Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

April SA – Potential buyout offer from CVC: Interesting Special Situation ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Please do your own research. 

April SA is an “Old friend” on this blog. I owned the stock in the past and last time I looked at them when a rumour came up that the company is for sale in late October.

This is what I said back then:

April had shown actually pretty decent growth in Q3 and I actually considered buying some shares but maybe this is not so sustainable and the founder wants to sell before it is getting worse again ? Who knows…

My fundamental assessment of April is that they have a strong core business (French Broker) but have over extended themselves internationally and the founder, Bruno Rousset, who stepped down in 2014, does not have the energy anymore to turn this around himself.

Well, things have progressed. There had been a “beauty contest” with PE bidders and it looks now that PE shop CVC is highly interested in buying the stake of the founder and majority owner. This is from a piece of news released by April SA and  CVC end of December:

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2018 Performance review – Outlook 2019

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In 2018, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -11,3%* (including dividends, no taxes) against –15.4 % for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%)).

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

Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2018:

Partners Fund TGV: +1,74% *
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -8,27%
Squad European Convictions -9,75%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos +2,65% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -13,72%
Evermore Global Value  -20.92% (USD)
Greiff Special Situation -7,02%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -11,7%

*TGV Partners as of 15.12.2018, to be updated

Since inception (01.01.2011), this translates into +152,6% or +14,0% p.a. vs. 66,6% or 6,0% p.a. for the Benchmark.

Current portfolio / Portfolio transactions

The current portfolio can be seen as always on the portfolio page. I have already mentioned the 2018 transactions in the “My 22+1 stocks for 2019” post.

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My 22 (+1) investments for 2019

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Edit: I actually forgot to include Expedia…..

This post has become now a small tradition at the end of December and is also very helpful for me to review my holdings.

The summaries of the previous years can be found here:

My 21 investments for 2018
My 27 investments for 2017
My 27 investments for 2016
My 28 investments for 2015
My 24 investments for 2014
My 22 investments for 2013

From the 21 stocks of last year, 4 have left the portfolio:

Silver Chef and Metro were clear mistakes from my side and I exited them as discussed with significant losses. IGE & XAO was a much more positive case. The company received a buy-out offer from Schneider SA and I exited at 138 EUR per share. DOM Security finally was merged into the main shareholder company SFPI. Luckily, I could sell 40% of my holdings at 75 EUR/ share.

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Ahlsell (ISIN SE0009155005) – Interesting pre-Christmas Special Situation ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, only the personal opinion of an anonymous blogger. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH !!!!

Background:

Ahlsell is a Swedish company that distributes building / renovation related products mainly to craftsmen in the Nordic Region. In 2012, the company was taken private by private equity house CVC.

In 2016, Ahlsell was IPOed again by CVC at SEK 46 per share. They sold 1/3 of their shares in the IPO and then down to 25,1% just some weeks ago.

Then more or less out of the blue a few days ago, CVC offered again to take Ahlsell private at 55 SEk/share which translates into a valuation slightly north of 2 bn EUR for the equity.

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8 Years of Value & Opportunity: Staying alive..

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Once a year in mid-December I always realize quite suddenly that another year has passed and Value and Opportunity is now 8 years old since the first post in 2010.

As I mentioned earlier this year, for very positive reasons, both private and professional, activity in the blog did not reach the standards of the previous years.

Looking back, I still managed to look a these companies in more detail:

  1. Getinge / Arjo spin-off
  2. Softbank (part 1 and part 2
  3. Landis & Gyr
  4. Boiron SA
  5. Expedia
  6. Criteo SA
  7. Saga Plc
  8. Paul Hartmann
  9. Creditshelf
  10. DormaKaba
  11. SIAS SpA (revisited)
  12. FitBit
  13. System1
  14. Listed VC funds part 1
  15. Listed VC funds part 2 – Vostok New Ventures

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How to invest into Venture Capital part 2: Augmentum, Vostok & others

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This is the follow-up on part 1 some days ago.. These were the listed VC vehicles,I presented as the base in part 1 (in brackets my short vote for the first 4)

  • Softbank (too crazy)
  • Kinnevik (Yes)
  • Rocket Internet (bad rep)
  • German Startup Group (no thanks)
  • Vostok New Ventures
  • Vostok Emerging Finance
  • Augmentum

I have added two US vehicles to this list:

  • Firsthand Technology Value Fund (SVVC)
  • GSV Capital (GSVC)

A few thoughts on Permanent Capital vs. “classical” fund structure vs. “SPACs”

In the previous post, one commentator mentioned that he was “sceptical of permanent capital” vehicles. Personally I would not support this. Berkshire Hathaway for instance is a permanent investment vehicle with quite some success. However there are other vehicles like Greenlight Re or Bill Ackman’s Persing NV which clearly have done a lousy job for shareholders as we can see in this chart: (Greenlight in yellow, Pershing Square blue):

greenlight pershing

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How to invest into Venture Capital – Listed Vehicles (part 1)

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One upfront remark: I do not recommend to invest in Venture Capital right now. The market is clearly overheated and the asset class is known to be very volatile although Warren Buffett’s Todd Combs seems to just have discovered Fintechs.

This post is ment as a “long-term perspective” view on the sector and not a buy recommendation in the current environment.

How to invest into Venture Capital as a Private Investor

Famous VC funds

Venture Capital, i.e. the industry funding (technology) start-ups is known that almost everything depends on relationships.

It is no secret that a few funds like Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins have produced outstanding returns but these funds are “invitation only”, there are little chances even for larger institutions to invest in them and for individuals without direct connections it is more or less impossible to get in.

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