Cheap, Unloved, Profitable: The Case for Value Investing Today?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Merryn Talks Money

Episode: Cheap, Unloved, Profitable: The Case for Value Investing Today?
Host: Merryn Somerset Webb (Bloomberg)
Guest: Ian Lance (Manager, Temple Bar Investment Trust)
Date: May 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the enduring relevance and recent resurgence of value investing, focusing on the principles, psychological challenges, and successes of the Temple Bar Investment Trust under Ian Lance. With the Trust celebrating its 100th anniversary and producing standout returns, the conversation digs into how sticking to value investing principles - even when unfashionable - has delivered for investors, how to distinguish value stocks from value traps, where global bargains may lurk, and the current risks facing markets.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Temple Bar's Performance and Value Philosophy

[02:04] - [04:15]

• Merryn highlights Temple Bar’s exceptional recent performance, with NAV returns near 200% and shareholder returns over 200% since 2020, outperforming benchmarks (even the S&P, despite being UK-focused).
• Ian credits fortuitous timing (taking over at the “bottom” of the pandemic) and strict adherence to the value philosophy: buying quality companies when markets are oversold, holding through adversity, and staying patient.
• Example: Buying UK banks and airlines at historic lows; these sectors performed despite widespread skepticism.

Quote:

"The market is offering you Marks and Spencers below a pound and NatWest Bank at the same price it was in the financial crisis... Simply, as a value investor, your opportunity set suddenly becomes incredibly interesting."
— Ian Lance [04:15]

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2. What Constitutes "Cheap": Value Assessment Criteria

[05:31] - [06:59]

• “Cheap” is defined based on normalized earnings potential, not distressed current earnings.
• Focus is on what a company can earn in 3-5 years, not on transient downturns.
• The key: Buying during periods when others anchor to bad news, not future potential.

Quote:

"We try to look three to five years out and then basically value the business off where we think the earnings can get back to."
— Ian Lance [05:37]

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3. The Psychology of Value Investing

[06:18] - [07:48]

• Value investing is simple, not easy — the hardest part is psychological: buying hated stocks when sentiment is deeply negative.
• The art lies in enduring criticism and holding through a period of unpopularity.

Quote:

“The mechanics of doing that are not particularly difficult. The difficult bit is the psychological bit... You don’t get bargains unless you buy things that have some sort of controversy around them.”
— Ian Lance [06:21]

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4. Portfolio Construction: Concentration and Long Holding Periods

[06:59] - [07:48]

• Portfolio is relatively concentrated: ~65 holdings, with the top 10 making up c.50%.
• Willing to ride winners, especially as they recover (“let them run”), e.g., UK banks growing from small to substantial portfolio weights over time.

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5. Value Stocks vs. Value Traps

[07:48] - [09:17]

• Avoiding value traps is challenging; mistakes will happen.
• Primary defense is favoring companies with strong balance sheets (avoiding excessive debt).
• Seek temporary dislocations (due to cycles or sentiment), with plausible paths to earnings recovery, not perpetual laggards.

Quote:

“If you spend your entire time saying, I’m going to avoid companies that might be a value trap, you are going to miss the ones that aren’t, the ones where the market has overreacted.”
— Ian Lance [08:12]

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6. High Conviction Holdings – Sector and Stock Case Studies

[09:27] - [14:24]

Energy (BP & Shell):

• Both at top of portfolio; not a call on oil price, but due to low valuations and company-specific strategic shifts (notably BP’s reversal on moving away from traditional oil & gas under activist/management pressure).

Financials:

• Banks have been trimmed as valuations caught up with fundamentals (“no longer so cheap”).
• Example: UK banks went from 5x earnings/half book value to 10x earnings/around book value.

WPP (Contrarian Play):

• 10th largest holding; market hates it due to management and lack of integration.
• Key insight: WPP’s issues appear company-specific, not industry-wide (peer Publicis still growing).
• Market gives “0% probability” to improvement, which Ian sees as opportunity.

Quote:

"The valuation is absolutely crazy... Market is giving new management 0% probability of improving things. We would say if they could just stabilize earnings at 50p, on 10 times, that's a 5 quid share price from kind of 2 pounds 60 today. And we think they can do better than just stabilize."
— Ian Lance [13:01]

GSK (GlaxoSmithKline):

• Not a classic recovery, but a solid company neglected due to sector-wide pessimism; now re-rating.

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7. Rotational Flexibility and Persistent Low Valuations

[14:24] - [15:22]

• Success allows continued reinvestment: as stocks rerate, rotate into newly unloved areas.
• Despite big returns, the portfolio as of recording still traded on <10x PE.

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8. Value vs. Quality Growth: The Style Debate

[16:46] - [19:36]

• Debate over "quality growth" as an investing style: Ian asserts all investing is value investing when measured correctly.
• Cites the rise and fall of quality growth (2010-2020), fueled by low rates and mispriced optimism.

Examples:

• Nike: Fell from $180 (40x earnings) to $40 as earnings dropped
• Starbucks, Reckitt — similar “overpaying for growth” disasters

Quote:

"You put those two things together and you just get this horrific combination of DE rating on lower earnings. That's the story across lots and lots of these."
— Ian Lance [18:11]

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9. Where Is Value Now?

[20:23] - [24:32]

• Most former “quality growth” names remain expensive; Costco/Walmart trade at 45-50x earnings.
• Diageo: Recently added as it's now de-rated (12x earnings) but concerns over industry structure mean the position is modest.

Overseas Value Hunting:

• Korea (“Cheap by neglect,” [22:18])
  • E.g., Korean banks Hana & Woori trading on 5x earnings, 8% yields, quality track records, no overt controversy.
  • “No controversy… just become cheap by neglect.”
  • Still hold, but have trimmed after strong run.
• US “Small Cap” (up to $20bn):
  • Pockets of value in smaller/lower-profile energy producers (Devon, Cord).

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10. Macro Environment, Market Risks, & Complacency

[24:32] - [26:35]

• Macro is harder to ignore, even for bottom-up stock pickers.
• Main worry: Market “complacency.” Despite global risks (Middle East tensions, high oil prices, etc.), major indices hit new highs; “buy the dip” mentality may not work if central banks can’t rescue markets during geopolitical supply shocks.
• Even a well-constructed, cheap portfolio is not immune to a broader US-led selloff.

Quote:

"I do find that mildly worrying – how people appear to have just become accustomed to buying the dip... Historically it was right because central banks wrote to your rescue... I don’t see how they can print money and open up the Strait of Hormuz."
— Ian Lance [25:32]

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11. Memorable Moments & Book Recommendations

[26:35] - [27:27]

• Ian recently finished Lionel Barber’s biography of Masayoshi Son and started Jeremy Grantham’s “Diary of a Perma Bear.”
• Admits to receiving only investment books and socks at Christmas!

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Notable Quotes With Timestamps

• On why value investing works:

  "You don’t get bargains unless you buy things that have some sort of controversy around them."
  — Ian Lance [06:21]

• On psychological difficulty:

  “I often say when we put up our top 10 holdings, people often feel slightly nauseous looking at the companies that we own.”
  — Ian Lance [06:34]

• On quality growth style’s reckoning:

  "People were paying 40 times earnings for Nike just ahead of a period in which the earnings went from $4 to $1.50... that is a fantastic example of where both of those bits went wrong."
  — Ian Lance [18:11]

• On the market’s current risks:

  "There just seems to be an awful lot of complacency... we are not macro forecasters but... energy prices at those levels is going to have an impact on the economy... if your starting point is very, very high valuations, those two things together don’t work out well."
  — Ian Lance [25:09]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:04] – Intro to Ian Lance & Temple Bar’s performance
• [04:15] – Defining value and opportunity post-pandemic
• [05:37] – Assessing “cheapness” and looking past short-term noise
• [06:21] – The psychological challenges of being a value investor
• [07:48] – Distinguishing value stocks from value traps
• [09:31] – Current high-conviction holdings (Energy, Financials, WPP, GSK)
• [14:24] – Rotating value and current portfolio valuation
• [16:46] – Value vs. quality growth investment style debate
• [20:38] – Where value is found now: Diageo, Korea, US small energy
• [24:32] – Market risks and macro concerns; “buy the dip” warning
• [26:44] – Book recommendations
• [27:29] – Closing remarks

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Tone & Language

The conversation is candid, sharp, and self-aware. Ian Lance blends analytical discipline with humility about market timing and psychological difficulty. Merryn’s tone is familiar and occasionally light, especially around “contrarianism” and value’s sometimes unglamorous reality.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

• The robust outperformance of value investing—when consistently and patiently applied—is highlighted, with detailed examples from Temple Bar’s own performance.
• The conversation demystifies what “value” means in practice and how to avoid the classic pitfalls of value traps.
• Ian Lance gives actionable ideas on where value persists globally, showing how opportunities rotate but the core process stays the same.
• The episode ends with warnings about market exuberance and the limits of central bank rescues in the face of real-world shocks, underscoring the importance of fundamentals, skepticism, and margin of safety.
• Book recommendations provide additional inspiration for value-oriented listeners or those wanting to understand financial market cycles.

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In sum:
A must-listen for anyone curious why value investing endures, how to apply it now, and what risks may lie ahead—even for value stalwarts.

Transcript

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[Maren Somerset Webb]

Welcome to marantalks Money, the podcast in which people who know the markets explain the markets. I am Maren Somerset Webb and this week I am speaking with Ian Lance, who is a manager at Temple Bar Investment Trust. Ian, welcome to Marin Talks Money.

[Ian Lance]

Thank you Mary.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Right, we have a lot to talk about. It's been exciting times for you, right? This year is the hundredth anniversary of the Temple Bar Investment Trust, right?

[Ian Lance]

It is indeed.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah. It's also the I was going to say the end of a period, but I hope it's part of an ongoing period of spectacular performance from the Temple Bar Investment Trust, which I will say, by the way, I'm particularly pleased to have you on because I've been a long time holder of the Trust, so I keep very close eye on what you do now. Your company, Red Wheel was appointed to take over the investment trust assets late 2020, right?

[Ian Lance]

That's correct, yeah.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

And since then it's been extraordinary. Your performance has really been absolutely marvellous. NAV and shareholder total returns of not far off. Well, 200% for NAV and well over 200% for shareholder total returns. And you're pretty much top of the peer group in every single time frame since they're in very, very much ahead of of the benchmark. And also, interestingly, I noticed in one of the reports I was reading in the run up to talking to you, that even in this period where everyone thinks that you're going to only outperform if you go to America, that Temple Bar performance has been ahead of the S and P composite. So that's really quite something given you are not entirely, but almost entirely UK invested. I think you can have 30% invested outside the UK, is that right?

[Ian Lance]

That's correct, yeah.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, so let's start by talking about how you did that and then we'll talk a little bit about whether it's sustainable or not. I mean, I think the important thing to say for investors and listeners who do not know the Temple Bar Investment Trust is that you are very much value investors, always have been. And even when the manager was changed in 2020, one of the interesting things that the board thought then was it was not the right time to move away from the value strategy and they continued with it just with a different manager. So let's talk a little bit about what value means to you and how you have created that really fantastic performance over the last six years.

[Ian Lance]

We've stuck to our value philosophy and I think the first thing that we would say is that the timing of us taking on the assets were in some ways fortuitous. That is, we started the clock ticking at the end of October 2020. If you cast your mind back then, we were right in the middle of the pandemic. People were wondering how long lockdowns were going to go on. A lot of share prices had done very, very. And simply what that means for a value investor is your opportunity set suddenly becomes incredibly interesting. So the market is offering you Marks and Spencers below A Pound and NatWest bank at the same price. It was in the middle of the financial crisis and so on and so forth. And so what we did was we basically used that to buy lots of those very, very cheap stocks and then stuck with them, by and large. And I suppose if you look at the things that have done best over that period of the time, financials would be a big one of them, you know, UK banks, which some people were saying you should never invest in a UK bank. UK banks perform very, very well. So you have insurance companies, lots of other sectors that people, you know, say you should never really touch. Airlines would be another example. Again, performed very, very well. So really it was, it was buying what we thought were sort of decent companies at a time when they were offered at very, very low valuations and then, and then keeping hold of them.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, and how, how are we defining lower valuations? How are we defining cheap? What do you look at?

[Ian Lance]

We define cheap by looking at where we think a company's earnings potentially is, not where its earnings is today. We think that people typically focus too much on short term earnings actually. So Covid is brilliant example of that. Obviously we'd gone into this lockdown, the economy had gone into a downturn, lost companies, their earnings went down, they passed the dividends, et cetera, et cetera. And what people have a tendency to do is basically anchor off that and they just kind of can't see how things are ever going to recover. What we tend to do is say, right, look, at some stage this will end, earnings will recover. Where do we think they can get back to? And we kind of try to look three to five years out and then basically value the business off where we think the earnings can get back to.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

It really sounds very straightforward. Quite obvious. Why doesn't everybody invest like this?

[Ian Lance]

Because it's simple, not easy. There's actually a book called Simple Not Easy and it perfectly sums up value investing, which is. You're absolutely right, the mechanics of doing that are not particularly difficult. The difficult bit is, is the psychological bit. It's the buying stocks which the share price has probably just gone down a lot. Everyone hates them. Everyone tells you you're an absolute clown to be buying those. Do you not know that? We're in the middle of a recession and yada yada yada. I often say when we put up our top 10 holdings, people often feel slightly nauseous looking at the companies that we own. But you don't get bargains unless you buy things that have some sort of controversy around them. But that's the reason that it works.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

And when you look at the top 10 holdings, it's actually, it's a very concentrated portfolio, isn't it? So there are 65 odd holdings across the portfolio, but the top 10 make up a very significant proportion.

[Ian Lance]

Yeah, that's correct.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

How much is the top 10 now?

[Ian Lance]

I think the top 10 is around 50% of the portfolio.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah, yeah. So this is very focused. So when you find a bargain, you really go for it.

[Ian Lance]

We do. Although actually you might be surprised to find that actually sometimes we put, you know, 3% or so into the portfolio. But I think the important thing is letting it run. So basically not being too quick to, you know, to take your profits on things. I mean, I, I keep going back to the banks. The banks would be a fantastic example of that. You would have had lots of opportunities to have sold banks as they went up. And by and large we just kind of let them run, let them run. And of course then they end up becoming a sort of 5, 6% type position.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, so what makes a stock a good value stock as opposed to a value trap? I mean, it's a standard question, right? There's a lot of stuff that looks cheap, but in fact maybe it's got an awful lot of debt or it is obvious to you that its profits may remain low indefinitely, et cetera. How are we distinguishing between a great value buy and a value trap?

[Ian Lance]

Unfortunately, buying value traps is almost an occupational hazard. If you spend your entire time saying, I'm going to avoid companies that I think might be a value trap, then you are going to miss the ones that actually aren't the ones which actually it turns out that the market has just overreacted in the downturn in earnings. But, but by and large we do stay away from companies with too much debt. And I think that's, you know, myself and Nick have been running money for 30 years. When we look back at the things that have gone the worst for us, often it's just companies with weak balance sheets because when things went down they didn't have the ability to basically stay the course. So you've got to buy something with a decent balance sheet. And then we do try to buy things where we think that the earnings can be higher on a five year basis. And we're not always going to be right about that, but it is our starting point. So we are not just buying cheap rubbish. We are buying things which we think have suffered temporary dislocation that might be because of something the company has done wrong. It might be because of an economic downturn, it might be because of the business cycle or commodity cycle or something like that, but where we can see some sort of route to the earnings recovering in the future.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, so very much an art form it is.

[Ian Lance]

And as I say, you do have to just sort of be fairly pragmatic about it and just admit to yourself that Occasionally you're going to get one or two of these wrong.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Talk us through the top 10 at the moment. What's in that high convection part of the portfolio.

[Ian Lance]

Energy is quite a big part of it for obvious reasons and actually they're a good example that they obviously were much smaller holdings start of the year energy stocks have done very well.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah. So you've got both BP and Shell at the top, right?

[Ian Lance]

BP and Shell, let's be honest, this was not a call on the oil price at all. To a certain extent it was almost the opposite actually. As we came into the year, some of the investment banks were falling over themselves to tell you that the oil price was going to be $40 this year and that immediately gives you reasonably high conviction. But actually there are some stock specific stories here as well. Probably the one I would highlight there is bp, where I'm sure you and lots of the listeners know the story here that strategically they just went in a completely different trajectory over the last few years, decided that they were going to sort of walk away from their core oil and gas business and invest lots of money in transition. Didn't go so well for their shareholders and they've had a change of management. You got an activist investor in the form of Elliot has come in and taken a stake and there's a bit of U turn going on in terms of the strategy and we think therefore you've not just got the recent rise in oil prices, you've got actually a self help story going on there as well.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay. And then after that you still got a lot of financials.

[Ian Lance]

We have, although I should say we have been trimming the banks not because we necessarily think that they're expensive, but you go back a few years, they were very, very cheap. I mean you literally could buy UK banks on 5 times earnings, half books, 6 or 7% dividend yield. Those days are gone. So now, now they're more like 10 times earnings, 1 times book, you know, slightly over. So they're no longer so cheap. And I think the second thing is when we look at the, the dynamics of the industry, things are pretty much as good as they could be at the moment in terms of net interest, margins are high, you know, loan defaults are low, etc. Etc. And so you, so you just say to yourself look, they've done well, you know, they're now more fully valued and conditions probably don't get much better than this. So we have been trimming those. I think another interesting story where we do seem to be quite Contrarian here is WPP.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah, I saw that. 10th biggest holding. Now that's definitely contrarian, but that's what you're supposed to do.

[Ian Lance]

WPP is definitely contrarian. So obviously WPP is the advertising agency. It was put together by Martin Sorel through a series of acquisitions. It's definitely lost its way in the last few years. But again, you've got management change about six months or so ago. I think what gives us conviction here is that their peers are still growing. So going back to your question about value traps, how do you know a value trap? Well, their biggest peer is a French company called Publicis. Publicis are still growing at 5% per annum. So, you know, there are definitely structural forces going on within the industry. And despite that, Publicis is still growing at 5% per annum. So that I suppose makes us think that it's probably a WPP issue, not an industry issue. And we can see what the WPP issue is, which is it's still run as a series of fiefdoms. So all those different advertising agencies, olv, ma, the J Walter Thompson, et cetera, that were put together through a series of acquisitions were never really fully integrated and they're still run as separate businesses to the extent they. Sometimes they will pitch against each other for the same account.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Well, that's absurd.

[Ian Lance]

We think the challenge is basically to integrate those different businesses into one company. And the valuation is just crazy. The valuation is absolutely crazy. The share price today, I suppose is about £2.70, something like that. They are forecast to do 50p of

[Maren Somerset Webb]

earnings, but that rather reflects lack of confidence in the management team being able to amalgamate things in the way you've just been talking about.

[Ian Lance]

It absolutely does, which, funny enough, we like, actually. So the market is giving new management 0% probability of improving things. We would say if they could just stabilize earnings at 50p. I don't know what, you put that on 10 times or something, that would be a 5 quid share price from kind of 2 pounds 60 today. And actually we think that they can do better than just stabilize the earnings. So at the moment the market doesn't agree with us, so we will see.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

You don't want the market to agree with you for a while, right?

[Ian Lance]

Well, not yet. Not yet, no. But eventually, yeah.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Let me ask you about another one on the top 10 before we move on to different things. GSK, you've got there at number five. That seems to keep coming up. When I talk to fund managers and listen to Doc Pico speak, GSK is very popular. At the moment. Yeah.

[Ian Lance]

Although funnily enough, actually I wouldn't say that there was a. That's not really a sort of recovery story. I think that is just a situation where within healthcare, the market just became very, very negative on healthcare companies. And actually, you know, these are reasonably good companies. They're not uber growth companies, but you know, they can normally knock out sort of 5% or so earnings growth. And that's absolutely the case with gsk. Their record in terms of new drug discovery has not been fantastic over the last few years. But know there are some very good businesses within the company and yet it just got down to a very, very low multiple. So. And actually in. In the last year or so, actually the stock has begun to rewrite. Hence again, why it's ended up in the top 10.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah. Okay, so what we've got here is a relatively inexpensive portfolio, pretty high conviction and very pragmatic in terms of where you look in the market. Right.

[Ian Lance]

You mentioned at the start that the trust is up sort of, I think 240% or something since we took it over. It's on a PE of less than 10 today, which is amazing, isn't it? You think that almost sounds impossible, doesn't it? And of course that's. I suppose the good thing about being a value investor is you rotate around the market to where the value is. You're not locked into sort of one set of companies. And that's exactly what we've done. So despite the fact that the trust has gone up, we have basically been able to continually rotate around the market and thus you've still got a low valuation today, which hopefully is an indicator of that the returns can continue in the future.

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[Maren Somerset Webb]

We were talking earlier, before we came on about different investment styles. And you know, you call yourself a value investor, we call you investor a value investor. And then other people call themselves growth investors. And then we've been through this lengthy period until quite recently when people talked about investing in quality growth and that seemed to be an area that massively outperformed. And people would talk about not worrying about price so much because they were invested in a quality company and it was growing. Therefore, price was slightly by the. By now that seems to be coming to an end or has come to an end. And a lot of the quality growth investors have been having a pretty torrid time. Which slightly brings us back to the idea that maybe all investing should be value investing. And in the end, if you buy something overpriced, it's going to end up a value stock one day.

[Ian Lance]

I would completely agree. The thing that always puzzled me about it was that when I look at a company, the quality of it and the growth rate of it are both things that I consider when I'm calculating the value of the business. And so. So why would you suddenly say, you know, all I'm going to look at is the quality and the quality and the growth, and I'm not, not really going to consider the valuation. That. That never really made sense to me. What is interesting, actually is that you're absolutely right. For about 10 years, actually, that style of investing worked quite well. 2010 to 2020.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah, 2010 to 2020. Right. Which coincided amazingly with, guess what, low

[Ian Lance]

interest rates, conservative easing. And I'm sure that has a big part of it. It's come badly unstuck since then. And I think there are two reasons for that. One is that it turns out that a lot of these companies were not as high quality or not as fantastic growth as maybe people thought. I scribbled down a couple of examples later on Nike, the share price has gone from $180 to $40. $180. It was doing $4 of earnings. So people were paying 40 times earnings for Nike just ahead of a period in which the earnings went from $4 to $1.50. And that is a fantastic example, isn't it, of where both of those bits went Wrong. So in other words, the earnings were not as great as you originally thought they were going to be and you were paying too much for those earnings in the first place. You put both of those things together and you just get this horrific combination of DE rating on lower earnings. That's the story across lots and lots of these. Another example, Starbucks earnings has gone from $350 to 230 people are still paying 40 times earnings for that. There are examples in the UK. Reckitts. Reckitts did 320 of earnings back in 2018. They're forecast to do 3 this year. So again, the earnings for a lot of these things have just not been nearly as good as maybe people anticipated and you paid the wrong price at the start.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

I mean that doesn't necessarily tell you that you shouldn't look for high quality companies that you think will grow fast. It just tells you that it's very risky to overpay for them. I mean the message is very simple.

[Ian Lance]

Yeah, it is. And actually coming back to this point about the fact that we rotate around the market to where the value is, people often laughed at the fact when we joined RWC, as it was in 2010, we own Microsoft. We were value investors. We own Microsoft. Why? Because in 2010 all the tech guys would tell you that Microsoft was basically, it was like old technology was going to get disrupted by all the, all the new entrants and so on and so forth. Microsoft was trading on 8 times earnings back in 2010. It had net cash on the balance sheet. There's a fantastic example, I guess of what you're talking about there. You had what you might call a quality stock, but it was available at a really low valuation, which is just. That's your nirvana, isn't it?

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah. Are you seeing any of that now? As we move away from the idea that quality growth is, it's okay to overpay and as some of those stocks have done very badly or worse than expected anyway. Is there anything in there that you can now pick up and say this is quality growth and value at the same time?

[Ian Lance]

I think the answer is no. One or two of them are starting to move down into interesting territory. So actually a stock which was, it was almost the post child of sort of quality growth was Diageo. So we haven't owned, I don't think we've ever owned Diageo. Actually we initiated a position recently on Diageo. Why? Because the earnings have come down, the dividends being cut. You're now actually only paying 12 times lowered earnings. You've got a change of management in the form of Dave Lewis coming in. So, you know, it's got the ingredients there for a business that could do relatively well. To be honest with you, we haven't gone sort of gangbusters on it. Why? Because actually, I think there are potentially some quite deep structural issues going on here. If you look at spirits volumes all around the world, spirits volumes are going down at the moment, actually, and there's a possibility that this industry is no longer the growth industry that people once thought that just consumer tastes have been changing, people are consuming less alcohol. For a new management team, if you're facing those sorts of structural issues, that's a big challenge. It's not just as simple as cutting costs. The honest answer to you is no. We still think lots of these things are just very, very overvalued. Costco trades on 50 times earnings. Walmart trades on 45 times earnings. I mean, these things, they're good companies, but they're just no way should you be paying that sort of valuation for them.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Have you got a Costco card?

[Ian Lance]

I don't have a Costco card, no.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

That's great. You should go to Costco. Strongly recommend nice day out.

[Ian Lance]

I'm sure it is, but I'm sure it is. Just don't think that makes the stock worth 50 times earning.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Good day. Out with the kids. So where else are you looking at the moment? Where are you seeing value? I mean, I'd actually quite like to talk about the international component of the portfolio. So that is 30%, right. Where are you finding value abroad?

[Ian Lance]

Last year actually, we actually found some interesting stocks in Korea.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Well, I mean, I wrote about career a lot the last couple of years and last year I suggested if you'd missed out on everything that you saw in Japan that had been super cheap, maybe you should head for career. I'm quite pleased with that recommendation.

[Ian Lance]

Yeah, exactly. And that worked out well. And what we found amazing about Korea, actually, was that most of the time as a value investor, you have to buy a stock where there's some sort of controversy. So something has gone wrong, the earnings gone down, people hate it, and that's your opportunity. And then we looked at some Korean stocks and we thought, actually there's no controversy here at all. It's just the fact that I think so much money had gone into US, tech growth, et cetera, et cetera. These things, bit like Japan, actually, have become cheap by neglect. So we bought a couple of Korean banks called Hanna and Woori last year. And they were trading on sort of five times earnings, half book and dividend yields of about 8%. And then you looked at the history of the company and actually the history of the company is really good. For about a decade they'd grown their earnings very consistently. They had very sensible lending policies. They actually already had very good shareholder return policies. So they were paying dividends, buying back stock, et cetera, et cetera. You're almost sitting there scratching your head thinking, what am I missing here? It turned out actually there wasn't, there wasn't anything we were missing. They had just become cheap by neglect.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah, okay, so Korean, is that still okay? I mean that market has really moved. No one would say Korea is neglected today.

[Ian Lance]

We still hold them. Obviously we've taken a little bit of money out of them because they've done incredibly well.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, so where else are you seeing cheap things either globally or at home?

[Ian Lance]

We're starting to see value in the US which will sort of potentially make you smile because I think we would probably agree that the US is a very expensive market, but it's also a very big market and it's a very diverse market. There are pockets of value in the US laughably in the US small cap is sort of 0 to 10 billion and 10 billion to 20 billion. That's called small cap. We've been finding value in that sort of area. So again, tail end of last year we bought a couple of energy companies. One of them is called Devon Energy, one of them is called Cord. They're your shale producers and as you can imagine, they have performed quite well. It's that sort of area. I just think you have to look outside of mega cap, US tech and so on and so forth.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

You're clearly a stock picker, a bottom up stock picker. And I would guess try not to think too much about the macro environment, but that's getting increasingly difficult. What worries you at the moment? What's keeping you up at night? I mean, obviously when you have a portfolio like this, you've built in margins of error across the board. And so you will maybe feel safer than someone who's got a very exp portfolio. But what wakes you up in the night?

[Ian Lance]

It's a conversation I think that yourself and John had about a week ago, which is, you could loosely call it complacency in the market, which is the Strait of Hormuz as we talk today is still shut. The oil price is still above $100. Airlines are starting to cancel flights. Some Asian countries have gone to a four day working week and the S&P 500 has just hit a new all time high. I think the semiconductor index has just done 18 consecutive up days. There just seems to be an awful lot of complacency. And you're absolutely right, we are not macro forecasters, but I don't think you have to be to say that eventually energy prices of those levels is going to have an impact on the economy. And if your starting point is very, very high levels of valuation, normally those two, putting those two things together don't work out well. And you're right. From where we sit, we can look at our portfolio and say, yep, it's lowly values and we think we've built in a margin of safety, but if the US market comes down, it's not going to sit there and just be completely immune from that. So I do find that sort of mildly worrying how people appear to have just become accustomed to buying the dip. And I think it's possible that people are buying this dip for the wrong reason, by which I mean historically it was right to buy the zip, because whenever something happened, the central banks of the world wrote your rescue either cut rates or printed money or whatever, or, you know, so they were going to do whatever it takes. I don't see how central banks can print money and open up the straight of Hormuz and get the oil price to come down. If anything, if they do that, it's going to make the inflation problem worse, not better. And so, yeah, I do find that a bit worrying.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Okay, so even you, even you are awake a little at night. Okay, so one last question, one last question, Ian, what are you reading at the moment?

[Ian Lance]

I have just finished Lionel Barber's biography about son Myoshi Son. And I have just started Jeremy Grantham's book, the Diary of Perma Bear.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Oh, have you the new one? We had him on the podcast, you know. Did you listen to that?

[Ian Lance]

I did indeed. Yeah. I almost, almost don't need to read the book, actually.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Yeah, and I saw him again the other night. I mean, he's just so interesting. So interesting. And Lionel's book is great too. Strong recommendations. Thank you, Ian.

[Ian Lance]

Those are both good books. What I tend to do is I have a list of books. At Christmas time, my family just buy me investing books and then I basically spend the rest of the year reading them.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

They're my investment books. And the odd pair of socks and that's that.

[Ian Lance]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Right. Brilliant. Ian, thank you so much for coming on today.

[Ian Lance]

Pleasure. Good to talk to you.

[Maren Somerset Webb]

Thanks for listening. To this week's Marian Talks Money. If you like our show, rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and keep sending your questions or comments to marianmoneyloomburg.net. you can also follow me and John on Twitter or x. I'm Arnesw and John is JohnStepek. This episode was hosted by me Merynsumset Web. It was produced by Summer Saadi and Moses Andam Sound designed by Blake Maples and Aaron Kasper. And special thanks of course, to Ian Larks.

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