Monthly Archives: April 2026

Bachem AG: Riding the “Golden Age of Peptides” with this Hidden Champion from Switzerland

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!

  1. Elevator pitch:

Bachem is a 5 bn CHF market cap Swiss listed pharmaceutical/specialty chemical company which is the global market leader in the (outsourcing of) manufacturing of Polypeptide, a complex molecule and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) that is, among others, behind the blockbuster drugs Wegovy, Ozempic etc. Demand for those molecules is poised to grow exponentially over the coming 5-7 years (15% market growth p.a. ,“Golden age of Peptides”). 

This growth is driven by several different fundamental growth drivers which increases the certainty of the projected growth rates. The complexity of the production process in addition to regulatory requirements and “Anti China” legislation in the US provides a decent “moat” for the coming years which makes Bachem, despite its relatively high valuation (28×2026 P/E), a very interesting investment case on a 3-5 year time horizon in my opinion.

It is clearly not an investment for everyone, but for more growth oriented investors, Bachem could be an interesting stock to look at. In my case, it is a 3% position for my small “quality growth bucket” alongside Wise and Chapters Group.

  1. Some editorial remarks:

Initially, I planned to write up and invest into both Bachem and its Swiss listed competitor Polypeptide Group. Due to vacation time and the rumour of a PE take-over, Polypeptide share price increased by +50% since I started to deep dive into those two companies which made the stock less attractive. Bachem only went up like +15% so  I therefore concentrate on Bachem.

In addition, I just wanted to make it clear that I write “by hand” but I do use several AI tools during my research (NotebookLM, Claude Cowork). You will find some output of AI models here in this write-up, as for some cases (i.e. making pictures), AI has just much better capabilities than I have.

In any case, I do expect a lot of critical comments on this.

  1. Soundtrack:

In order for my readers to actually listen to the obligatory soundtrack during reading the write-up, I’ll post it right at this spot. I think “Golden Years” from David Bowie is the perfect Soundtrack for this

David Bowie Golden Years

And here is the complete write-up (28 pages), Have fun !!!

Bachem 21.04.2026Download

Some links 13/2026

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Rob Vinall’s 2025 letter to investors is worth reading, as he also discusses why he sold some positions (Prosus, PDD, International Pet.)

A good reminder that Value Investing only works long term if it stops working short term 

Despite the rhetoric, Stablecoins are rarely used for actual payments

An epic write-up on the “Seabed economics landscape”

Some interesting thoughts from Heavy Moat on Capital allocation and the virtue of dividends

Jamie Ward with a nice write-up on Chapters Group

Sixt competitor Avis experienced an epic short squeeze this week. How needs fundamentals these days anyway ?

Deja vu all over again: Allbirds vs. Zapata’s 1998 “fish oil to Dot.com” Pivot

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For the older investors among my readers, the name Zapata maybe rings a bell.

In 1998, US fish oil producer Zapata announced that they had enough of fish oil and planned to go big time into the “Internet business”. The history of Zapata itself reads like a novel, among other it was owned in its various incarnations (Real oil company, fish oil nutrition etc.) by George Bush Sen., The Glazer family, Wilbur Ross and Phil Falcone.

As one could imagine, the Dot.com Pivot was not very successful. The final “pivot” then was to transform into the company that is now called Spectrum Brands, a medium successful collection of consumer products. The long term Chart of Spectrum from Google also shows the short & crazy spike from the Dot.com Pivot.

This sounds very similar to Allbird’s recent move to transform from a failing Sneaker company into a super sexy Ai GPUaaS company.

History doesn’t repeat itself but as the saying goes, it rhymes.

If I want to draw some learnings from the Zapata episode, I would point out two things:

  1. The Allbirds Pivot will most likely not lead to long term shareholder value creation
  2. In Zapata’s case, the peak of the bubble was still ~2 years away (April 2018 vs. March 2020). I would not take this as a benchmark but the experience shows that bubbles like Dot.com and potentially also the AI bubble part can run much longer as anyone imagines. Trying to time a bubble based on episodes like this is very difficult.

In any case, the Zapata example shows that rarely anything is new in investing and a pivot of a non-sccessful company into the “hot thing of the moment” company is an old strategy. I guess we will see a lot more of this in the coming weeks / months as the Allbird example has made the backers of this pivot some serieous money.

Some links 12/2026

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Semaglutide Generics (Wegovy, Ozempic) are now available in India at a fraction of the cost of the original

A great article on what makes companies really “durable”

An interesting deep dive into Disney’s theme park business

Very timely: Joachim Klement’s Football Worldcup prediction for 2026 with a very surprising favorite

Interesting viewpoint on why friction can be good in society and AI removing friction is maybe dangerous

The Mr. Market Miscalculates Substack looks at Pomegranate Investment AB, a Swedish OTC stock that invests into Iranian businesses

VC legend Bill Gurley clearly explains why Share based compensation is a real expense