Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Performance review Q2 2025 – Comment: “Just keep going or reflect & adapt ?”

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In the first 6 months of 2025, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  +5,8% (including dividends, no taxes) against a gain of +15,6% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), EuroStoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all TR indices).

Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.

Performance review:

As mentioned in Q1, in relative terms 2025 turned out to be a tough year. Despite my traditional overweight in European stocks, I didn’t have enough exposure to performing sectors (Financials, Defense) but instead too much exposure to weak sectors like Oil/Energy related (ATD, DCC), Alcohol (TFF) or construction (Thermador, Samse etc.). I also had no expsoure to takeovers or buy outs.

The only positive news is that June was a relatively good month, in relative terms the best month since December 2023 and the first few days in July looked quite good as well.

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Some links 15/2025

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Must read: The FT has a fantastic (free) article on the regulatory Shenanigans that Apollo, KKR & Co play with their Life Insurance operations

As an equity analyst competing against AI, the best strategy to stay relevant seems to be to look where little information is available on the web

The DB_Silver_Fox substack with a great write-up on Bossard from Switzerland

The “No deep dives” Substack with an interesting write-up of Belgian company Bekaert

A pretty comprehensive presentation from Drum Hill Partners why Private Investors might want to stay away from Private Equity & Co

Whenever Andrej Karpathy has something to say about AI, you should listen. Programming 3.0 is a great concept.: Slides, Youtube

Great write-up on how Booking.com became the behemoth it is right now

Private Equity Mini Series (3): Listed Private Asset Managers (KKR, Apollo & Co)

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Background:

After part 2 of the Private Equity Mini series a few days ago, I wanted to focus on how to access the asset class as a private investor via the “normal” capital markets.

Currently, the PE industry and the broader “Private Asset” industry is massively trying to lure private investors into its Fund offering via a variety of “NEW” and usually structured instruments, such as “ELTIFS” in Europe or lobbying hard in the US to get access to private investors.

In the past, Private Assets, including its subgroups like Buyout, Venture, Growth, Infrastructure and Private Credit were “exclusive” to larger institutional investors and Ultra High Net Worth individuals.

These days, with declining commitments from those traditional investors, the PE industry now tries to access the vast pools of money that smaller, private investors collectively own.

Often you hear the pitch that now is the time to “democratize” the asset class, which is an expression that should make the targeted investors extremely nervous. I had linked to the excellent Bain PE report already in one of the link collections.

A key slide of the report is the one that shows that for the Buy-out category, 2024 was the first year ever with declining AuM:

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Some links 14/2025

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Andrej Karpathy on the opportunities and dangers of the new AI Video generation tools

David Einhorn pitches Lanxess at the Sohn conference

BCG with an interesting report on investment opportunities in Climate Resilience & Adaptation

The Midyear Private Equity report from Bain shows how PE firms have been “liberated from exit options”

The “Patient Capital” Substack with a book review of “The Nvidia Way”

Richard Beddard with short reviews of a few UK contrarian stocks

Outside the US, Value Investing seems to be still working according to Morningstar

Fraport (ISIN: DE0005773303) – An essential Infrastructure play geared up to “fly away” ?

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This is an investment idea that I have “borrowed” from my friend Jonathan Neuscheler from Abilitato. Therefore I highly recommend to read what he has written first. And this is also the reason why this write-up is rather short.

In short, I think Fraport is an interesting turn-around/deleveraging story with a near term catalyst in form of the resintatement of the dividend in 2026. Relative to its peers, Fraport trades at a significant discount which could disappear if things go according to plan which adds to the potential upside.

Here is the write-up (don’t worry, only 9 pages incl. pictures):

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Some links 13/2025

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Rob Vinall has sent another “Postcard from Around the World”

Larry Swedrow shows (once again) that most active funds underperform their Benchmarks

Great article on the virtues of investing into “Controlled” companies

Interesting first part of an “Airport deep dive” series with many interesting details

Nice deep dive into UK’s Games Workshop from the Stoa Capital substack

Timely FT article on the foolishness of taking Private Equity IRRs seriously 

Edelweiss Capital with a deep dive into fraudulent Intercompany accounting (Pescanova & Wirecard)

Private Equity Mini series (2) – What kind of “Alpha” can you expect from Private Equity as a Retail Investor compared to public stocks ?

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Management summary:

In this post I wanted to dig a little deeper on why I think that many currently offered Retail Private Equity offerings (e.g. ELTIFS) will most likely underperform public equity markets going forward. Despite some structural advantages of Private Equity as such, the double layer of fees and costs will be a huge drag on performance. On top of that, historic tailwinds for the PE industry (low interest rates and low purchase multiples) have most likely disappeared.

Introduction:

After the first installment of this mini series, where I tried to explain why stated PE IRRs should not be confused with actual performance, I wanted to briefly touch another important point in order to understand this “asset class” better:

Many Private Equity players claim that both, past returns and future returns of Private equity will be significantly better than comparable indices of listed equity. 

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Some links 12/2025

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AI “Pioneer” Klarna paddles back on AI use for customer service

Highly recommended: Conversation between Nikolai Tengen and legendary investor Chris Hohn (TCI)

Wintergems has 3 new positions. I do like the Vintage year/Cohort approach a lot.

The “Wonder Stock” Substack has a great write-up on UK smallcap Kitwave

Arranging portfolio companies like players on a football tactic screen is a very nice idea

Robin’s Substack on Misitano & Stracuzzi, a potential “Mini Robertet” from Sicilly 

Behind the Balance Sheet with (among other stuff) a deep dive into the catastrophic Walgreen & Boots take-over

Some links 11/2025

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The largest Battery company of the world, CATL, is going public in HongKong

The “Top 40 UK dividend stocks” list is a good starting point for dividend fans

A pretty pessimistic take on the future of Google’s search business from a former employee

Large language models are really hard to understand

For Offshore Wind farms, the so called “wake effect” can be quite relevant

Interesting article on Mytheresa’s CEO and their approach to online luxury shopping

Antti Ilmanen (AQR) with an interesting paper on return expectations

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