Savour Just Eat’s tasty share price while it lasts

Just Eat (LON:JE.) at 530p is capitalised at around £3.6bn and has virtually negligible tangible assets. The gap is hope value.

And things are currently going swimmingly. But the problem is that there is nothing patented or patentable in this company and, as a result, JE. is eventually wide open to devastating competition.

The new company could be called Savour (SAV) and start in one area by massively undercutting JE.’s margins. It would be slow to start with and, then, it would gradually find itself taking JE.’s business since it would charge half the commission payable by the restaurants to JE.. Since SAV’s business would be sufficiently profitable to allow it to expand, expand it will. And it’s cheerio JE.’s share price, if not its business.

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I bought what was then Belize Commercial Bank about eight years ago. It then changed its name to Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited (LON:CIHL) and spun off Waterloo Investments (WTI) (q.v.). On Monday it announced that it had at long last won a judgement against the government of Belize as to $27.5m plus interest.

At its current price of 18p it is capitalised at £18m. This does not look dear in relation to tangible net asset value of c. £45m especially given that the claim against the Belize government was fully provided for. Put another way, tnav is now circa £65m provided the Belizean government pays up – which I rather think it will.

Further, I am told that the business is probably making a profit. As to how much I have no idea. But, despite the fact that the Belizean government is virtually communist, I reckon CIHL is very cheap. You will have to sit on it for a while before any dividend gets paid and indeed there is no guarantee that any dividend will be paid. But I reckon it is a fair bet that it will. I have paid as much as 22p and as little as 17p.

Incidentally, Waterloo Investments (there is a market at what was JP Jenkins – I do not know what it is called nowadays – the listing is in Bermuda or somesuch) is, I am told, cheap with property assets in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Well you pays your money and takes your choice. The closest I have come to these islands was in Eartha Kitt’s “Oh those Turks”.