Category Archives: Bilanzanalyse

All Swiss Shares Part 9 – Nr. 81-90

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Another week, another 10 randomly selected Swiss stocks. This time, 2 stocks might be worth watching.

One quick comment on why I continue to go through all Swiss stocks despite many of the good ones being very expensive: First, I like to finish projects that I started. Second, I think there is always a lot to learn to look at any company, even if it is expensive. And third, there might be a time when stocks become cheaper again and then having a list of great companies might be very practical.

81. SoftwareOne AG

SoftwareOne is a 3,6 bn CHF market cap company that was IPOed in October 2019 at a share price of 18 CHF. Since then, the share price has made little progress at currently 22,50 CHF, considering the run in other software related stocks.

SoftwareOne seems to allow companies to manage their various software applications via some sort of cloud environment. The majority of revenues seems to come direct or indirectly via Microsoft products, their main business seems to be reselling Microsoft licenses which is actually a pretty crowded market.

KKR seems to have been involved only for 4 years or so.

Looking at the P&L reveals that their margins are not very Software like, but rather look like a wholesale business: 7,9 bn CHF in sales only result in ~190 mn EBITDA.

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All Swiss Shares Part 8 – Nr. 71-80

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And another 10 randomly selected Swiss stocks. Again, I found a couple of high quality businesses that are unfortunately very expensive. However, I did find one candidate to “watch” and actually bought one 1% position in one stock that I liked.

71. Klingelnberg AG

Klingelnberg is a 180 mn CHF market cap company that manufactures machinery for the Automobile and Mining industry. The company was IPOed in 2018 at CHF 53/share. As the chart shows, the IPO was not a big success ,losing more than -50%.

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Back to boring: Meier & Tobler (ISIN CH0208062627) – Boring enough to invest ?

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Background/ The company

During part 6 of my “All Swiss Series” I mentioned that Maier Tobler looks interesting, at least if one likes “boring” stocks which I do.

Meier_Tobler_logo

Meier & Tobler these days is a Swiss focused company that is active in heating, cooling and ventilating homes and buildings. They are both, distributing appliances and spare parts as well as offering direct maintenance services.

Until 2013, the predecessor company Walter Maier was a pretty diversified company, with the main areas of cooling/climate (DACH) , tools (Us) and machinery (among others wood working machines). In 2013/2014, they completely changed their strategy: They sold the tools division and the German climate business and spun-off all manufacturing activities that they had bundled under the name WM Technology.

In 2017 they took over/merged with Swiss competitor Tobler, creating the clear market leader in Switzerland.

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All Swiss Shares Part 6 – Nr. 51-60

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Another 10 randomly selected Swiss shares with very short “High level” analysis. This time, I actually identified three companies that are worth watching. Enjoy !!!

51. Sika AG

Sika is a 43 bn CHF market cap specialty chemical company that produces material for the building sector. What makes the company especially interesting is the fact that despite being very dull at the surface, the stock went up by 10x over ther last 8-9 years. Even Covid-19 could not stop Sika:

Sika

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All Swiss Shares Series Part 4 – Nr. 31 – 40

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Another week, another 10 Swiss stocks, this time with one stock to “watch”.

31. Plazza AG

Plazza is a 581 mn CHF market cap real estate company that invests in and around Zurich. The company seems to trade close to NAV and as a rule I normally don’t consider listed real estate as part of my investment universe, therefore I’ll “pass”.

32. Komax AG

Komax is a 831 mn CHF market cap company that supplies cable automation machines to mainly car manufacturers but also the Aerospace industry as well as other industries. As a automobile supplier, business suffered already in 2019 before getting hit again in 2020.

The stock chart shows a significant cyclicality which is not a surprise:

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All Swiss Shares series Part 2 – Nr. 11-20

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And the next batch of randomly chosen Swiss stocks, however this time I only identified one potential “watch list” candidate. 

I do have to say that I enjoy this kind of research a lot. After looking now at 20 stocks so far I have to say that reporting quality is generally a lot better than for German companies, independent from the size of the company. 

11. Varia US Proporties

Varia is a listed property company that only invests in US real estate with a market cap of ~380 mn CHF. They seem to own a diversified portfolio of resdidential units. The company seems to be a “yield vehicle”, with relatively large distributions but little increase in NAV. As I am not a fan of listed real estate in any case, I’ll “pass”.

12. Lonza Group

Lonza is a 42,3 bn CHF “large cap” chemical and pharmaceuticals Group. What makes the company interesting is the fact that over the last 10 years, the share price has risen by around 10x:

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Tekmar PLC – Hidden “Off-shore” Champion or Cheap for a reason ?

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Introduction:

At a very first glance, Tekmar Plc, a AIM listed UK company looks like a very interesting “hidden Champion”:

The company is active in a very attractive market: their main business is to provide sub sea protection systems for cables with its biggest entity providing this service to the fast growing off-shore wind farm market.

In addition, Tekmar claims to have 75% market share. the combination of a company providing an essential, relatively small ticket item to a large installation with a dominating market share makes many investors water their mouths I guess.

Even more mouthwatering looks their chart from the 2020 annual report (from August 2020):

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The new “Energy Transition” Basket Part 1 – (Siemens Energy, Orsted, AKer Horizon)

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Background:

As some of my readers might have noticed, I have been looking deeper into the topic of renewable energy and connected topics such as Climate change, Net Zero targets etc.

My current conclusion is that we might have reached a real “Tipping point” towards a significant increase in “Electrification” which in my opinion is driven by a confluence of several factors:

  • The cost of renewable energy (esp. Solar) has been dropping by -90% over the last 10 years and is still dropping further. Solar is (c.p.) now the cheapest available resource of electricity on the planet
  • Battery technology is making leaps and prices are dropping as well quickly, very similar to solar energy
  • A few major electric appliances are already better or almost equal compared to fossil alternatives (Electric heat pumps already now, EVs in very short time, DRI & Electric arc furnaces for steel, Green ammonia etc.) 
  • Money is flowing into the sector like never before, driven by ESG considerations
  • Governments are pushing into the same direction. Europe so far has been leading, but under Biden the US is pushing hard
  • interest rates are low which makes creating new infrastructure cheaper than never before

There remain a lot of challenges, especially the “intermittency” of renewable energy and the current lack of solutions for longer term storage. However, especially in the battery space there is significant progress made. Plus, all the billions now flowing into “Green tech” will create a “Cambrian explosion” of new technologies in a few years time. 

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The “All Swiss Shares” Series Part 1 – Nr. 1-10

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Introduction

After the great fun of doing the “All German shares” Series in 2019/2020, It is time to start the new “All Swiss Shares” series in 2021. According to the Swiss Stock Exchange, there are currently 220 Swiss based listed companies, so the series will be a little bit shorter. The reason for choosing Switzerland is that I actually own already two Swiss based companies (Richemont, Zur Rose) and that I think there is an interesting mixture of companies in Switzerland, several of which I have covered over the last 10 years.

Again, mostly for my own entertainment, I will use a random approach in looking at the companies.

One difference to the German series is that I’ll try to better define what I am looking for. In principle, my portfolio comprises three different styles/buckets:

  1. “Long term holdings” – Stocks where I think there is good long term potential. For this group, I require high quality with regard to the business model, leadership and balance sheet
  2. “Value Trades” – Stocks where I think for some specific reasons there is a significant undervaluation that will materialize in a period of up to 3 years. This could be a “sum-of-part” situation, a spin-off, activist involvement or another situation where I think that I can identify the reason for the undervaluation and where I have a different view. Due to the shorter time horizon, the requirements for “quality” are a little bit lower.
  3. “Special situations”  – in my definition, special situations are based on corporate actions (M&A, Squeeze out etc.) where the potential outcomes are clear and the main task is to assess probabilities and an expected value.

 

So now let’s jump into the first 10 stocks. Surprisingly, I found already 4 stocks worth “watching” out of the first batch.

  1. BVZ Holding AG

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