Monthly Archives: February 2025

Some links 05/2025

Recommended: Wexboy with his 2024 portfolio & performance review

A great video explaining the East 72 Dynasty portfolio with a lot of interesting “family owned” companies

Some deep thoughts from the Brooklyn Investor on the “Broken Markets” theme

Nat Bullard’s annual presentation is a must for anyone interested in the energy sector

An interesting analysis that shows that “real assets” were not good hedges against inflation following Covid

Fantastic post why you should never rely on Bullshxt Earnings errrr Adjusted EBITDA

Royce Funds Microcap 2024 review with some summaries of US microcaps

Collector’s Corner 2: Robertet SA

This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Finally, after more than 18 months, I found a second candidate for my “Collector’s Corner” bucket after Laurent Perrier. Just as a reminder, the purpose of this bucker is as follows:

So here is the management summary and the write-up (which is a little bit “thinner” than usual.

Management summary

    Robertet, is a 175 years old, 1,8 bn EUR market cap French company, owned and run by the Maubert family in the 4th and 5th generation that is active in natural flavors and fragrances. Although much smaller than its larger peers, Robertet is the leading player in natural/organic ingredients which they source globally.

    The company has grown EPS by >10% for the last 5,10 and 20 years. Although not cheap (~19x 2024 EPS), the stock is in my opinion nevertheless attractive as there seems to be a good fundamental tailwind and the business is very stable and diversified with decent margins. I therefore decided to add it to my “Collector’s Corner” bucket next to Laurent Perrier with a 2% allocation.  

    Some links 04/2025

    Some deep thoughts on the relationship between material wealth and happiness

    You can challenge any of Prof. Damodaran’s assumptions on Nvidia, but compared to the many clowns and scumbags that pose as stock analysts these days, his logic and level of transparency is just awesome. Well done Professor !!!

    Nice wite-up on conglomerate Jardine Matheson from Emerging Value

    Some interesting stats on UK take-over premiums from Klement on Investing

    For anyone interested in the insurance industry, the Swiss Re Sigma reports are a great resaource

    Interesting Sharescope article on small cap premium and a few UK Trust ideas

    Philipe Luchesi with a new Video discussing Laurent Perrier (French, Youtube offers translation in subtitles)

    Book rewiew: “Gambling Man – The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son”

    Content:

    This was clearly one of my “must read” books in 2024. The author, Lionel Barber, is the former editor of the financial times and as such clearly has access to people who might have otherwise not spoken to a more unknown journalists.

    The book goes back to Masa-son’s very humble roots as part of the Korean minority in Japan which clearly was not an easy childhood. His father earned the first money by breeding pigs in their garden in a “slummy” area in their hometown. The father seems to have been quite an entrepreneurial character himself, moving into “loan sharhing” and then into Pachinko, low scale gambling game very popular in Japan. Similar to Masa later, his father used risky leverage and often risked it all to win. In any case, the family got decently rich with these gambling halls.

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