As I have been updating the Portfolio page infrequently and I made quite some changes in September & October, here is the current portfolio as of October 31st. It can also be accessed via the portfolio page.
VC Legend (and future fiction author) Brad Feld on the 6 bn Binance Crypto hack (Spoiler: He thinks that Crypto is fuxxed)
Some deep thoughts on how AI will influence and change White Collar work
Prof. Damodaran with an attempt to value Anthropic (at a CoC of 9,73%)
Some deep thoughts from Ben Thompson on the future of the internet
Fundamental Value with a look at US “Mega Compounder” TransDigm
The big Music Labels (including Universal Music) are Toast according to this post from “the Honest Broker
Reimar Scholz, a very successful Munich based investor shares his mistakes and what he learned from them: Part 1 & Part 2
DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
Management summary:
Following my post on the disappointing IPO of Birkenstock, I decided to look at 2 more “busted IPOs” that happened more recently, both in Autumn 2025:
Swedish listed Verisure (IPO early October 2025) and Swiss Marketplace Group (IPO mid September 2025). I actually found both of them interesting enough to justify smaller positions.
“Busted PE IPO” from Sweden: Verisure Plc
Verisure, the European leader of Home Security and Alarm systems IPOed in Stockholm in late 2025 and initially looked like a great success with a 20% “first day pop”.
This however also marked the peak of the share price so far, since then the stock has been going down:
The low was reached in the beginning of October with around 8 EUR per share when the initial lock downs expired.
Verisure was IPOed at around 16x EV/EBITDA and is now trading at ~8 NTM EV EBITDA .
This seems to be attractive enough that a few days ago, the FT leaked that another PE, this time CVC is interested in taking the company private again after only 12 months of being a listed company.
Verisure itself looks like a potential “Compounder stock” and has been written up already on a few Substacks, for instance on “Best Anchor Stocks”.
With the CVC rumour however, Verisure for me is rather an early stage “Special Situation” opportunity than a longer term investment.
Shareholder Structure:
One interesting aspect of the current shareholder structure is that the Pre-IPO shareholders are still the dominating shareholder Group. Best Anchor stocks has summarized this quite well:
Verisure is still controlled by its pre-IPO owners. The company listed on 8 October 2025 at €13.25 per share, but only around 26% of the company was sold in the IPO. As of 31 December 2025, the largest shareholders were:
The above simply shows that roughly 70% of the shares are held by investors who will, sooner or later, want to sell (or at least have the option to). At today’s share price, H&F’s stake alone is worth around €3.7 billion, close to half of Verisure’s market cap. The lock-up calendar looks like this:
So basically CVC can negotiate with H&F for 70% of the shares which makes it a rather simple process. A very likely outcome of an negotiation would be that H&F and the other shareholders will need to “roll” part of their exposure into a new deal with CVC which will reduce the required cheque size-
Simplified Special situation calculation
Now one can speculate at what price H&F and the others would be willing to sell. A very simple assumption would be that they want to see the IPO price of 13,25 EUR.
This would equal a premium of around 40% to the price before the “rumour leak” and in line what one has seen in similar Nordic PE buy-outs in the past.
Based on this assumptions, we can calculate a very simple “expected fair value” for Verisure:
Assuming a 50% probability for a deal at 13,25 EUR and a 50% non-deal probability with the stock going back down to 9 EUR, the expected value of the stock would be 0,5*13,25+ 0,5*9 = 11,13 EUR or ~11% higher than the current share price at the time of writing.
One can now try to make more elaborate scenarios but in principle this looks quite attractive, especially as under Swedish rules, a deal could happen rather quickly if the parties agree.
Summary Verisure
For that reason, I established a 1,5% position for my “special Situation” bucket at a share price of slightly below 10 EUR per share. I sized this rather small as it is not clear if a deal is actually happening. If CVC officially calls the deal off, I will sell. If a formal offer is made, I will revisit the position.
Swiss Marketplaces AG
Following my “UK Portal Pain basket” post from late September, one reader actually suggested in the comment to look at Swiss Marketplaces AG (SMG).
After a second look, I actually got more excited about the stock. SMG is the clear number 1 in Switzerland, both, for Real estate and Cars (so like an Autotrader and Rightmove combined), plus they own some smaller comparison sites in Switzerland.
Interestingly, the origin of the two main portals, Immoscout24 Schweiz and Autoscout24 Schweiz was the German Scout Group that sold these two portals in 2014 to Swiss publisher Ringier.
In 2021 then, these two portals merged with their main Swiss competitor TX Markets (owned by listed TX Group) to the Swiss MArketplaces Group.
As mentioned in the beginning, SMG IPOed in autumn 2025 and looking at the stock chart we can see that similar to Verisure, the IPO was the peak of the price range so far:
Compared to the “old parent” Scout24 Group, SMG has performed significantly worse over the past 12 months:
And this despite very solid operating numbers. for the first 6M in 2026, sales were up +11% and EBITDA +17%:
This chart from the 6M results presentation shows how dominant they are in virtually every area in Switzerland:
AI threat
As mentioned in my “Portal Pain basket” post, I think that especially real estate and car portals will not be disrupted by AI agents or similar tools any time soon.
I am more sceptical about travel, but SMG has no exposure to travel.
Shareholder structure:
As in Verisure’s case, the Pre-IPO owners are still the majority owners of SMG:
The biggest investors are the two Swiss publishing Groups TX Group and Ringier. In a recent transaction, Swiss Insurer Mobiliar sold ~7,5% of SMG’s shares at 28,50 CHF per share. Interestingly, TX Group bought ~3% of MSG and SMG itself bought back 1%. According to this article, Mobiliar has agreed to a further lock-up until March 2027 following the placement.
TX Group is now at 34,9%. According to the Articles of Association of SMG, the crossing of the 35% threshold would trigger a mandatory take over offer by TX Group.
So with Mobiliar selling down, there is clearly fear of a stock overhang in the market which might explain the relative underperformance to Scout24. I also assume that General Atlantic, a US based PE investor will not stay forever. Interestingly, also Ringier reduced its stake before and during the IPO from initially 29,5% to the current 19%. Only TX Group seems to have not sold shares, but as mentioned above, bought more.
As a result, the valuation of SMG is for a Swiss stock, quite moderate. At ~19x NTM P/E, SMG is valued in line with Scout24. Leverage is quite low (below 1x Net Debt/EBITDA) and with ~3,4% the stock has an attractive dividend yield for a Swiss stock.
What I find interesting is that SMG clearly has some runway to increase profitability. Scout24 for instance has an EBIT margin of ~50% whereas SMG “only” shows 35%. Especially the “other marketplaces” seem to have some room to improve profitability.
There is clearly the stock overhang especially from Mobiliar, but operationally SMG seems to perform quite well and the Swiss economy is doing better than many of their neighbours.
So the stock overhang “blues” might actually represent a good opportunity to get a quality asset at a reasonable price.
Summary:
Overall I find SMG quite attractive as a potential 4th member of my “Portal Pain basket”. Compared to Scout24 in Germany, I like the better diversification and the exposure to a country that performs much better economically.
Therefore I decided to allocate 2% of the portfolio into SMG at current prices of ~29,50 CHF per share.
I could actually think of making it an even bigger position if they continue to perform well operationally and the stock keeps being depressed because of more selling from some of the large shareholders.
Management Summary:
This is a more superficial look into Birkenstock, a much hyped IPO from 2023 which now trades at 12,5x NTM P/E. Despite still growing at “mid teens”, I could not build up the conviction to start a position, as it is really hard to judge for how much longer the “Birkenstock hype” will continue. I also took a quick look at Dr. Martens, which is a prime example for a broken fashion trend. Maybe not directly comparable to Birkenstock, but still a warning sign.
The 2023 IPO “flip”
Birkenstock, the famous German “health sandal” maker went public 3 years ago. The IPO price was USD 46 (upper end of the range) and already on day 1, the stock dropped to around 40 USD.
Interestingly, the PE investor L. Catterton only bought Birkenstock in 2021. Back then it was estimated that the purchase price was ~4 bn EUR. So IPOing in 2023 is a pretty “quick flip” in PE terms.
In between, things looked a little bit better and the stock reached ~60 USD in 2024. Fast forward to today, and the stock trades at around 32 USD at quite cheap multiples:
TIKR says next year’s P/E is only 12,5x. Looking at the financials, we can see that since 2023, both sales and profits increased significantly, however, things have been slowing a little bit lately.
L. Catterton, the Private Equity arm of LVMH owner Bernard Arnault still owns 43% and Arnault’s family holding, Financiere Agache another 6%, but they have been selling shares. A few weeks ago in August, L. Catterton sold shares for around 1 bn EUR, of which Birkenstock bought back a relevant amount.
Looking at the shorter term share price, this sale by L. Catterton clearly did not infuse a lot of confidence in other Brikenstock shareholders which leaves the share price very close to all time lows:
Interestingly, according to their latest investor update, sales are still strong and growing in the “mid teens”, both in their own retail channel (DTC) and wholesale:
In contrast to other more high end luxury brands, the exposure to Asia and specifically China seems to be rather limited.
One point one has to give L. Catterton is that they managed to increase sales by +50% within 2 years as this chart from the IPO prospectus shows:
The problem of course was that the valuation at IPO which, in true PE fashion was north of 20x EV/EBITDA, was clearly too high. Now, at a much compressed 8x NTM EV/EBITDA, this looks more reasonable.
This Chart from TIKR nicely shows how multiples have been compressed since the IPO:
Will the Birkenstock “Fashion Trend” continue ?
A big issue is clearly if the “Birkenstock fashion trend” will run out of steam at some time.
Originally, Birkenstocks were nerdy “health sandals” often worn by office workers in technical professions like engineers or programmers.
When I was a student, I did an internship at Siemens and I remember that a lot of the engineers had (white) Bikenstocks at their desks in which they changed in the morning and would walk around all day in the office. That looked quite odd especially with those who actually wore a suit.
This is a picture of a classic Birkenstock sandal:
And if you ever were on vacation with a lot of Germans in the summer, this look might be familiar to you:
Birkenstock became fashionable in the Mid 2010s. Before that, especially in the US, Birkenstocks were considered “hippie style” but that changed when Birkenstock teamed up with famous design labels to create more fashionable versions.
Interlude: Dr. Martens – the famous example for a footwear fashion brand that is not so fashionable anymore
A famous example for an explosive run-up and spectacular drop of an iconic shoewear brand is UK footwear brand Dr. Martens.
Dr. Martens was IPOed in January 2021 by PE shop Permira, which owned the company for 7 years. As we can see in the chart, after the first day “pop”, the stock went south pretty much soon thereafter and has now lost -85% from the initial IPO price:
Looking at the financials, we can see that Dr. Martens only managed to show 2 more years of double digit growth after the IPO before sales declined significantly and profits even more so:
That’s clearly not enough if you IPO a company at 20x EV/EBITDA which Permira did. Interestingly, Permira still owns ~38% of the company.
Reading the 2022 annual report, where they show 18% sales growth, the growth story still seems to be intact:
In 2023, lower than anticipated growth was blamed on the botched transfer of a US distribution center:
In 2024, the sales decline was blamed on cautious wholesale customers:
However, looking at the previous year report, one could already see that wholesale had declined and the brand only grew by opening a lot of new stores.
There are a couple of articles on why Dr. Martens became unpopular especially in the US. Overstocking after Covid and heavy discounts is one reason, but also moving the production from the UK to Asia is often mentioned (although that seemed to have happened long time ago in the early 2000s).
There seem to have been challenger brands like Solovair and Blundstone. Solovair boots interestingly seem to be manufactured in Dr. Marten’s old factory in the UK.
Their latest report from May 2026 still shows a decline in sales but a certain recovery in (adjusted) profits:
So turning around a once hyped but then struggling footwear brand is clearly not that easy.
It doesn’t help that a lot of other footwear brands have very weak stock charts, too, with the exception of Crocs:
Back to Birkenstock:
Overall I find Birkenstock quite interesting but it is clearly not an easy stock. For full transparency, I am not a “Birkenstock person”, I have never owned a pair and will most likely never own one. But still, it could be a potentially interesting “broken IPO” story as long as growth remains in the mid teens.
My gut feeling tells me that Birkenstock is less “fancy” than Dr. Martens and compared to Dr. Martens for instance, Birkenstocks are still produced in Germany, not in Asia.
However, there are already a lot of similar smaller brands that sell similar shoes for much lower prices than Birkenstock, for instance this one or even Sandals that are manufactured in German prisons.
Dr. Martens clearly shows that when a trend breaks, it can take a very long time to recover, if at all.
The comparison of Dr. Martins and Birkenstock is also a great use case for an AI analysis/report. In this case, I asked Claude to research the similarities and differences between Birkenstock and Dr. Martens and I have to say that the result was quite interesting.
This is Claude’s summary:
I would certainly not base any investment decision on this, but it confirms my feeling that Birkenstock is not exactly on the same trajectory as Dr. Martens a few years earlier. But clearly there is a risk that they might not grow at 15% for many more years, which the current share price seems to expect as well.
A big learning in any case is (and this is no surprise) that you should avoid investing into PE sponsored IPOs of some hot footwear brands at a valuation of 20x EV/EBITDA or more.
The PE guys definitely know when to sell and as an investor, you should not try to outsmart PE guys at an IPO. Maybe there is one out of 10 that is doing really good, but the probability is slim.
When you look at Private Equity portfolios which often have average valuations of 16-18 x EV/EBITDA, it is clearly not a surprise that IPOing or selling them at these valuations are not easy.
For Birkenstock, I will watch the company but at the time of writing, I could not build enough confidence to start a position despite the quite attractive valuation.
I think especially the massive sales of L. Catterton just a few weeks ago does not create a lot of confidence that growth will remain at mid teens levels for that long.
Morningstar with a list of potentially undervalued luxury stocks
Very interesting deep dive from Edelweiss Capital into the Question how AI Agents will influence OTAs (Booking etc.)
Abbott Laboratories is planning a major spin-off in 2027
Thoughtful Q3 letter from Greenkeepers Asset Management
Govro from Wintergems with an update on Champagne and other alcoholic spirit companies
Tomas Puyo with a fantastic deep dive on what’s wrong with French education
Jeremy from French Hidden Champions with a short “manifest to invest into French stocks”
DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!
Management Summary:
Rubis, the French listed Fuel distribution company, represents a potentially interesting Special Situation investment, despite (or because of) the current negative sentiment towards French stocks.
On the back of strong earnings momentum (6M earnings +18%), Rubis has almost no exposure to France and has recently announced to undergo a structural transformation from a disadvantageous SCA structure (similar to a German KGaA) to an ordinary stock corporation.
For normal shareholders, this is hugely positive despite a planned compensation for the former controlling shareholders. In addition, this opens up M&A opportunities which had been rumoured about for some time.
The share price so far has not reacted, most likely because of the perceived problems in France which in my opinion creates an opportunity for the opportunistic investor. The time that will be required until a potential M&A transaction will occur, will be nicely compensated through a 6% dividend yield.
Rubis Background
Historically speaking, Rubis is a rather young company, having been founded only in 1990 by a gentlemen called Gilles Gobin and then grew rapidly through many acquisitions, often buying small subsidiaries of large international energy companies.
Rubis is a company that I came across several times in the past. It has a very interesting mix of businesses and geographies, but due to corporate structure issues (SCA, more similar to a GP/LP structure than a normal stock corporation) I never considered investing.
Effectively, the heirs of the founder through a 2,3% share holding were controlling the board and on top of that was able to charge a significant royalty on Rubis’ profit (in 2025 this was approx. 30 mn or 10% of Rubis net profit). The formula seems to give them a percentage of the annual share price increase but capped at 10% of the net income.
At the time of writing, Rubis is valued at around 3,6 bn market cap and trades at a relatively modest ~10,7 x NTM P/E which is clearly impacted by this unusual arrangement:
Looking at the long term chart, Rubis shareholders have done Ok including the dividend but the share price is significantly below the peak of around 60 EUR from 2018.
Rubis is French listed but has very little exposure to France
As there is “blood in the streets in Paris”, it is worth mentioning that Rubis sales have a pretty unique breakdown:
~50% of sales are in Africa
~40% in the Carribean
~0nly around 10% in Europe
The business as such is a mixture of fuel and LPG distribution, Renewable Energy and interestingly Bitumen distribution. Bitumen is a byproduct from refining oil and is used among others to create asphalt by mixing bitumen with sand and stones.
Rubis is the biggest Fuel distributor in Kenya which according to some sources is their biggest single market. This is a split of the fuel distribution business from their website:
This chart from the 2025 annual results nicely shows the extremely unique geographical footprint of RUBIS:
The Renewables Energy business is a result of the 2022 acquisition of a French Renewables company called Photosol, which was widely criticized as too expensive.
Rubis also owned a terminal business, but sold that in 2024 to JV Partner and Infrastructure fund I Squared capital.
So in a nutshell, Rubis is not impacted much by the current situation in France.
Financing wise, they seem to have restructured their debt financing “just in time” in late 2025 with a syndicated loans facility that seems to have a 5 year term.
As the business is very cash generative, it looks like that they are also not affected by the recent widening of French spreads as they don’t have to issue debt for the next few years.
The catalyst: Corporate structure change
Now however, things seem to change and quite quickly: Rubis intends to become a “normal” company, most likely under the pressure of some prominent investors, such as the Bollore Group. My friend Graouilly has written about it here.
From a technical perspective, the former “GP” will receive an extra 12% of newly issued shares as compensation for giving up his special rights that included a royalty on Rubis’ net profit.
Rubis has scheduled an extraordinary shareholder meeting for December 9th where these changes including the capital increase shall be approved.
There seems to be some resistance among the larger shareholders that the compensation is too generous, but any lower compensation amount will be a positive for shareholders.
Share price:
Looking at the share price, we can see that Rubis is up ~11% YTD, which is in line with earnings growth that had been +18% for the first 6 months:
What I find interesting is that the share price didn’t react a lot on Monday’s surprise announcement, although all in all, this is quite positive for shareholders:
Similar cases in the past:
There was a very similar case in the past in France: Lagardere underwent the “same procedure”, also driven by behind the scenes activism from Boloré. The GP in that case got compensate by a share capital increase of ~8% but the shares jumped 10-15% after the announcement.
Subsequently, Lagardere was taken over by Vivendi by Vivendi and Lagardere Shareholders did quite well.
A somehow similar case was Fresenius Medical Care, where Fresenius transformed FMC from a KGaA to a normal AG because they wanted to deconsolidate FMC and FMC subsequently performed quite well.
One can only speculate why Rubis didn’t move at all, but my guess is that the current riots in France and general Caution with regard to French stocks clearly plays a role here.
Good earnings momentum
Higher fuel prices are almost always good news for distributors and Rubis is no exception here. After decent Q1, 6M numbers looked really good an dthe increased their guidance for 2026 significantly:
Investor base
Over the past few years, some prominent investors have disclosed stakes in Rubis:
The largest shareholder, Patrick Molis is a French Business man active in logistics who started a first position in 2023/2024. He had been openly activist in the company for some time, demanding among other things a complete overhaul of the board.
At the same time, Vincent Boloré disclosed a 6% stake. Boloré is especially experienced in African businesses. He also seemed to have been involved in Rubis in the 1990ies and seems to know Molis from a couple of previous interactions.
The billionaire Dassault family seems to own its stake already a little bit longer since 2017 or 2018. I didn’t find a lot about Ronald Sämann but he also seems on board since 2023/2024 and was actually part of the supervisory board until early this year.
Graoully has some more information on this eclectic group of shareholders in his post.
In any case, I assume that those shareholders will most likely not just sit around and be happy to collect dividends but they will continue to press for change and even more so once the structure is cleaned up.
What would a PE buyer do with Rubis
Already in September last year, there were relatively specific rumours that PE firm CVC and energy trader Trafigura were interested in taking over the company.
As we have seen with my previous portfolio company DCC, especially LPG and fuel distribution are highly attractive businesses for PE companies as these businesses are stable, can be leveraged and there is still ample room for consolidation.
In Rubis’ case, those two businesses would be clearly the main targets. The Renewable business would most likely be sold to a more specialised renewable fund or energy company, although right now, there are quite some renewable assets on the market.
That leaves us with the Bitumen business for which the natural buyers would most likely be competitors like Colas or the Swedish guys
My “sum of parts” estimate for such a scenario would be at least 50 EUR per share based on recent transaction multiples including DCC. Although one has to mention that Rubis’ geographic footprint makes this analysis a little bit more difficult. For those more exotiv locations, the number of buyers is clearly smaller, however potential growth in these countries is also much higher than in saturated markets.
A quick win of any “activist” would in my opinion be to spin off the renewables business and leave the Fuel and bitumen business together which would be a veritable cash machine. This could also lead to a decent rerating of the stock.
Return expectations
Other than a direct M&A “arbitrage” situation, the current situation at Rubis is a little bit more fluent.
My base case looks as follows: I look at a time horizon of 18-24 months. Within this time horizon I expect to:
My estimate for a Pivate Equity “take out value” would be around 45-50 EUR per share.
So my overall return expectation for Rubis, including dividend would be in the range of +30% to +40% in the base case including dividends.
The bull case would be a little bit higher, the bear case would be the dividend yield only.
Pro’s & Cons
So let’s summarize the Pros and Cons for this special situation quickly:
+/- in general negative sentiment towards French stocks which limits short term upside
Summary & game plan
Overall, I find the set-up quite interesting as an “early stage” special situation, despite the exotic geographical footprint of Rubis.
The relevant dates are as follows:
From an operational perspective, Rubis will announce a Q3 trading update on November 3rd. I assume that this trading update will confirm the positive trajectory of the business. The upside case would be a further upwards revision of the expected 2026 profit.
The most important step will be clearly the formal approval of the restructuring in the special AGM on December 9th. Maybe this triggers some revaluation already, especially if maybe the compensation for the former “GPs” can be reduced a little bit.
I would then expect over the course of 2027 that we see more discussions on how to “catalyze” the value of Rubis. Either through renewed negotiations with CVC and Trafigura or some other actions.
My “long stop” date for this will be Mid 2028. If nothing happens until then, I will get out in any case.
Overall, I find this set-up attractive enough to allocate a 2,5% position of the portfolio into Rubis at the current price of ~35,50 EUR per share.
I partially financed the position with further sales of STEF, which has much more exposure to France, high French interest spreads and high fuel costs.
DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!
Background/Follow up:
When I wrote the initial post about CEWE a few days ago, I didn’t know that CEWE actually held a Capital Markets Day for selected investors on the very same day that I was publishing my post. They didn’t disclose it on their Website or IR calendar either.
Anyway, in the meantime, the slides are online.
On the capital markets day they presented more background on the Kodak acquisition. In a nutshell, I can now better understand the rationale and see it as less opportunistic but more strategic than without that information.
I think there are clearly some risks with the Kodak Moments acquisition, but on the other hand, there seems to be also a plausible path for some extra growth on top of the rather slow growth in the past few years.
Here are a few interesting snippets:
Although there are no actual numbers, they project EBIT growth that in the first 2 years is double the organic run rate and up to almost 3x in year 5. As organic growth in the last years was more like 3-4%, this implies growth rates of 6-10% for the next 5 years which would of course be really great.
If growth would actually accelerate like this, then there is also a decent chance that the stock might get back to historical valuation ranges. So in the upside case, there is potentially much more upside than I thought initially.
One detail they seem to have mentioned only verbally is that Kodak Moments currently only charges around 50% per printed picture than CEWE. It seems that Kodak’s quality is also lower, but this is clearly a relatively simple lever for CEWE to increase prices (and quality) up to CEWE’s levels.
They also point toward some risk, where the regulatory approvals might be the most relevant ones:
From previous reports one can estimate that ~40% of Kodak Moment’s business is actually from Germany.
The attractiveness of the instant photo kiosk business
Another aspect that seems to have been mentioned in the call is that the “instant photo” business as such has been growing nicely within CEWE already. I always thought that only the online photo books were the growth driver, but with this information, the acquisition could make even more sense.
I did a little background research on these photo kiosks and it seems that they fulfil quite an interesting niche for customers. We shoot more and more digital pictures and it seems that from time to time, people have the urge to print out pictures rather today or tomorrow than to wait 4-5 days and uploading them online.
Modern Photo kiosks often offer additional formats like larger prints or even more sophisticated Greeting card or invitation card formats.
On my past visits to a dm or Rossmann, I always checked on the photo kiosks and I was surprised how busy they are at any time of the day. Interestingly, I have seen branches where CEWE stations were next to Kodak stations in the same store.
From the perspective of the drugstores, these photo kiosks seem to be helping to draw customers into the store who might then also purchase something else. So these photo kiosks seem to look like a win-win. It would be interesting to know how the revenue sharing looks between Rewe/Kodak and the drugstores.
Some other aspects of CEWE
Governance/Incentivation
As a KGaA, the Governance is different to a normal “AG”. Effectively, common shareholders have no say who runs the company, this is solely determined by the “Komplementär”, in this case the foundation of the family that owns around 30% of the shares.
Therefore it is important to understand how Management is incentivized. In CEWE’s case, the variable component of the Management’s salary is relatively small and almost exclusively tied to EBT development. So no per share or Return on Capital measures.
There is a share option program but the amounts are rather insignificant.
From that perspective, incentives are not optimal. Interestingly, they still buy back some shares and report ROCE, but the variable component of the Board’s compensation really only depends on absolute EBT.
Share price momentum
Although it is not a criteria per se, the stock has positive Momentum. Looking at the long term chart, we can see that it is still below the ATH from COVID, bt it has been breaking out a little from a trading range recently:
In my screening model, the overall score at the moment is quite good, putting CEWE fromly into the top 10 of stocks that I monitor.
Summary & conclusion
Following the CMD material, I have become more optimistic about a potential longer lasting growth runway following the Kodak Moments Acquisition.
As mentioned above, I now better understand the motives and think that there is a potential for some additional growth if they execute that acquisition well.
I therefore decided to allocate 3% of the portfolio into CEWE at the current price of ~112 EUR per share. My expected investment return for this will be somewhere between 40-50% including the dividend yield, buybacks and maybe a little valuation uplift over the next 2-3 years. This is clearly not exceptionally high, but I think the downside is also relatively well protected at less than 9x EV/EBIT.
Due to the Governance topic (KGaA) and suboptimal Management incentives, I will most likely not increase the position much above the current level. For a full position, I would need better scores on that aspect.
The next milestones will be as every year, the result of the all important Q4 and then in 2027 the successful closing of the Kodak moments transaction.
Chinese researchers conclude that Ai cannot pick (Chinese) stocks successfully
The Slow Compounding Substack on Swedish Serial Acquirer Momentum Group
KNA Capital thinks that Howden’s has a great opportunity in the US (Via Flyover stocks)
Quick pitches for three cheap French Technology stocks
Another set of short musings from Graoully
A nice interview with Jensen’s Group CEO and Chairman
The Blackwood Research Substack has a great series of unusual stocks
DCC – post mortem
Let’s start with the positive case. I realized my DCC position recently as the share price (~64,4 GBP) approached the bid value (66,72 GBP) and the remaining upside was not so attractive anymore, especially considering potential GBP volatility for me as a EUR investor.
Looking back at the initial write-up, the result was pretty Ok.
I made slightly over +50% over 3 ¾ years plus some more on the additional portion I bought after the first bid in May this year. This was within the expected range of outcomes:
However, and this is a big HOWEVER, this positive result was not driven by the business case that I had underwritten, but purely a function of the premium paid by the acquirer KKR.
Looking at the earnings history, we can see that DCC’s earnings didn’t improve at all since my purchase in late 2022:
DCC rather had to go through a painful restructuring because they found out that everything they acquired outside their core business Energy was rather not good.
To be honest, I didn’t see this when I invested back then. I rather thought that having 3 different “platforms” gives them a lot of flexibility to allocate capital.
Looking at the stock chart we can see that my entry timing was quite lucky, but then not much happened until very recently:
So the positive outcome of this investment was much more luck than my ability to pick an undervalued company with a great past that performed well.
I think this is/was maybe a major weakness of my investment approach: Just assuming that a successful past is a good indicator for an equally successful future, depsite some temporary headwinds. This can work, but it clearly doesn’t have to work.
What went well though was the decision to increase the position after the first bid. While this was not a huge performance driver for the overall position, it was a very low risk Special situation add-on.
Quick update: Just an hour ago, DCC announced that they sold the remaining business from the Technology segment for a rather “lowish” price. From a potential 125 pence “Sweetener” for this deal the actual outcome seems to be “only” 42 pence now.
TFF post mortem
Funnily enough, I funded part of my DCC position as mentioned above with a partial sale of TFF, which back then was my largest position. I just checked my files and I sold ~11% of my position back then for ~39,70 EUR per share.
TFF was my oldest position and the only stock remaining from the initial portfolio from December 2010.
So why did I decide to sell now ? To be honest, i had been thinking about reducing/selling for quite some time. I wrote about my doubts already in the 2026 performance review in January 2026 and subsequently sold my Laurent Perrier shares.
With regard to TFF, I cautiously thought that maybe the worst is behind us.
And:
Then however came the horrible horrible Q1 (2026/2027) report in mid Septmeber which showed once again an acceleration of the sales decline, both in Wine and Whisky:
What really worries me now is the debt level of TFF. With declining Sales and profits, the 300 mn in net debt will become a larger and larger burden and refinancing this with the rapidly increasing interest rates especially in France is clearly not so easy.
What I find interesting, looking at the charts of TFF vs. Pernod and Diageo, is that TFF’s share price for some reason kept up longer than the actual spirits makers:
One of the disadvantages of writing a blog is that when I write about a decision like this one, the risk is relatively high that I look like a complete idiot if the stock rebounds within a short period of time. Then the usual group of trolls will make nasty comments that I delete (of course).
I think that was also one of the implicit reasons why I didn’t sell earlier. Going forward, I think I will move from a “real time blog portfolio” to something like a “quarterly rebalanced watchlist” in order to avoid such “mental traps”.
In any case, after almost 17 years, I sold my TFF position which now was only 2% of the portfolio. My average purchase price (including a later purchase at a higher price ) was 11,75 EUR and I collected 4 EUR in dividends per share. That’s about 2% p.a. over almost 17 years. It improves a little bit taking into account the mentioned partial sale in 2022. But overall, the result was not great.
EVS
Luckily, I sold EVS in July because I didn’t feel comfortable after the CFO suddenly disappeared and numbers looked weak in an “event year” with Olympics and the Football Worldcup.
Yesterday, EVS drastically reduced their sales outlook for 2026 and the stock got hit really hard and was down -30% at the end of the day:
And this after being already down -30% YTD.
In this case, my timing was fortunately better than usual.
Rightmove
Yesterday around 4 pm my time, Rightmove suddenly jumped almost 15% because an outlet called “Betaville” mentioned that they heard about a rumor of take over interest for Rightmove.
No one knows if there is any truth in that or not, but the significant reaction in the share price in my opinion shows that maybe (and this is a big maybe), the worst is behind for the major classified/marketplace players.
Upfront remarks & Management summary:
This is not a deep dive but more like my typical “first round screening” of a potential interesting investment. In the past, I would have not necessarily published it if I didn’t invest. Going forward, I will now and then publish these “initial assessments” mainly in order to receive feedback from readers who might see it differently. So please give feedback if you see things different !!!
As a Management Summary, I did not invest. Although I like the company, I could not build up the conviction for a 3-5 year investment case mainly due to recent slow growth and a somewhat risky acquisition.
Company History:
Cewe Color traces its roots back to 1912 to a photo finishing lab in the Northern German town Oldenburg. And that’s what they did for the next ~100 years: “finishing” or “developing” Fotos from films that were given or sent to them. For the (few) younger readers: In the old days, there were real photo cameras where you took the pictures on a rol of film and you could only look at the pictures after they came back from the phot finishing lab.
In 1951 they introduced color pictures, 1994 they started to develop digital pictures and in 2025 they introduced the category that is today’s most relevant: The photo book.
in 2007/2008, CEWE became the target of US activist Guy Wyser-Pratte, who wanted CEWE to speed up its transformation into a digital player. However, in 2008, the activists lost interest.
As a consequence of this “activist attack”, CEWE changed into a KGaA structure in 2013, which makes it factually impossible to take over the company as the listed shares are effectively only non-voting shares.
Here are some current highlights:
This chart from the annual report is very interesting which shows the transition from analogue to digital over the years:
When Wyser-Pratt “attacked” the company in 2007, only~50% of the business was digital, however that changed pretty rapidly.
From different sources, one gets an estimated market share for CEWE in Europe of ~30% and an estimated market share in Germany of >50%.
Recent developments:
Sale of Commercial Online Printing division – This was actually very positive news: Cewe published in May that they were selling their struggling Commercial Online Printing division to Cimpress.
This seems to result in an one-off gain of around 50 mn EUR.
As we see in the numbers, the division was barely profitable and not growing but represented 10% of total sales:
More or less at the same time, CEWE announced an acquisition: They are buying the Kodak Moments business which is basically very similar to their CEWE in-store kiosk business from a US PE fund,
This is what we know from Kodak Business:
Purchase price: 88 mn EUR (including debt)
Sales 200 mn EUR
EBIT margin “mid single digits” – lest assume 5%
That means CEWE paid an EV/EBIT 8,8x vs. 8.3x for CEWE itself. The seller seems to be an American Private Equity investor, who bought this business and another one from the bankrupt UK Kodak pension fund only 2 ago.
I found some information about the business from 2023 where it seems that 40% of the Kodak moments business seems to have been generated in Europe, 3% in the US and the rest in Australia and South America.
So CEWE sold ~2 mn in EBIT and acquired 11 mn EBIT, which seems like an OK deal. The big question s of course if and how fast they can bring the Kodak Moments business up to CEWE’s standards with double digit EBIT Margins.
The main risk that I see is that CEWE’s German Board (one exception) might struggle a bit with the non-European parts of the Kodak Moments business. I am also not 100% sure in what condition this business is after years of bankruptcy and 2 years of PE ownership.
General development
In general, looking at different sources, printing single photos still seems to be in a decline, while photo books seem to be growing, at least from a value perspective.. To my understanding, the acquired Kodak Moments business includes both.
Another question is at what stage, Agentic AI might be an issue for “branded” Photo book offerings. My feeling is that things move quickly, but I have no idea if and when this could be a threat.
Other aspects:
What I do like about CEWE is that they report ROCE which is rather unusual for a German small cap. ROCE numbers are pretty OK:
Ebit margins are double digit, however since the Covid Boom, they have been going down a little bit.
10 year EPS growth from 2015 to 2025 has been ~10,4% p.a. which is pretty impressive. However, since 2023, EPS was rather flatish. The main growth came in the years up to 2022.
This is the EPS chart from Tikr:
Valuation & Share price:
Looking at the chart we can see that CEWE peaked during COVID and traded sideways until recently, underperforming both, SDAX and MDAX (before dividends)::
Recently the stock went up from the trading range as some market participants seem to see a better future.
Valuation wise, the stock is still relatively cheap.
Based on trailing 12M P/E, the stock trades at around 13x P/E vs. an average of 15x:
Pro’s & Con’s
+/- some share buy backs
Intermediate conclusion
Although I kind of like CEWE, at this stage I don’t see myself investing into the stock on a 3-5 year horizon,
Yes, it’s cheap, quite profitable and the stock price has just trended upwards. On the other hand, I do see the risk that the recent acquisition might not go so smoothly and I am also not sure about growth prospects after that one time bump from the acquisition.
If I would be in the mood for shorter term trades, I might set up a 3-6 month trade trying to ride the current momentum, but the high interest rates make me nervous.
I also need to manage my exposure in the portfolio to the European consumer to which I am exposed directly and indirectly through stocks like Sixt, Fielmann, Thermador, Italmobiliare etc.
Therefore, for the time being, I am not investing into CEWE but keep it on the watch list.Upfront remarks & Management summary:
This is not a deep dive but more like my “first round screening” of a potential interesting investment. In the past, I would have not necessarily published it if I didn’t invest. Going forward, I will now and then publish these “initial assessments” mainly in order to receive feedback from readers who might see it differently. So please give feedback if you see things different !!!
As a Management Summary, I did not invest. Although I like the company somehow, I could not build up the conviction for a 3-5 year investment case mainly due to recent slow growth and a somewhat risky acquisition.
