Paul Hartmann AG (DE0007474041) – Back to my (boring) roots
The company:
Paul Hartmann AG is a 200 year old German company active in the healthcare sector, This is how they describe themselves:
Category Archives: Fundamentalanalyse
Metro update: Bad, but may be not so bad at all ?
A quick update on the Metro case. This is how I ended the Metro post from a few days ago:
For me, it is currently too early to do something. It is not clear to me if the stock price has overreacted or if more trouble is coming along especially from Russia.
Selling now would be clearly an uninformed decision as well as buying more. The next step will be the release of the 6M report next week. I think I will then still wait and see how Russia develops. If, for instance there would be a further profit warning because of Russia, then this would be a clear sell signal.
So let’s quickly check out the half-year report.
The good:
- Real, the German Supermarket chain is doing batter than last year. However the improvement in Q2 was smaller than in Q1 and might have been aided by early Easter holidays
- Delivery & Real Online do well, but are small
- Asia stable despite negative FX impact
The bad:
- Metro Germany is still losing money
- Eastern Europe less profitable despite good growth
- FCF Q2 lower by -130 mn (reason given: Store openings)
- Restructuring charges at Real of up to -40 mn EUR (over 2 years if I understood correctly)
The ugly:
- EBITDA in Russia in Q2 dropped -50%, Like for like sales by almost -9%
Boiron SA (ISIN FR0000061129) – Boring enough to invest ?
It’s no secret that I like French family run companies. TFF Group, G. Perrier, Installux, Dom Security are just the main examples of these kind of companies.
Boiron SA is a French company which Bloomberg lists as “Specialty Pharmaceutical” company. Although “Specialty Pharma” is not exactly what they do. in fact, Boiron SA ist the only listed company that I know that exclusively produces and sells Homeopathic “pharmaceutical” products. The call themselves “World leader” of this field.
A few words on Homeopathy
From Wikipedia:
Softbank Part 2: Sum-of-parts Valuation and don’t forget the Taxman
A couple of days ago, I looked at Softbank more from a strategic point of view. This time I want to focus more on the actual assets and a sum-of-parts valuation
What is Softbank ?
Essentially the company at its core is a Telco company in Japan and US plus a lot of “extra assets” like the Alibaba stake, Yahoo Japan and then all the other stuff including the vision fund. The initial Software distribution business (this is where the name Softbank comes from) doesn’t play a big role anymore.
I will now try to walk through the major Softbank Assets in more detail:
- The Alibaba stake
Let’s start with the largest position first, the now so famous Alibaba stake. From a technical perspective, Softbank doesn’t own the listed shares but this:
Trisura (TSU) – Interesting spin-off opportunity or intransparent minority mess ?
A friendly reader had mentioned Trisura as a potential Spin-off opportunity in the comments and the stockspinoffinvesting blog mentioned it a few days ago and linked to a Seeking Alpha write-up.
At first sight, Trisura indeed looks interesting:
- it’s a small cap specialty insurer currently mainly active in Canada
- it hasn’t been “discovered” by sell side analysts yet
- only mini spin-off dividend for Brookfield holders (1 Trisura stock for 170 Brookfield stock(~0,3%)
- the company has been growing very quickly over the last few years
This is from the listing prospectus:
Travel series part 6: Tripadvisor (TRIP) – Riding a dead horse ?
So this is part 6 of my little travel series. Previous posts were:
Part 1 – lastminute.com
Part 2 – Expedia
Part 3 – Trivago
Part 4 & 5 – Flight Centre
The company
Tripadvisor is clearly one of the most well-known names in Online Travel. The company was founded in 2000, but was then acquired by Interactive Group in 2004 and rolled into Expedia. In 2011 the company then was spun out and listed separately. Similar to Expedia in true John Malone style, there are two entities listed: Tripadvisor and Liberty Tripadvisor.
Amaysim (AU000000AYS5) – The “Freenet of Australia” ?
Business & Business model:
Amaysim is a 320 mn AUD market cap Australian company which went public in July 2015 and offers mobile subscription plans without owning the physical network in Australia. So they are effectively a reseller (like Freenet in Germany). As a specialty, they do not package the plans with “free” phones and long lock in periods, but offer “clean” and customer friendly contracts which can be canceled on a monthly basis.
Essentially, this is a distribution / billing service. Their value proposition both, for the networks and end clients is that they can offer this service better and cheaper than the networks. If they can do this, then it is “win win” for both sides.
