Contact Energy - CEN Chart

[Snoopy]

My fifteen years with the company have had their (relative) highs and lows. Although I have been with Contact for 15 years, half of my purchases (in terms of the total number of shares bought) were over the last four and one quater years. IOW my median purchase timing was back in May 2011. So how have I done? A quick look at the historical chart would show that I made my time based theortical equivalent single purchase (median purchase) when the share price was at $5.92. The current share price is $5.11 - not good! But is this really a good measure of how I have done? Let's see.

Looking back at my notes, my worst purchase of Contact Energy shares was made in November 2008 when I picked up a parcel for $6.63. That doesn't look very clever now. But the share price had within a short time of that been as high as $9. So it was easy to convince myself that $6.63 was a bargain. And so it might have been. Except that post GFC a lot of the 'growth premium' was let out of the energy market. Contact as a 'steady state' earner had a very different outlook to Contact as a 'growth company'. The truth is I took my eye off the ball and assumed energy growth was going to follow the historical trend, and it didn't. So I have no-one to blame but myself for this little episode.

By contrast my best purchase was when I bought a parcel for $2.80 in December 2000. What a millennium present that little purchase turned out to be! Contact had floated at $3.10 just over a year earlier. My memory isn't good enough to remember exactly why the price declined. But I do remember thinking about those shares I bought at float time, and reasoning that if I could pick up some more Contact shares at a 10% discount that sounded like a good thing. And so it was!

What we have here are two examples of 'catching a falling knife'. In the first case I got bloodied. In the second case I got a firm grip on the handle. Which proves nothing really. The big bandage I keep in the bottom of the doghouse meant the bloodied paw was a repairable effect.

SNOOPY