My CSL Investment Experience

Sorry guys I’m bored……bored, bored, bored.

I’m bored waiting for CSL to release its full year results in August, the $200 party thread seems to have lost its fizzle, there are no other topics so, I’m hoping you’ll share your CSL investing experience on this thread.


My experience

CSL were not the first shares I ever purchased (unfortunately ), actually, I cut my teeth on Telstra back when it first floated. Telstra was the dominant player then, those were good times……..before the prevalence of mobile handsets, before the internet and before Justin Bieber and the Spice Girls. It gave me a fire for share investing. Now the telecommunication industry is beset with a whole raft of problems complicated by Telstra looking for new ways to destroy shareholder value (it seems). But I continue to hold my Telstra shares.

“Please god, just one more bubble” ¹

In those days there was a magazine I use to buy and read called “Shares” which featured articles of companies listed or about to be floated on the ASX. One month it ran a story on CSL which I read and became interested in. CSL was selling around $50 at the time (pre-share split, someone please correct me if my CSL history is wrong), it must have been before the ZLB acquisition and the plasma oversupply. It was regarded as one of the most expensive stocks on the ASX (funny huh?) but I vowed to buy CSL if the share price ever dropped significantly (that was the extent of my due diligence back then ).

The share price did drop, down to like $12 dollars after they announced the ZLB acquisition. I hesitated for some time and then not long afterwards, CSL made a play for Aventis Behring’s plasma business. I managed to look at the proforma financial statements of the combined entity and thought the share price was grossly understated given the combined earnings for the group.

I paid an average $22 per share for my parcels.

It has been fascinating to watch the rise and rise of the share price interrupted by intervals of pure madness. The flash crash many years ago comes to mind and if I recall correctly, CSL dropped $7 in like minutes only to recover most of it by the end of the day. What a day!

Since then I have learnt not to confuse genius with a bull market and ignore the daily fluctuations of the share price. I try to follow the philosophies of Warren Buffett who I regard as the greatest investor of all time. I am still learning and refining my investment knowledge but the one adage that Mr Buffett advocates (and echoed by Peejay2 and others on this forum) that I believe strongly in is, the “do nothing” approach to shares after you have purchased it. While I have never sold my CSL shares I haven’t added to my holdings since.

The problem now, as I see it, I have grown to love CSL (I try to stay impartial when I do my analysis) so I am not exactly sure when to sell. I have now narrowed it down to a “change in personal circumstances or CSL stuffs up the business” but I am a long term shareholder at heart. However, I am reminded of the late Kerry Packer who loathed the the thought of selling his beloved channel 9 but when presented with an unsuspecting Alan Bond had the very good fortune to do a deal with him, twice!

So let me change my sell criteria to “change in personal circumstances, CSL stuffs up the business or when my Alan Bond arrives in my life time”.




¹ Berkshire Hathaway annual report