How I Achieved 28.6% Return by Investing in Mauritian Stocks

and surprised myself

Image of Warren Buffet from Google Images

I invested in stocks in Mauritius, a tiny tropical island country I currently call home.

I was hoping for the very vanilla sub 10% return but the ability of Mauritian businesses to create value exceeded my expectations.

This article, and more to come, are my attempts to share whatever little I have learned along the way. This isn’t financial advice.

I have been always good at picking breakthrough stocks, sometimes with frightening accuracy. But I never seemed to have the money to invest. This is because I understood business but I did not understand personal finance.

Personal finance is the set of skills and habits required to manage your own money. I did not possess these. That changed when I read ‘Personal finance is a set of skills and habits you need to manage your own money well. I did not possess these. That changed when I read a simple little book and put it to practice. I wrote about that in my previous article.

Once I had the habits down, I set my eyes on my little investment experiment on the Mauritian stock market.

The experiment

1. Pick Mauritian stocks I thought were good businesses from personal experience.
2. Invest what I can afford to lose.
3. Buy and hold for at least a year.

I had three simple rules:

That’s it.

The result? A return of 28.69% upon selling my portfolio 10 months later. What I was more pleased about was that it was all mostly passive income and took maybe 10 hours of total work.

The stocks and why I picked them

1. CIEL Limited — Diversified businesses across 10 countries. I happen to have worked at one of their companies for a year. I quickly realised they were doing quite a few things right. At the time of purchase, I thought the stock was very undervalued.
2. C — Care — Biggest private healthcare service provider in the country. I went through a number of health checkups for my visa at C — Care and was pleasantly surprised by the service. I also had an opportunity to listen to their CEO give a very human and inspiring talk about their business once, bringing the business to my attention. Their expertise and ability to provide value during the pandemic certainly seems to have helped their share price.
3. Terra — Diversified business group behind the ‘Beau Plan’ development. I was a fan of the precinct there and when I saw the residential developments and the Mahagony Mall under construction, I saw the potential in their stock.
4. IBL Limited — An established business group with really diverse business units.
5. Rogers Group — Diversified business group across FinTech, hospitality, logistics and property industries.
6. CIM Finance — I noticed their kiosks outside strategic locations such as shopping mall lobbies and supermarket entrances. I found it to be pretty savvy. More recently, they also purchased a stake in Fundkiss, a leading P2P lending platform in Mauritius. I found the move to be quite progressive.
7. United Docks Ltd. — I used to work at an office located in the United Docks Business park in Caudan. I learnt that they own a lot of prime real estate, have a large new commercial development under construction and a very high occupancy rate on their current spaces. They also run ‘Park and Ride’, a car park service with shuttle facilities, providing a neat little solution to one of the biggest problems in Port Louis.
8. ENL Limited — Established and diversified business group with progressive businesses such as a startup incubator and accelerator, Turbine.

I picked stocks because of one of the three reasons — either the company was an established and diversified conglomerate, had specific expertise or had plans in the development that were promising. Here are the stocks that made up my portfolio and the reasons why I picked them.

Bought/sold timeline

Please see the boring spreadsheet below.

Basically, I bought a bunch of stocks a couple of times during the year and sold them all at once in October 2021.

• C — Care — 181% increase
• CIEL Limited — 88% increase

Biggest Gainers

• C — Care — 181% increase
• CIEL Limited — 88% increase

Why I sold it all

I get it, 10 months is not exactly a long term investment.

I decided to sell because I had another investment opportunity — my sister’s own fashion business.

My sister is a fashion design student. I wanted her to get an entrepreneurial experience early on and learn to become financially independent. I advised her to start her own little business. You can check out her apparel, leather goods and jewellery brand here.

If I could invest in a business and support my sibling’s ambitions at the same time, that’s probably as satisfying as it gets.

I will, however, continue to invest and run experiments in areas of personal growth and finance.

But whatever I decide to do, I’ll be sure to write about it and share what I learn through my newsletter.

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Takeaways

• Building wealth begins with building good financial and investing habits.
• An understanding of business and entrepreneurship will make you a good value investor. If you see a business doing things the right way by their customers, chances are they might stick around long enough to appreciate in value.
• Patience > instant gratification. Consistent financial actions, no matter how tiny, add up to be very significant.