value and opportunity

This is not Investment Advice. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH !!!

Bois Sauvage is a Belgian Holding Company that I owned in the past and have written several times about:

2014 Write-up Bois Sauvage

2014 Update on Bois Sauvage and Ackerman

In essence it’s main business is high-end Belgian Chocolate (Neuhaus, Jeff de Brugges) and a variety of other assets, from real estate, listed Belgian stocks and some VC/PE like investments.

What created my renewed interest in the stock was this passage in a recent “Newletter” sent out by the company:

These topics are part of a broader transformation. For several months now, we have been conducting an in-depth strategic review of all our holdings. This review will result in concrete announcements in March 2026. It reflects our desire to better focus our efforts on our areas of expertise, align our portfolio with our ambition for sustainable growth, and enhance the clarity of our investment profile.

On Bluesky, the user Berkshire Haddaway, who has a deep understanding of the Company and its history speculated the following:

This is clearly a very educated guess. I would also welcome a sale of the listed stocks, but let’s see what they do. In any case its something that was long overdue.

My main issue with Bois Sauvage was always, that although the stock was cheap and the Chocolate assets really interesting, the rest was a more or less random mix of assets and the strategy as such was never clear. 

What already changed structurally in the last years, and especially after the death of founder Guy Paquot was that they started to buy back shares. Which is a good idea when the stock is trading at 50% of NAV.

According to TIKR, they have bought back more than 4% and keep cancelling them on an annual basis. However, this didn’t really help with the Discount to NAV which is still at around 50% at the time of the release.

This is the NAV calculation from the 2025 half year report. I do think that it represents a relatively fair value of Bois Sauvage’s NAV:

More than half of the value is the Chocolate Group. One of the biggest drivers for costs and  profits is the price of Cocoa which has been in steady decline since the beginning of the year as this chart shows:

Cocoa prices half dropped -50% from the beginning of the year. I am not sure if the Chocolate group might have hedged the price at least partially, but there is clearly tailwind from Cocoa prices after a crazy 18 months or so.

Over the last 5 years, the shareholders of Bois Sauvage had endured a relatively long decline:

The issue is that over that period of time, Intrinsic value stagnated/declined as well. If we look for instance at the NAV calculation from 2022 we can see that not much happened:

The increase in Value in the Chocolate Group had been negatively compensated by Umicore and Noel Group. They did pay nice dividends (~8 EUR per share) but value creation over the past few years was clearly not great.

Umicore, the largest listed stock had a great run until 2022 but did very poorly afterwards:

Investment thesis:

This is clearly a short term “special situation” investment for me, not a long term compounder. I do not know what they will announce in March, but I think there is some chance that it will reduce the discount to NAV.

In addition, I expect relatively good numbers from the Chocolat Group or at least a positive outlook for 2026 from the cost side that might be already reflected in the valuation of the position for the NAV calculation.

On the other hand, I do think that the downside is rather limited, so the risk/return ratio looks quite good to me for the next 3-6 months.

On a quick and dirty basis, I would assume there is a 50% chance for a 30% share price increase vs. a 50% chance of the stock doing nothing.

Summary:

Knowing the company over some years, I do think that the “announced announcement” represents an interesting special situation.

I have allocated 2% of the portfolio into the stock at an average share price of 257 EUR.

The time horizon for this is 3 to max. 6 months.

Bonus Track: Although no one has asked for it, here is of course a bonus track. Of course from the band Hot Chocolate. Let’s hope that investment turns out to be a sexy thing…..

Hot Chocolate – You Sexy Thing (ZDF Disco, 24.04.1976)