Category Archives: Capital allocation

The German Mittelstand is maybe Down but not Out: Hermle AG – Hidden Automation Champion from the “Ländle”

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As always with my longer write-ups, I will attach the full PDF below. In the post itself I will focus on the Exec summary, Pro’s and Con’s and the conclusion. And the Bonus Track of course at the end.

Executive Summary

Hermle AG is a typical “Hidden Champion” Mittelstand company from Southwestern Germany (Baden Wuerttemberg, the “Ländle”) that managed to carve out a very nice niche in 5- Axis CNC machines and connected production automation.  The company is able to earn industry leading EBIT margins (>20%) and Returns on Capital (>30%), has a Fortress Balance sheet and trades only at a relatively modest valuation of around 7,7x EV/EBIT.

The business is exposed to the economic cycle, but a combination of competitive advantages, a flexible cost base and a structural tailwind (Automation) make the stock attractive in the mid- to long term

Full PDF can be read & downloaded here:

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Eurokai KGaA (ISIN DE0005706535) – Playing the “Time arbitrage game” with the possibly cheapest Port Stock in the World 

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

Some reason for not reading this post:

  • You have already posted YTD Performance numbers on FinTwit
  • You don’t like capital intensive stocks
  • You don’t like cyclical stocks
  • You prefer stocks that have positive share price and/or fundamental momentum
  • You require short term catalysts/Share buy backs/activists etc.
  • You like simple businesses with simple structures
  • You think Germany/Italy/Europe is going down the drain anyway

In such a case, do yourself and myself a favor and move on.

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My 22 (+1) investments for 2024

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Following an annual tradition, by the end of the year, I review my portfolio by writing/updating very short summaries for each individual position.  16 of the 23 positions from last year are still in the portfolio and I have added 7 new positions. That turnover has been partially driven by exits/take-overs (Schaffner, Logistec) and by finding new ideas. A more comprehensive Performance review will follow in early January 2024.

A short user guide:
My preferred style of investing is a bottom up approach, focusing on 20-30 small/midcap stocks that in my opinion have a good return/risk profile over the next 3-5 (or more) years. Many of these stocks are not household names and are unlikely to make spectacular gains in any single year. Many of them look interesting only after the second or third glance and are rather boring, which is exactly what I am looking for. So if you are looking for a “Hot stock for 2024”, this post won’t help you much.

And always remember: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

As a special service and to offer something “fresh”, I have created a new portfolio overview chart based on holding periods which I proudly present here:

The summaries of the previous years can be found here:

My 23 Investments for 2023
My 28 Investments for 2022
My 21 (+6) Investments for 2021
My 20 investments for 2020
My 22(+1) Investments for 2019
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

Let’s go:

1. TFF Group (Portfolio weight 7,4%, Holding period 13,0 years)

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Samse Group (ISIN FR0000060071) – A Hidden French Compounder that is as exciting as watching Paint dry ?

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

As in the past, due to the bad WordPress editor, I’ll post a summary here and attach the full write-up as PDF.

After teasing a new position in the Nabaltec “Post Mortem”, I proudly present the next (hopefully) super boring company for my boring portfolio.

SAMSE SA is a French company that distributes building materials to “professional” customers like contractors, craftsmen etc. It also has a smaller “Direct to consumer” DYI store segment, which represents around 20% of sales. Samse is active only in France and No. 2 after Saint Gobain, which, however is much bigger even only in this specific sector (2000 outlets vs. 350).

Here is an overview of relevant “KPIs” at a share price of 190 EUR (time of writing):

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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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“Freedom Insulation” – Follow up and Basket Update (Sto, Steico)

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

Some days ago, I made the case for a significant increase in demand for insulation in Europe for the next several years. In this post, I want to dig a little bit deeper into the main listed players and which I find more interesting. In general, even only for the German speaking region there are many companies that offer insulation, among them very large, diversified groups such as BASF, Dow Chemical and St. Gobain.

However, the following listed companies are those who do the majority of sales in insulation to my knowledge:

Kingspan, Irleand/UK
Rockwool, Denmark
Recticel, Belgium
Steico, Germany
Sto SE, Germany

Sto, Rockwool and Recticel are already in my portfolio with relatively small weights.

Before jumping into the companies, I have compiled a table with a few KPIs that i find interesting. One quick coment upfront: As Recticel is undergoing a signifcant transformation, their numbers are curently not comparable.

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Schaffner Group AG (ISIN CH0009062099) – Is this “Meier & Tobler 2.0” ?

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

Summary:

If you would ask me about the most boring stock of my generally very boring portfolio, I would possibly name Schaffner Group. I had bought a first position back in 2021 during my “All Swiss Stocks” series.

However, I have never written a more detailed write-up despit my annual summaries (2021/2022 , 2022/2023), maybe becasue I always got bored when I started writing about it ? Over time I added to the position and after the most recent 6 months numbers, I decided to increase into a full position. Time to explain the investment case a little bit better.

  1. The Company – Transformation

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SFS Group AG (ISIN CH0239229302) – Super boring but sexy “Hidden Champion” from Switzerland

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

Summary:

In my relentless effort to create the most boring and unremarkable stock portfolio imaginable, I think I identified an ideal  candidate with SFS Group from Switzerland.  Despite having a market cap of ~4 bn CHF, this majority family-owned company is not very well known and its products and B2B business model look similarily unremarkable.

The company doesn’t have an easily identifiable moat, doesn’t pay high dividends or buys back stock, is not super cheap and also not super profitable, doesn’t grow like crazy and doesn’t have sexy products that one can see in the supermarket.

Nevertheless I do think it is an great addtion to my portfolio as it is attractively priced and both, the business as well as the management are of high (Swiss) quality. Based on my own estimates, the stock trades at a PE of ~12x for 2023, despite having delivered EPS growth in EUR of around 15% p.a. since its IPO in 2014 and maintaing double digit EBIT margins across the cycle.

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Hannover Re: An overlooked Reinsurance Compounder & Comparison with Munich Re

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Spoiler: This rather long post contains no actionable investment ideas.

Background:

Hannover Re is a stock that for some reason I have ignored for some time although I consider Insurance stocks as part of my circle of competence. Why did I ignore them ? I was always put off from the ownership structure. Hannover Re is majority owned by Talanx, which itself is also listed. Talanx again is owned ~80% bei HDI, which is owned by …I don’t know.

Looking at the chart, I should have considered them earlier: Over the past 15 years, Hannover outperformed the larger and better known peers like Munich Re and Swiss Re by a wide margin and ties with Berkshire (before FX):

hannover 15 years

This is very interesting, considering that Hannover Re is only the No. 3 global Reinsurer and Berkshire only number 5. Absolute size doesn’t seem the drivig factor for shareholder returns in the Reinsurance industry.

Deep dive Comparison: Hannover Re vs. Munich Re

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