Category Archives: Anlage Philosophie

Performance review Q3 2023 – Comment: “How tall should your hurdle be ?”

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In the first 9 months of 2023, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained  +6,5% (including dividends, no taxes) against a gain of +8,3% 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. Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in the first 9M 2023:

Partners Fund TGV: -0,9% (as of Sep 15th)
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +12,9%
Squad European Convictions 5,7%
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen +4,9%
Squad Aguja Special Situation +2,4%
Paladin One -4,7%
Alphastars Europe +4,9%

Performance review:

Within a quarter, the YTD performance jumped from close to the bottom of the peer group to second position. Looking at the monthly returns, it is not difficult to see that especially August and September were in relative terms very good:

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Broedr. Hartmann (ISIN DK0010256197): A truly Egg-citing Special situation ?

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

  1. Introduction
  2. “Catalyst”: Lowball bid from Majority shareholder
  3. Delisting in Denmark – what I found so far
  4. Majority Shareholder Thornico
  5. What is Thornico’s ultimate goal ?
  6. Scenario Analysis, Risks & Summary
  1. Introduction

Broeder. Hartmann (not to mistake with Paul Hartmann AG) is a company I looked at during my All Danish Shares series in last July. I think it would be fair to call it a “hidden champion”. Their business model is focused almost 100% on egg packaging which as such is already something I like a lot. Their main product looks like this (only the box, not the content):

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Brødrene A & O Johansen A/S vs Solar Group A/S – A short comparison

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I always wanted to have a quick look at A&O and was finally motivated again reading about it several times in my Twitter timeline. In my All Danish Stocks series, A&O didn’t make the cut because I had already Solar in the portfolio, but still I want to look at them as this often yields some insights into the other company.

Both companies are headquartered in Denmark and in principle distribute supplies for craftsmen/installers.  

From what I understand, Solar Group is focused a little more on electrical equipment, A&O has a broader assortment but focused on renovation and remodeling. A&O Johanson has a small B2C segment that makes up ~12% of sales but less in profits, as margins in B2C are smaller.

A&O is active in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, however 90% of sales seem to be in Denmark. A&O has a dual share structure, with “super voting” shares owned by the family and CEO giving copntrol to the family. Also Solar Group has a dual share class structure, with the majority of the votes owned by the heirs of the original founder (4th generation).

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Half year 2023 Portfolio Review Part 1/2

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I had mentioned it several times in the past: I don’t think it makes sense to do quarterly updates on portfolio companies, as some of my holdings don’t even report quarterly and it would take away a lot of time.

It is also weirdly fascinating to watch how many investors seem to see quarterly earnings as something of a holy grail that you must follow and react on as quickly as possible (“Beat -buy” etc.). Personally, I prefer to let the dust settle and then, with a time lag of a few weeks have a look at earnings if they are roughly in the direction I had initially envisaged. Sometimes you might miss the best time to sell, but more often in my opinion quarterly earnings are very “noisy” and distract from a longer term picture. I also deliberately ignore analyst expectations and only measure earnings against my own expactions.

Nevertheless, looking at the portfolio every 6 months or so makes some sense. As not all companies report timely, I split this into 2 parts.

So let’s jump into the first part (in no particular order, sorry for that. I will look at Admiral, Alimentation Couche-Tard, Logistec, SFS, TFF Group, Thermador, Solar Group, DCC, Sto, Italmobiliare, Sixt, Nabaltec and Schaffner.

  1. Admiral

Admiral had reported  6 months results a few days ago and the market seems to have been positively surprised. In Admiral’s case, which is a long term holding (~9 years), I actually did “re-underwrite” the stock last year in July, so it makes sense to compare against my business case from last year.

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Tamburi Investment Partners (ISIN IT0003153621) – NAV vs. “Intrinsic Value”

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Tamburi Investment Partners (TIP) is kind of a “secret star” in the area of European Holding companies. I looked at it briefly within my Italmobiliare write-up friom last week. The stock price has performed extremely well especially over a 10 year horizon:

TIP has been founded in 2000, listed in 2005 and the history is well documented on TIP’s homepage.

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Italmobiliare (ISIN IT0005253205) – Buying “Italy’s Finest” for only 50 Cents on the Euro ?

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

What better day to publish a post about an Italian company than Ferragosto, the Italian Public Holiday where virtually any Italian family is somewhere close to a beach and Italian offices only are staffed with the most junior person to take up the telefone in order to say: “No one here, please call next week/next month”.

With Italmobiliare, I fell deeply into a rabbit hole, which lead to a quite extensive analysis. Due to some problems with the WordPress editor, I wrote it with a different Editor and have attached the PDF with the full version. In the blog post I’ll focus on the executive summary, the Pro’s and Con’s and the return expectations. The rest of the gory details can be read in the attached PDF document.

vo-im-write-up-15.08.2023Download

Executive summary:

Italmobiliare (IM) is an Italian Holding company with a market cap of ~1 bn EUR that underwent 2 pivots in its 40 year history as a listed company. The first pivot, in the 1990s, from conglomerate to Cement (Italcementi) and then once again in 2017 after a 2 bn sale to Heidelberger into an Italy focused, “Quality-growth small/mid cap PE” style investment company.

What makes the company very attractive to me, is a very interesting portfolio (including at least two potential “Super Star” holdings), decent value creation, good strategy/transparency  and especially a 50% Discount to NAV. 

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Mikron Group AG – Super Cheap (EV/EBIT ~4) and +33% EBIt 6M 2023- what is not to like ?

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

Spoiler: If you are short on time: I did not buy a position here. No need to read everything.

Mikron is a company that I had on my (passive) radar since my “All Swiss shares” series some years ago (since I passed on it, it made around +100%, so keep this in mind for the rest of the post). It is a Swiss based machinery manufacturer with a market cap of 200 mn CHF and has some connection to SFS (SFS is a client, same Chairman in the past).

These were the main items that motivated me to looks deeper into Mikron this time:

+ currently very (very !!) cheap (P/E 7,5, EV/EBIT 3,5)
+ currently VERY good business momentum (6M 2023: Sales +22%, EBIT +33%)
+ better customer/product mix than in the past
+ Rock solid balance sheet (100 mn CHF cash vs 200 mn CHF market cap)
+ good share price momentum

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The Social Chain Cash Flow Shenanigan- Could that one have been spotted ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, just a tiny little bit of “forensic analysis”.

The Social Chain, an initially hot, but now busted “Social Media DTC” company was recently subject to an intervention from German regulator BAFIN, claiming the 2021 accounts contained a material error in the Cashflow statement.

In essence, BAFIN said that The Social Chain’s Operating Cashflow did contain ~60 mn EUR of non-operating cashflow items that should have classified either as Financing and Investing Cashflow.

Why is that important ? Many investors (myself included) consider “Free Cashflow” as a very important metric. Free cashflow consists of Operating Cashflow minus Capex and is generally considered to be less easily manipulated than accounting numbers (“Adjusted EBITDA before costs to build the product”).

Looking at the headline numbers from the 2021 annual report, we can see that despite the “adjusted pro-forma” numbers, the +22 mn Operating cashflow compares to -23mn EUR in EBITDA and -82 mn EUR Net income and seems to generate the impression that the underlying business is cash generating, as the investment cashflow was mostly M&A:

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The return of the “Freedom Energy basket”: ABO Wind vs Energiekontor (BUY)

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

Background:

Some of my readers might remember, that I bought into a “Freedom energy” basket in March 2022 in order to “hedge” against potentially catastrophic effects from the Russia/Ukraine war. After a first nice run, I sold 3 out of the initial 4 (7C Solar, PNE, Energiekontor and ABO Wind) and only kept ABO Wind because I considered it the most undervalued stock.

Looking at the chart we can see that for some of the stocks of that basket, not so much happened, only PNE is still significant above the level of March 2022 (ABO Wind is the solid Yellow chart):

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All Norwegian Stocks Part 11 – Nr. 151-165

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And on we go with yet another 15 randomly selected Norwegian share. Despite many uninteresting or crappy companies, again 2 made it onto the preliminary watchlist. Have fun !!

151. Sogn Sparebank

With around 8 mn EUR market cap, Sogn Sparebank seems to be the smallest Sparebank so far. Maybe interesting for people who live in Årdalstangen, where it is loctated, but not for me. “Pass”.

152. Aqua Bio Technology

From the name alone, I assumed that this 5 mn EUR market cap company would be a crappy 2021/2022 IPO and ….I was wrong. Rather it seems to be a crappy company that has been around for a little bit longer. The company has little income but consistent losses. “Pass”.

153. Norsk Solar

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