Short-Term Interest #1

This is the first issue of Short-Term Interest, the newsletter from Sunk Capital. Every other week we’ll send quality corporate communications straight to your spam folder. Expect a robust collection of updates from our latest investments, our CEO Barry Sunk’s assistant’s ghostwriter’s take on a trending topic in the business world, and the renowned stock picks of our very own market expert, Ikla the Wise, Senior Vice President of Forecasting at Sunk Capital.

Please follow us on the social medias, share, subscribe, and send your non-refundable cash deposits directly to our finance team.

- Jenny Smith, Vice President, Public Relations

There’s plenty going on at Sunk Capital this week. We’ve made a major investment in Norwegian energy giant Dypvann, and opened a new office in the remote Gobi Desert.

Dypvann Innovates Through Considered Exploitation
Sunk Capital announce a major investment in Norwegian energy firm Dypvann, ushering in a new era of power generation and bringing considerably higher energy costs to tens of millions around the globe.

Unrivalled Personal Protection Systems with Backbunker™
Sunk Capital announce a partnership with wearable entrenchment startup Backbunker, providing $19 billion of backing to help bring military-grade defensive positions to the street. Crime means nothing when you’re inside a steel-reinforced concrete bunker.

Dypvann’s zero-waste vision: offshore growth transforms concrete infrastructure into high-value biomass
A bold innovation in edible bio-waste, Dypvann's new food product, Viscous Marine Ooze, hits the shelves next month.

Dypvann hits production target, successfully begins oil flow in Morocco
A new oil extraction facility in Morocco has overdelivered against a production target of six barrels by a full two barrels.

Backbunker saves New York woman from minor argument
Alison Fuller, from New York, USA, thanks Backbunker for coming between her and an argumentative fellow shopper.

My fellow investors,

The talk in the geopolitical locker room these days is all about deglobalisation. Even the common man in his regular-sized home, eating his self-prepared meals, is ruminating on the decline of unregulated free trade. For decades, we’ve operated under the simple, elegant assumption that the world was a perfectly integrated, low-cost assembly line. Then, reality, like a handsy uncle at Christmas, shuffling toward us with its mischievous grin and overfilled glass of cheap port in hand, reminded us that shipping a critical component from a poorly maintained factory in a distant, politically unstable country is a somewhat sub-optimal path to supply chain security.

The solution, we are told, is "friend-shoring". That is, shifting production to countries that don't routinely threaten to nationalise our assets while interfering with our information space by waging wars of quiet subterfuge. I am, at heart, a pragmatist, and this seems like a sensible direction.

That being said, it is remarkable what can be accomplished with a well-placed bribe to a customs official of sufficient rank, or the extortion of a political candidate on the cusp of a fraudulent victory.

And that is precisely why Sunk Capital has decided to embrace the approach of hybrid-shoring.

Hybrid-shoring is a new concept that we are pioneering each day. Our substantial legal team, along with three economists who wandered into the office looking for cocaine, have developed this unique approach to these unprecedented times. We will seek to promote friend-shoring, while simultaneously executing a Parallel Supply Chain Optimisation strategy that continues to engage with non-traditional regulatory frameworks in emerging and fluid jurisdictions.

What the global press has, with characteristic lack of sophistication, referred to in the past as corrupt regimes, oligarchical monopolies, major crime families and autocratic governments with a tenous grip on power, will instead be seen as dynamic alternative supply brokers with de-centralised compliance protocols.

It is in these places where efficiencies—and profit—can be found, particularly by streamlining, or even eliminating the need for, business administration activities such as tax, the proper filing of paperwork, adherence to safety regulation and the following of employment law.

The tyranny of 'efficiency'

What the old models failed to account for was the once-in-a-century and almost impossible to predict shocks to global economies that have come from tariffs, war on the European continent, the COVID-19 pandemic and surprise geopolitical realignments. At Sunk Capital, we can no longer stem the financial bleeding by simply following the precedent of sound governance and adherence to common law.

One solution to deglobalisation is a hyper-focus on self-sufficiency. By concentrating the entire supply chain of complex products into a single building—or better still, a single room—we work to remove entirely the causes of instability. Yes, prices will rise. In some cases, by a staggering, economically unviable amount. But this is the price we must pay to counter what has been the steady erosion of globalisation over the last decade.

These new, totally unaffordable products should be seen as loss-leaders. But they are predictable loss leaders. And in today's environment, predictable negative cash flow should be seen as a form of risk mitigation. It’s the ultimate de-risked revenue stream. One that is guaranteed to never surprise us with profit.

We should, then, consider stability a key objective with our investment partners going forward. On the one hand, there’s building isolated islands of production that are self-sustaining despite the crippling losses they inflict to shareholders, and on the other a reinvigorated programme of corporate lobbying that creates value-added instability in the very markets we seek to flee.

Ultimately, the future is for the bold.

Barry Sunk
CEO, Sunk Capital