value and opportunity

Condensing the watchlist and some general remarks:

As the ultimate climax (or anticlimax), my readers will find below a table with all Swiss stocks that I identified in round 1 as worth to “watch” including a second flag if they made it into my 20 stock “priority” watch list. Those who manage to read to the very end will also find my next target country for the “All Stocks” series 😉

Overall, I prioritized companies that are already in my portfolio or have the chance to become a member of my high quality “GARP” bucket at some point in time in the future or undergo a potentially value enhancing transformation process (ABB, Metall Zug, Holcim).

I am in general very positively surprised, both on the quality of the businesses that I have seen as well as the quality of the reporting of many companies. I always thought that Switzerland is mostly about banking and tax evasion.

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Finally I made it, below you find short summaries of the last 13 randomly selected Swiss stocks quoted on the SIX, three of them are potentially worth watching.

Just one remark: There are many smaller Swiss stocks quoted outside SIX, but as I am not able to trade them via my brokerage accounts, I will omit them in this series.

Overall, I have identified 45 stocks out of these 213 as potentially worth watching. The final post of this series will condense this to maybe 15-20 stocks that I think I can handle going forward.

201. CS Group

CS Group has a market cap od 23.6 bn CHF and clearly has seen better days. They managed to be part of all the big blow ups in the last few years, from Greensill to Bill Hwang or Wirecard, not to mention ugly infights of the previous management.

So it is not a surprise that the chart looks ugly and the market cap is less than 50% of arch rival UBS:

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No bonus this time, only 10 Stocks in this post. Spoiler: none of the 10 stocks went onto the watch list.

Another interesting story that caught my attention is this one: The Swiss Exchange finally opens up to SPAC listings. It’s about time to catch the last wave of this hype. The Swiss seem to be unhappy with the large share of (expensive) quality companies listed right now.

181. Valiant AG

Valiant is a 1,4 bn CHF market cap Bank Holding company. As with all other Swiss banks, the company seems to stagnate since a long time. “pass”.

182. Galenica AG

Galenica is a 3,4 bn CHF market cap company that calls itself the “leading Swiss Healthcae Platform”. The company IPOes in april 2017 and has performed decently since then:

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As last time, I throw in an extre 5 stocks at no extra cost for my readers (2 candidates to watch) !!! To make it an even more compelling offer, I add this link which explains how German investors can mitigate the 35% withholding tax for Swiss dividends.

166. Walliser Kantonalbank AG

Walliser is one of the many regional banks with a market cap3 of ~1,6 bn CHF. As the other Kantonalbanken, the have a decent dividend (~3,3%) but the stock price is flatlining for many years. “Pass”.

167. Valora AG

Valora is a 775 mn CHF market cap company that is active in food and convenience retailing. If I understand it correctly, they run both, own outlets as well as franchises and have a certain focus on bakery products. 75% of sales are done in Switzerland.

The long term share price looks extremely uninspiring:

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This time I spared no expenses and threw in another 5 randomly selected Swiss stocks to make it 15 “for free”. Among the 15, there is one stock that I already own and one that i find worth watching.

151. Helvetia Holding

Helvetia is “yet another” Swiss insurance company valued at 5,6 bn CHF.  As with Baloise, the long term chart doesn’t look very interesting:

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And on we go. Another 10 randomly selected Swiss shares. This time, three companies are going on to the extended watch list and one is actually a current holding of mine. As we are now already at around 2/3 of the Swiss Stock universe, I need to think about the next market to look at.

131. Perrot Duval AG

Perrot Duval is a 13 mn CHF micro cap. According to their latest annual report, the company is already 116 years old. The company seems to have sold its major operating business a year ago or so and now concentrates on the sector process automation, although I did not really understand what their remaining subsidiary called “Füll” really does.

What is kind of interesting is the fact that the company sits on 17 mn CHF of net cash and therefore the market seems to discount a lot. The CEO and Chairman owns 35% of the shares.  In the mean time, the company seems to have made further acquisitions.

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Half time. With this post I will have covered more than 50% of the 217 SIX listed stocks. This time only one stock made it onto the watch list. Again, I will be on vacation when this scheduled post will be published.

111. Basler Kantonalbank AG

Basler KB is another one of the Swiss regional banks. The listed stocks seem to be “participation” shares only. As the other regional banks, the stock looks cheap with a dividend yield of almost 5%.

However, as the other banks, Business has been stagnating for some time and I don’t see any scenario that looks better. “pass”.

112. Hochdorf Holding AG

Hochdorf is a 115 mn CHF market cap Dairy company that has a surprisingly exciting chart for such a boring business:

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