Greenlight Q4
Greenlight Q4
Dear Partner:
The Greenlight Capital funds (the “Partnerships”) returned 5.2% 1 in 2020 compared to
18.4% for the S&P 500 index. Since its inception in May 1996, Greenlight Capital, L.P. has
returned 1,683% cumulatively or 12.4% annualized, both net of fees and expenses.
Greenlight’s investors have earned $4.6 billion, net of fees and expenses, since inception.
In the fourth quarter, the Partnerships returned 25%. This was the best quarterly result in
Greenlight’s history. Longs contributed 42% while shorts detracted 15% and macro
detracted 1%. After nine months in which growth stocks relentlessly outperformed value
stocks, the fourth quarter had a moderate reversal. For the year, however, the Russell 1000
Pure Growth index returned 67% while the Russell 1000 Pure Value index was essentially
flat.
In the quarter, nearly the entire long book performed exceptionally well. The leader was
Green Brick Partners (GRBK), which surged from $16.10 to $22.96 per share as strong
results caused a significant upward revision to the forecasted earnings trajectory of the
company. Brighthouse Financial (BHF) recovered part of its earlier decline, advancing from
$26.91 to $36.21 as the yield curve steepened and value stocks did better. AerCap Holdings
(AER) bounced from $25.19 to $45.58 following enthusiasm that the COVID-19 vaccines
will lead to a recovery in air travel.
New positions established earlier in the year, Resideo Technologies (REZI), NCR
Corporation (NCR), Change Healthcare (CHNG) and inflation swaps, were also significant
contributors.
REZI is a residential HVAC and security business that was spun out of Honeywell in 2018.
REZI enjoys strong recurring revenues generated through replacement sales into a base of
150 million homes. However, execution errors and overspending following the spinout
caused REZI’s margins to plummet. By the time the pandemic struck, REZI was already in
the process of implementing a turnaround plan, and we used the sell-off in April to establish
a small position at an average entry price of $4.88.
We believe that the new management team is well-equipped to capitalize on the opportunity
set in both the core business as well as REZI’s low voltage distribution business (ADI). In
the most recent quarter, progress made on existing turnaround projects combined with the
tailwind of pandemic-driven spending on the home resulted in REZI nearly doubling
expected profits and guiding well ahead of consensus for the fourth quarter. We see the
potential for this to continue and for earnings to grow from around $2 per share in 2021 to
1
Source: Greenlight Capital. Please refer to information contained in the disclosures at the end of the letter.
$3 per share in the coming years. The shares ended the quarter at $21.26 and REZI is now a
medium-sized position.
We occasionally invest in private companies. We don’t often discuss them because the
investments are small and infrequent; we generally consider them only when it’s something
very promising coming to us from an established relationship. This quarter two of our private
investments went public and led to significant gains.
The bears contend that the sports wagering market is small and FUBO won’t be able to
compete with established books like William Hill or Caesars Entertainment. To the extent
that sports wagering is a bet on who wins a game and by how much, we agree. However, we
perceive the integrated opportunity to be qualitatively different. What if you could bet 1:2
on whether Giannis will make the next free throw, 1:3 on whether Jacob deGrom’s next pitch
will be a strike or 20:1 that Aaron Judge will homer on the next at bat? One could even bet
on whether Tiger will make his next putt or whether Nadal’s next serve will be an ace.
Suddenly, watching sports goes from being a passive experience to a highly engaging, active
one. Higher engagement leads to higher ad revenues and the ability to make other in-app
sales to players. We expect the software to launch in 2021, initially for play money and later
with the benefit of regulatory licenses for real money. We think the right comparison will be
to video gaming companies such as Take-Two Interactive Software or Activision Blizzard
rather than other over-the-top (OTT) video providers.
After being introduced to Danimer Scientific (DNMR) in 2014, we invested privately a year
ago. DNMR makes Nodax, a biodegradable plastic. Plastics are a global environmental
problem, and nobody likes using paper straws. Enter Nodax, which is made by feeding
vegetable oil to bacteria and then transforming the fat bacteria into a type of plastic that will
decompose even in salt water. The market opportunity is obviously enormous and companies
including Pepsi, Walmart and Nestlé have already signed on as customers. At the end of the
quarter, DNMR came public by merging with a SPAC, which then soared from $10 to $23.51
per share.
While we have a handful of other promising small private investments, having two
successfully go public in a single quarter is a rare occurrence.
GREENLIGHT®
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NBSE’s own pre-clinical progress leaves us surprised that NBSE hasn’t yet joined the “story
stock” party. NBSE is a “platform” company with a technology called PATrOL, which
develops highly targeted therapies that increase, decrease or change the protein function of
genes. By addressing all of the causal mechanisms underlying rare and common diseases –
including cancer – PATrOL consolidates the capabilities of highly-valued gene silencing,
gene editing and gene replacement companies in a single unified platform. NBSE’s emerging
therapies also feature the best precision in engaging misbehaving genes of any technology,
which is critical to eliminating “off-target” engagement with healthy genes elsewhere in the
genome and to ensuring well-tolerated medicines. The company’s laboratory successes over
the last couple years suggest that PATrOL could be a breakthrough technology that addresses
many types of diseases. Like DNMR, the addressable market is immense. While there is a
long path from here to products on the market, NBSE’s current market capitalization of less
than $200 million prices in little chance of success. We think the risk-reward is
asymmetrical. NBSE ended the year at $6.99.
The short portfolio had a difficult quarter and continued to generate losses in a rising market.
Last quarter we postulated that the technology bubble had popped and that September 2,
2020 might have been the top of this cycle. We should clarify what we meant, as our
language was imprecise. We don’t believe that all technology stocks are in a bubble; we
believe that a growing number of “story stocks” that have become disconnected from
valuation are in a bubble. Nonetheless, the theory that it has popped has proven to be
incorrect. The bubble is alive and well, and we covered the bubble basket we had put in place
with a moderate loss.
We also managed to sidestep most of the significant second-half rally in Tesla (TSLA), as
we adjusted our position ahead of its inclusion in the S&P 500 index. Even so, TSLA was
our largest loser in 2020, with most of the losses coming in the first half of the year. TSLA
cars are not a fad; if they were, TSLA would sell many more than it does. The fad is in
owning TSLA stock. We have quipped before that twice a silly stock price is not twice as
silly, it’s still just silly. But what about 20 times a silly price? In the 2000 internet bubble,
Cisco Systems peaked out at 29 times revenue, which would be a discount to where TSLA
now trades.
This begs the question as to why a stock might trade at 20 times a silly price. Of course,
there is the possibility that we are just wrong and bad at measuring silliness. But setting that
aside, we think that the answer is that certain stocks are held exclusively by valuation-
indifferent investors.
In our early training, one of the first concepts we learned is market capitalization, or the
share price times the number of shares outstanding. This is what a company is worth in the
market today. Valuation analysis means comparing the market capitalization to various
indications of value. It might be a comparison to current and future revenues, earnings, cash
flows, asset values, etc.
GREENLIGHT®
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Will not: Index funds are the most obvious valuation-indifferent investors. In fact, to the
extent a stock is overvalued, index funds are required to buy even more of it. Passive
investing has become so prevalent that passive index investors are no longer price-takers,
buying at the prevailing price set by active investors engaging in a vigorous effort to
determine the correct value, but rather price-makers. Their demand sets the price. From our
perspective, price-making rather than price-taking calls into question the entire premise of
passive investing.
Cannot: A second group of valuation-indifferent investors are the new masses of retail
investors, who simply have no training or competency in valuation. Historically, their
influence has been limited by stock-brokers or financial advisors who determine suitability
and provide advice. Today, no advice or suitability is needed. Download an app and start
trading, commission free. Log onto the app and it will give you a “free” share in a highly
speculative stock to get you going. Many in this group think an “expensive” stock is one that
trades at $100 a share and a “cheap” stock is one that trades at $5 a share.
Choose not to: A third group of valuation-indifferent investors are professional investors
who have decided that valuation is not part of the process. As Howard Marks described in
his recent memo “Something of Value,” the attitude is to “hold on as long as the thesis is
right and the trend is upward.” This investor group thinks it’s unproductive to consider if the
market capitalization exceeds even the best case estimates of the present value of future
earnings by an order of magnitude. This goes far beyond buying growth at a reasonable price
or even growth at any price. It takes the traditional advice of letting your winners run to its
logical extreme.
When the last holder of a stock that has valuation as part of the process exits and the shares
are held more or less exclusively by members of those groups, the stock becomes
disconnected from fair value. 2 Valuation becomes irrelevant and the stock price itself may
as well be a random number. The only point in observing that various money-losing
companies, without any proprietary advantage, are trading at valuations that imply they will
someday become industry leaders, is to marvel at just how speculative the bubble in
disconnected stocks has become.
Many of the favorable dynamics that helped our long portfolio in the fourth quarter led to
losses in the short portfolio.
2
Yes, Wall Street analysts will provide research that purports to support inflated valuations and give “price
targets.” The key is to understand that price targets follow stocks, rather than lead them. A higher stock price
generates higher price targets and a lower stock price generates falling price targets. Wall Street analysts didn’t
blow the whistle on the internet bubble, and they won’t do any different this time around.
GREENLIGHT®
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We’d be remiss if we didn’t give air time in this letter to a fraud – one we had spoken about
publicly years ago and whose illegal practices we’ve enumerated to all who would listen to
us, including the SEC.
At the Sohn Investment Conference in 2007, David revealed that we were short The St. Joe
Company (JOE), a land development company based in Florida. At the Value Investing
Congress in 2010, David presented “If you build it, they won’t come,” which detailed how
a number of JOE’s real estate investments were impaired, yet the company’s financial
statements did not reflect as much. We complained to the SEC. Five years later, the SEC
ultimately agreed with our analysis and fined JOE for improper accounting of its real estate
assets during the financial crisis. After initially denying our claim, the SEC agreed that David
was, upon appeal, entitled to a whistleblower award. The award was remitted to the funds in
November 2020.
As slow and inhospitable as the SEC was to our whistleblower claim a decade ago, the
situation has become even worse. We are short Assured Guaranty (AGO), based on our
original thesis that it has several billion dollars of likely embedded losses on its exposure to
Puerto Rico, where it refuses to take accounting reserves. We presented our thesis at the
2018 Sohn Investment Conference.
After our presentation, we learned that Standard & Poor’s (S&P) was making a substantial
error evaluating AGO’s international project financing portfolio. These bonds are not
guaranteed by any taxing authority, yet S&P incorrectly assigns a capital charge that implies
they have the safety of government guarantees. Were S&P to assign the correct capital
charge, we believe it would reveal that AGO could not sustain its current credit rating. We
contend that S&P is not following its own rating guidelines. We pointed this out to S&P,
who essentially told us to pound sand.
Under Dodd-Frank, the SEC directly supervises rating agencies. So, we complained to the
SEC in a detailed letter. The SEC reached out to us to let us know that the letter appeared
very compelling and they would take the matter seriously. In fact, they had hired an outside
advisor to help with the technical areas of our complaint.
A few months later, the SEC called back to tell us they had reached a “decision point.” They
had conducted an investigation by requesting information about the company’s business in
an area that was not at all related to what we were complaining about. Unsurprisingly, they
did not find fraud in these unrelated areas, so they would likely close the investigation. We
encouraged them to actually look at the subjects we complained about. The SEC has since
been silent.
We did not initiate or close out any significant positions during the quarter.
GREENLIGHT®
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generally go this way, value stocks should continue their recent outperformance. We are
excited to turn the page into 2021.
We capped off the quarter with the arrival of another Green(e)light baby. Harry Greene and
his wife Debbie welcomed Genevieve Rose Greene in December. Baby Gigi already knows
how to make an entrance, as her arrival coincided with the first winter nor’easter.
Congratulations to the Greene family!
Next week our annual partner dinner will be a virtual partner meeting. While it’s not the
same as having it in person, and some may miss the food (you are welcome to defrost your
own pigs in a blanket), we hope to see you all again next year.
At quarter-end, the largest disclosed long positions in the Partnerships were AerCap, Atlas
Air Worldwide, Brighthouse Financial, Change Healthcare and Green Brick Partners. The
Partnerships had an average exposure of 134% long and 70% short.
“And there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.”
– Counting Crows
Best Regards,
GREENLIGHT®