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Ebix denouement, service changes and more ?5

09:22 01-Jul-24


Though they still trade around a dime each, it's now official that EBIXQ shares are worthless, per Article III.B.7.b on page 24 of the Amended Plan:
On the Effective Date, each Holder of each Existing Equity Interest in Debtor Ebix, Inc. shall have such Interest cancelled, released, and extinguished and without any distribution or compensation.
For anyone interested, remaining operations, including EbixCash will be taken over by an Indian consortium led by Eraaya Lifespaces for an enterprise value around $361M, though the net payment is much less.  There's also a $2M settlement document, which I must admit that I'm unwilling to put much time into parsing.

As a result, the EBIX section will go public, probably over the 4th of July holiday or weekend, along with MRDB.  It's possible I will hold out a bit longer, though, as I still expect AKTS to join them sooner rather than later.

The other reason for delaying is to solicit subscriber feedback.  The accountant for CrowdWisers has confirmed that their should be no problem making gifts to subscribers from a fund owned by the company.  This fund would far beyond the long-only research published on the website.  It would include practices on which I rarely write, like holding cash in multiple currencies, and as well as those on which I never write directly, like short selling.  Shorting EBIX near double digits from the point where the market briefly mistook the forbearance agreement as a positive, was perhaps my most profitable position of the past year, and I expect short positions and market hedges to become increasingly important in the years to come.  I still do not ever expect to publish overt short research, as shorting is extremely dangerous; the market is literally rigged against such positions, and prevailing culture only makes the matter worse.  That said, the fund would publish its trades infrequently, giving readers an opportunity to learn by example.

More importantly, the fund would return a portion of its profits, if any, to subscribers as gifts on an annual basis.  The main reason for this is to show my appreciation for long time subscribers, many of whom have offered their own ideas and insights.  A secondary reason is to show the quality of the analysis, to prospective new subscribers.  Consequently, I am envisioning a structure where the fund keeps half of the profits, offers a quarter of them as a bounty for referrals, and reinvests the remaining quarter given to charity and/or put into business development, which will still not include paid advertising.  I might enable, but not recommend, repeat subscriptions for those who want a greater share of any proceeds.  This seems like an appropriate point to acknowledge that I think history has shown me to be a decent analyst, but a mediocre trader.  Again, I am soliciting reader on ideas on any or all of this.  Just keep in mind that I am NOT looking to greatly increase my workload.

To finish off with some minor news...  New Fortress is selling off its first LNG facility in Miami to a U.S. middle-market infrastructure fund for an undisclosed amount.  This demonstrates management's commitment to deleveraging.  I also neglected to document BGC once again affirming its guidance on Friday.  On the macro level we have Europe swinging further to the right, both with the EU presidency and French election.  The currency initially spiked a quarter cent, but is now little changed just below €/$1.075.  It's also noteworthy that India's government bonds are now part of JP Morgan's emerging government debt index.  This should bring around $2b in foreign investment to the country per month, and is a small positive for AMSC, as many of the proceeds should go to infrastructure development like Inox's wind farms.  However, China is further tightening its grip on the materials used to produce such products as of October.  I note that the actual resources are sparse rather than rare, which makes procuring them expensive.  Thus, replacement is likely to be the role of large, less developed countries like Mexico, India and Brazil.