Monthly Message

The Wutherich & Co. Composite was up 1.6% in September. This compares with the S&P/TSX up 1.2%, the BMO Small Cap Index up 2.9%, S&P 500 (US$) flat at 0.0%, the DJIA (US$) down 0.3%, while the NASDAQ (US$) was up 1.9%.

Despite September’s nasty reputation, market performance was fairly stable. Affirmation for why we don’t think too much about what month we are in or pay too much attention to geopolitical or macro-economic factors. We focus on good long-term growth names which have a way of working out over time, regardless of the environment. Sometimes, this leads to controversial investment ideas that can take some time, even years, to bear fruit. Take Directcash Payments Inc. (DCI-T). We initially bought the position in February of 2015 and the stock did little but go down for the next year-and-a-half. The company operates in the ATM and payments processing businesses in Canada and internationally. Now, if you’re like me, you’re going to the ATM a lot less often. So where’s the growth? It can come from harvesting cash from a shrinking but profitable ATM business, use it to buy up other shrinking but profitable networks and expand into other financial services. DCI had done a good enough job at this to attract the attention of the world’s largest ATM operator, Cardtronics. On October 3, DCI announced that it would be bought by Cardtronics. After a year-and-a-half of waiting and suffering negative performance, we got paid in one day.

I would like to remind all of our clients and friends that we are doing our annual event at Gabriella’s on November 10. Please confirm your attendance by emailing jf@wutherich.ca.

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