Bogumil Baranowski – Be Careful With Businesses in Secular Decline

<p><strong>BIO: </strong>Bogumil Baranowski is a founding partner of Sicart Associates, LLC, a New York City investment firm. He has almost two decades of investment experience.</p><p><strong>STORY:</strong> Bogumil invested a lot of time and money in two companies that were drowning in debt, had poor management, and had a secular decline.</p><p><strong>LEARNING:</strong> Just because it’s cheap, don’t compromise on debt, management, and secular decline. Debt is the number one risk for an existing company.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><blockquote class="ql-align-center"><strong>“Yes, you can make money, but keeping it is equally as important.”</strong></blockquote><blockquote class="ql-align-center">Bogumil Baranowski</blockquote><p>&nbsp;</p><h2>Guest profile</h2><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bogumil-baranowski/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Bogumil Baranowski</strong></a> is a founding partner of <a href="https://www.sicartassociates.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sicart Associates</a>, LLC, a New York City investment firm. He has almost two decades of investment experience. He holds a master’s degree in Finance and Strategy from Sciences Po Paris and a master’s in Finance and Banking from the Warsaw School of Economics. He is the author of <a href="https://amzn.to/43cS5UK" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Outsmarting the Crowd</em></a> and <a href="https://amzn.to/3ZPL8WI" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Money, Life, Family</em></a>. He is the host of the <a href="https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talking-billions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Talking Billions Podcast</a>.</p><h2>Worst investment ever</h2><p>In 2011, Bogumil picked up Verifone stock because it was cheap. The company had just acquired Hypercom, one of its competitors. It looked like they were well positioned, with Ingenico being the other competitor to coexist in a growing industry. Bogumil paid attention to how cheap the stock was. However, he had questions about