Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Some links 07/2025

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The Wintergem Substack with a very interesting write-up on Canadian Business Jet Maker Bombardier

Behind the Balance Sheet with a great deep dive into the business of Finance/Investing Substacks

A very interesting article on the influence of Korean retail investors in the most volatile US securities

Lego’s profit margins are in decline (but still very high)

Richard Beddard looks at UK Smallcap Dotdigital

A good overview of the “Private Infrastructure” Asset Class from Larry Swedrow

A decent summary of the current “hangover in Alcohol stocks”

Quick update Thermador & Some thoughts on Defence stocks

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Thermador 2024 numbers

Thermador released 2024 numbers last Friday. The most positive part of the release is the fact that Thermador manages to put everything you need to know on two pages without any BS. The numbers were clearly not good, with sales down -13,5% in 2024 and profit down -23,3%:

On the positive side, Thermador seems to continue to look for acquisition targets:

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Some links 06/2025

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Highly Recommended: Rob Vinall’s 2024 letter is out

Paul Singer is a very rare Podcast guest. So if he appears, do listen/watch. A true “living legend”.

Heat waves and droughts are really bad for GDP in the mid- to long term

Flyover Stocks with a great post on how capital cycles work (Examples Bourbon & Home building)

Maynard Payton with an interesting write-up of BIG Technologies, a UK based “fallen Angel” IPO

The new Mauboussin Paper “Probabilities and Payoffs” is worth reading

An interesting article on a busted Austrian Private Equity deal and the pitfalls of “adjusted EBITDA”

Some links 05/2025

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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

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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.  

    Robertet PublishedDownload

    Some links 04/2025

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    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”

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    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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    Some thoughts on DeepSeek- The Black Swan for MAG7 or something else ?

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    For various reasons, I was able to spend much more time on this topic since Sunday than I would usually have. On Sunday morning, the topic somehow picked my interested and I have been trying to understand as a Non-Expert what is going on here.

    For full disclosure: I have no positions in any of the MAG7 stocks, but that might make me equally biased than someone who has mortgaged his family home to invest in NVDIA.

    On Sunday Morning, I initially used mostly Twitter, but during the day this was overflooded with MAGA Crap. Twitter is still a good place at an early stage for “virally developing situations”, bit it gets washed with (AI written) turd pretty quickly.

    The DeepSeek topic is interesting on many dimensions. Here are some facts (taken from Wikipedia, but confirmed by other sources):

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