Category Archives: Bilanzanalyse

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

Posted on by 9 comments

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):

Read more

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

Posted on by 11 comments

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. 

Read more

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

Posted on by 7 comments

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

Read more

Alimentation Couche-Tard: Cheap Quality Compounder or Gasoline Dinosaur ?

Posted on by 10 comments

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

Management Summary:

Couche-Tard_logo.svg

Alimentation Couche-Tard (“CT”) is one of the historically best performing Canadian companies, operating gas stations and convenience stores around the world with a focus on North America.

The company currently looks like a very interesting GARP (growth at a reasonable price) stock.  Over the last 10 years, the company showed exceptionally good numbers: 23% EPS CAGR and 10 year average returns on capital  >20% (23% ROE, ~20% ROCE).  The business model is very resilient, Covid-19 actually led to an increase in margins and profits, both on the convenience store segment as well as in fuel despite declining sales.

Read more

All German Shares Part 35 – Nr. 776-800

Posted on by 16 comments

Finally !!! This post will cover the remainder of the German stock universe. These remaining “newish” companies only yielded two watch list candidates Overall, I need now to slim down the watch list significantly to maybe 25-30 companies that I want to keep on my radar screen, but that will take some time.

As for the next country series (as time allows): My next target will be Switzerland. First, it is a smaller market with only around 240 local stocks according to the SIX, Secondly, I have currently  3 Swiss stocks in my portfolio (Zur Rose, Richemont, Dufry), so I have some hope that there are more interesting stocks on the Swiss market.

So enjoy the last batch of German stocks !!!!

776. Centogene AG

Centogene is a “rare disease” reseacrh company that seems to be a mixture of German/Dutch locations. The company went public on the Nasdaq in November 2019 at USD 14/ Share but lost around -30% since then. The market cap seems to be around 250 mn USD. Unfortunately not my area of competence, “pass”.

777. Cyan AG

Read more

All German Shares part 33 – Nr. 726-750

Posted on by One comment

And another 25 (almost) randomly selected stocks. This time 5 stocks were in my opinion worth “watching”. As it looks now, there will be only one more post in this series.

726. Smart Equity AG

A 1.7 mn EUR market cap company that calls itself “Experts on Crypto currencies”. “Pass”.

727. InnoTec TSS AG

Innotec is an 88 mn EUR market cap supplier to the construction industry. The company had a nice run up, increasing more than 10x from its low in 2009 until early 2017 as we can see in the chart:

Read more

All German Shares Part 31 (Nr. 676-700)

Posted on by 11 comments

And again 25 more randomly selected German shares with short analysis for each one. This time, seven (!!!) candidated were worth “wacthing”.

Maybe one remark: I asked last time for suggestions for the next series. however before I move on, I will also need to thin down the watch list to an amount that I can handle going forward. At the moment, the extended watch list comprises 141 (!!) stocks which I want to slim down to something like 25 or so.

676. mwb fairtrade Wertpapierhandelsbank AG

mwb is a 33 mn EUR market cap securities trading company. For some reasons, the stock price doubled in 2020, mabye a result of overall trading activity. As I do not undertand their business model, I’ll “pass”.

677. Bayerische Motorenwerke AG 

BMW is clearly one of the most famous German brands and one of the most successful car manufacturers in the world. With a market cap of ~39 bn USD, it is valued at a fraction of Tesla and the stock price is on a pretty long lasting downtrend:

Read more

All German Share part 30 (Nr. 651-675)

Posted on by 22 comments

Time flies, it’s more than a month since the last posting of this series. So another 25 randomly selected German stocks. Despite the usual duds, the dices this time brought up 6 stocks that I found in principle worth watching.

With “only” around 100 stocks left, I need to think about another market/area that I will cover in this systematic way. Suggestions highly welcome !

651. IFA Hotel & Touristik AG

IFA is a 242 mn EUR market cap company that has rarity value: I think it is the only remaining listed German stock that represents a “Hotel pure play”. However there are a few specialties to consider: The company is majority owned by the Spanish Lopesan Group. Lopesan did a lot of related party transactions with other Lopesan entities and IFA did a couple of capital increases without real necessity.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that Lopesan has screwed minorities. Some of the “Trades” were actually quite profitabel. Nevertheless, the stock is on a 2 years downtrend that just accelerated due to Covid-19:

Read more

Grenke fOllow up: Recap & Fundamentals (and why Grenke is actually a stealth insurance broker)

Posted on by 51 comments

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Please do your own research and never believe anything from  anonymous bloggers !!!!

A first a quick quick recap on what happened since the last post.

Friday’s written statement from Grenke pre press/analyst was actually pretty lame. I think they made clear that the money laundering and Ponzi issue were indeed minor issues but they didn’t shed any more light on the whole CTP issue.

Unfortunately I missed the press/analyst call. From what I have heard there was nothing new.

A quite surprising statement from Grenke on Monday was more substantial. All past M&A transaction with Franchises will be checked by an independent auditor, Grenke AG will have the option to buy the existing non-consolidated franchises and Wolfgan Grenke will (temporarily) step down from the Supervisory Board. It is also mentioned, that in the future, Grenke AG will fund new franchises.

Read more

Grenke Leasing Short Attack – First analysis

Posted on by 43 comments

Background:

Long time readers of my blog know that I covered Grenke a while back and unfortunately invested instead in what I thought was the “Australian Grenke” with a pretty bad outcome.

Now Viceroy Research came out with a blazing short attack on Grenke. Viceroy seems to be the same guy that released the now famous “Zatarra Report” on Wirecard in 2016.

This post is a first attempt to look at the allegations in order to find out if they are true and how severe they potentially could be. At the time of writing, Grenke is down more ~ -20% and close to the lows from March.

1. Non disclosed related party transactions

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »