Trolling for Investments: Norwegian Fisheries

So I was trolling the Glitnir Bank website (the same Glitnir that was saved by the government of Iceland) and found an index for fishery stocks, most of which are Norwegian. There are almost enough Norwegian fishery stocks to create an ETF (Claymore, can I get a hollah?).
 

• Marine Harvest MHG.OL or MNHVF.PK
• Austevoll AUSS.OL
• Cermaq CEQ.OL or CRMQF.PK
• Leroy Seafood Group LSG.OL or LYSFF.PK
• Salmar SALM.OL

Obviously fishing stocks are recession proof and bear market proof as everyone keeps eating, right? Well, we might keep eating, but the stocks have all been crushed this year. Marine Harvest is the top performer, down only 20%. Three of them are down 50%, and if you go back one year Marine Harvest is down 60%.

MHG sells just about every edible fish you've ever heard of in Norway, Ireland, Chile, Canada, the Faroes (small island nation in Europe west and I think north of Denmark) and Maine.

AUSS has operations in Norway, Chile and Peru. It operates fishing boats, makes fishmeal, canning fish, extracting fish oil and freezing fish.

Cermaq focuses on "aquaculture" which makes R&D a big priority. I can't tell from a glance of the website if it is more of a pick and shovel type of company or does a lot of fishing too. Besides Norway it does business in Vietnam, Chile, Canada and Scotland.

The Leroy Seafood Group site was also tough to navigate, but they seem to be involved in farming, aquaculture and distribution with offices in Norway, Turkey, China, Japan and the US.

Salmar does salmon farming and shellfish processing and it looks like it has all of its operations in Norway.

As the world appears to be ending (intentional hyperbole), why write about publicly traded Norwegian fisheries that are down a lot? Well, the world probably is not ending. If the thread that many, including me, are working with --  that the US may not offer normal market returns once the bear ends -- that means looking elsewhere. A Norwegian fishing company might be one answer at some point.

Or maybe not, I don't know. But the task for anyone is to continue to explore and learn. I just found these by accident. There are all sorts of segments we don't know about and while we cannot learn about all of them we can study some of them and maybe include one or two at some point in the future.

Being defensively positioned does not mean putting your head in the sand and shutting 'er down. In case it is not clear, I am not suggesting anyone buy any of the names mentioned. They exist, that's all; and if you've read this entire post you now  know as much as I do.

Comments

[Vittalize:]

All sounds good but the reason the stocks are down is because of a major disease outbreak in Chile (ISA virus) which is killing the salmons and having reduced Marine Harvest's Chilean capacity by at least half. There is also another disease in Norway (Pancreas Disease or PD) of which we are yet to see the full impact.

2008 Oct 08 03:23 AM