my learnings from Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman’s brilliant biography of Shannon, “A Mind at Play”.

By being well-versed with both Boolean algebra and electronic circuitry, Shannon was able to cross-pollinate ideas between these fields. A series connection is akin to the AND operator, while a parallel connection is akin to the OR operator.

Shannon spotted and articulated the isomorphism (as “Gödel, Escher, Bach” fans would call it) between equations in symbolic calculus and physical circuits – an act that may possibly have been inspired by his mentor Vannevar Bush’s synthesis of math and engineering in the differential analyzer.

“In these days, when there is a tendency to specialize so closely, it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of being at once broad and deep did not pass with Leonardo da Vinci or even Benjamin Franklin.”
– Vannevar Bush

Is it any surprise that Shannon wrote his PhD dissertation on…genetics? In fact, it was about genetic algebra!

Shannon viewed information as messages not sent – a fascinating case in figure v/s ground. His equation expressed information (H) as a probabilistic function (p and q).

H = – p log p – q log q

This has many parallels to cryptography, for instance how the easy to anticipate “Heil Hitler” at the end of every German message helped the Allies crack Enigma, by pruning the search tree.

This work primed Shannon to discover insights into the redundancy of language – how redundancy facilitates error detection and correction in languages.

The one trait underpinning all of Shannon’s work was his playful curiosity. He experimented with juggling, winning at Roulette through wearable computers (with the great Edward Thorp, interestingly) and much more.

This reminds me of the philosophy of playfulness v/s seriousness in James Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games”. Here’s what I wrote in an email to the authors: “…’To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility’. Given the formulation of information as the resolution of uncertainty (H = – p log p – q log q), it seems like being playful is being information-rich. Perhaps Shannon’s playfulness wasn’t just a coincidence but had something to do with information theory…”

Rob Goodman very kindly wrote back: “That’s a really insightful connection between the ideas of playfulness and information theory. It makes sense to me, and I wish we had thought to make that connection in the book!”

Not only is the subject matter of the book an individual I immensely admire (Claude Shannon), it is written exceedingly well too! An absolute page-turner. Most certainly among the very best books I’ve read, and one that I would most highly recommend. 11/10

This is what they stated during the last call during Nov. They quantified it to 3 to 4 weeks for the PCB which was delayed due to the regime change. But there were no blockers for the drug license. Surprising to find both pending till now.

Disc: Invested – Second biggest position

Thanks a lot @Shiveroptimism . I corrected it, you are right.

@anmol_satyam PEG of the company for me is ~1.5x. TTM PE is 30 (also given on screener.in – Sandhar Technologies Limited financial results and price chart – Screener). I expect company to do a topline of 15 to 20% and bottomline of 20-25% over the next 2 to 3 years. So the PEG of less than 2x is very much in my comfort zone.

Please note that my numbers/projections incorporate my assumption of growth and management guidance of margin improvement so this may differ from actual outcome on positive or negative side. Also note my disclaimer below:

Disclosure: own it and added more in last 30 days.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and nor a SEBI registered Analyst. The content shared here is only for learning purpose. All the names mentioned here are for example purpose. I may buy more, exit or partly sell the stock/bonds without any prior intimation.