Kuroto Fund, L.P. - Q1 2001 Letter
Dear Partners and Friends,
Performance
We attribute our relative success to our unconventional, possibly even unique, Asian investment process. Specifically, our long-term holdings of extremely undervalued, superior businesses run by rare shareholder-oriented managements, held their value during the global downturn in the quarter just ended. In addition, our modest hedging efforts which focus on those Asian stocks overowned by foreigners (read “technology”), worked well.
Dividend Yields and Valuations in Asia
A year after the peak of the tech-stock mania, the graph below demonstrates that Asian punters’ attention is still captivated by the prospect of a speculative rebound.
Korean Fund Managers’ Sector Preference Survey April 2001
Despite substantial losses recently suffered in the Korean variant of the global technology stock mania meltdown, local investors have yet to sour on the cyclical, capital intensive “IT” industry. As a result, they have also not begun to shift their investment predilection to prosperous consumer companies that grow consistently, while throwing off significant free cash flows, which Kuroto favors (“Other domestic-oriented companies” in the graph above).
For example, one of the best managed companies in which we have invested, currently sports a dividend yield of 6.3 percent—generating this premium yield to short-term interest rates while keeping 89 percent of earnings to reinvest in the business (and pay off all the company’s debt). Furthermore, this company is not the typical overlevered, cyclical, Korean commodity producer that is bent on growing its marginally profitable business. Instead it is a dominant consumer branded product producer that can effectively reinvest the bulk of its earnings because of the very profitable growth potential of its markets.
What is the catalyst that might reverse the “sector preferences” above? Though we obviously cannot accurately predict such changes in Korean investor sentiment, recent tax changes in that country might just do the trick. In an effort to change the climate in the Korean stock market from speculation to investing, the government has just lowered the tax rate on dividends for stocks held more than one year to absolutely nothing. It has occurred to us that a few of the family-owned businesses might even find it worthwhile to take their compensation in the form of tax-free dividends as opposed to taxable salary. An increase in family-owner dividends, of course, would necessitate a similar treatment for all other shareholders (e.g. Kuroto partners).
Hedging Asian Risks
Kuroto Fund has never made a secret of our view that Asian investing incorporates a higher degree of uncertainty than the ownership of shares in American and European businesses. These regional risks, “go with the territory” of the sizable market inefficiencies, which provide us with such extraordinary profit opportunities. While we principally focus our risk reduction on the quantitative and qualitative features of our specific long holdings, we do take advantage of low risk, low cost opportunities to reduce the general risk we perceive in the Kuroto portfolio.
To this end, we have used various techniques over the last two years to stabilize our returns. These hedges have helped our performance during the first quarter of 2001. For example, we have purchased puts on markets and currencies (as we currently have done against the Japanese Yen and the Korean Won). We also have small shorts in country specific closed-end funds to partially hedge our exposure to those countries where we wish to reduce our currency and general stock market risk. Last fall we added several very small short positions in companies we knew to be popular with foreign investors to lessen the impact of a potential contagion from the spreading global bear market in growth stocks.
The bulk of our current hedging effort is directed towards protecting our fund from a significant devaluation of the Japanese Yen. As most are aware, the Bank of Japan has recently adopted a new monetary policy designed to reverse the creeping deflation that has characterized the Japanese economy for so long. Without offering our opinion on the merits of the policy, Kuroto recognizes the simple economic fact that significant increases in monetary liquidity imply a potential for a similar devaluation of the currency. In Japan’s case, the massive amounts of very low interest rate government debt outstanding could make the “Land of the Rising Sun” particularly vulnerable to cash outflows and a declining currency. As their Korean neighbors compete in many international markets with Japanese companies, the Won could be vulnerable to a Yen decline. Consequently, Kuroto has purchased inexpensive puts against both currencies to hedge the risk of a meaningful depreciation of the Yen.
Sir John Templeton’s “The Locus of Maximum Pessimism”
Competition for the above distinction has intensified since we last plagiarized Sir John’s definition of his favorite investing locale. For example, both the tech laden American NASDAQ market and the dollar value of Asian equity markets have suffered major bear markets. However, only the latter in our view, currently offers truly exceptional investment prospects. And within that continent Kuroto’s largest country exposure continues to be Korea.
Thus we were gratified to read Barton Bigg’s April 10, 2001 “Global Strategy” piece in which he relates his recent breakfast conversation with Sir John Templeton. After describing the 89 year-old’s recent homerun shorting strategy, Biggs queries, “What’s the best equity market in the world today? John picks Korea. He believes that the shares of good companies are truly cheap there.” We could not agree more.
Sincerely,
William W. Strong
Gifford Combs









