Cresud-Argentine farmland play

Cresud (CRESY, Nasdaq) is an Argentine company, a leading company and also one of the largest farming companies in Latin America. From a commercial standpoint, Cresud’s key business includes acquisition, transformation and sale of farmland and the production in its own farmlands or in farmlands leased from third parties. Over years, Cresud has made many smart move to buy quality farmlands when no one is interested, not only in Argentina, but also significantly in Brazil and other South American countries. As a result, buying Cresud's stocks is just like investing in the great assets in Cresud's balance sheet.

As you can see from the long-term chart below, CRESY goes boom and burst every few years. It appears it has just gone through the burst cycle and has shown a sign of uptrend. Actually CRESY is trading at almost 20% discount against its book value, a rather great value. It is paying a big dividend, at a 5.5% yield at this price below $9. I think the downside risk for CRESY is quite limited now. For those who would like to take a risk and want to have exposure to the international stocks, CRESY is worth considering.