Category Archives: Quick Check

Updates: EVS Broadcast, Jensen Group, Wise & Installux

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EVS Broadcast

Let’s start with the most disappointing update first: EVS Broadcast got slammed down after their Q1 trading statement:

I think three items spooked investors, including myself:

First, after confirming the guidance, both in the CEO and CFO statement, the press release suddenly contains this sentence in the Outlook section:

“In particular, the current situation in the Middle East may affect full-year revenue performance and could lead EVS toward the lower end of the guidance range. At the same time, given the strength of the pipeline and the opportunities currently identified, we believe there remains potential to offset this impact through execution in other areas of the business. “

Second, once again they mention that the 2026 year will be “back loaded”, i.e. investors will have little visibility how things will develop until the end of Q4.

And finally, the departure of the CFO lady without a direct replacement is also not optimal. I guess there has been some tension in the board.

Longer time EVS shareholders know that they always guide cautiously, but 2026 as an “event year” should have been a very good year and now it looks that it will not be materially better than the year before.

Anyway, at the moment I am clearly not increasing my position in EVS, rather the opposite. It was one of my larger positions and I think unless something changes (like maybe a big share buyback program), I will remain rather cautious.

Jensen Group

Luckily enough, my second Belgian stock, Jensen Group, is the exact opposite of EVS. Once again they started with a great quarter into the year and are “firing on all cylinders”.

The numbers look fantastic, the only question is why net income only rose by +10%, but maybe there was a tax effect:

They keep buying back shares ( a new 10% buyback program has been approved), book-to-bill is >1 and despite a new all time high, the stock is still cheap as earnings grow as fast as the stock price goes up. 

There is currently Absolutely nothing to complain with this company besides the fact that investors think that 11xP/E is the right valuation for such an outstanding company.

Wise Plc

Wise Plc finally listed on the Nasdaq and as a consequence, I do now have a Nasdaq listed share in my portfolio. The share price went up before the listing and actually reached its peak on the day of the listing on May 11th, only to drop significantly in the aftermath:

The listing for me was not the ultimate reason to invest, but of course it is interesting to see how much the stock dropped directly after the listing.

One factor might have been that JP Morgan seems to have reduced its price target by more than 10% following the listing.

Although not exactly so, this resembles a little bit wehn Ferguson (Wolsely) moved its primary listing to the US in March 2022. As we can see in the historical chart, the stock outperformed significantly before that move but then underperformed for some time thereafter:

Sunbelt rentals (the former Ashtead) also so a drop in relative performance a few days after its listing in the beginning of MArch 2026, but that is most likely due to the start of the Iran war:

Anyway, from a fundamental side, there hasn’t been any change with regard to Wise’s prospects, so no action there.

Installux

Finally, some of my readers might remember that I owned the French Micro Cap Installux for some time (bought in 2012 during the EUR crisis) but sold in 2021 with a decent return despite the stock being still cheap.

Yesterday, out of nowhere, Installux suddenly published that they bought out the largest minority shareholder, French Value Asset Manager Amiral at a share price of 500 EUR per share vs. 290 EUR which was the last trade before that announcement.

Interestingly, the Canty family now has ~88% of the shares and is extending the offer to all other shareholders. Interestingly the 500 EUR are almost the all time high from 2021:

Installux is an interesting case study insofar as the family clearly had very little incentive to show to the outside how good the business actually is. Their long term mission was clearly to get full control of the company. Amiral really had a lot of patience here.

At the end of the day it shows that if you invest into shares like Installux, timing and patience is really everything. You either have to get in when they are extremely cheap or be lucky to be there when the family finally wants to gain full control.

On the positive side, the Canty family never did anything fishy and the final offer seems kind of fair.

Updates: STEF SA & Gerard Perrier SA

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

Summary

In this update post, I look at two of my French stock positions, STEF SA and Gerard Perrier. For STEF, I reduced my position by 1% of the portfolio because of problems with the integration of newly acquired companies. In contrast, I increased my Gerard Perrier position by 1,5% of the Portfolio as business is accelerating and they seem to have made some very good acquisitions in the Defense/Aerospace and Digital space.

STEF SA

Stef is a company that I analyzed and wrote about 2 years ago. In essence, I considered it a cheap but reliable infrastructure-like cold-storage company with a great track record that is consolidating several European markets. For such a “compounder”, the price looked very cheap at around 8xP/E.

However, things turned out a little differently than I thought. While 2024 was a little bit weaker than 2024, 2025 saw a significant decline in EPS to a level of less than 50% of the 2023 earnings.

According to the 2025 investor presentation, this was a combination of one-time effects (Tax France, VAT Italy) and slower than expected integration success in its recent acquisitions.

To my own discredit, I failed to follow up on the 6M sales release from STEF which still looked good. I should have looked at the full half year report instead.

This is how the explain the declin:

Also, net debt increased by 200 mn.

The dividend was cut to 2,70 EUR from 4,15 EUR the year before (and 5,10 EUR in 2023). This is understandable from a company perspective but somewhat unfortunate for investors.

Analyst estimates seem to expect a recovery in 2026 and the following years according to TIKR:

Share price wise, the stock is almost exactly where it was when I wrote up STEF. Interestingly the US peers did much worse:

A quick look into Americold’s 2025 press release shows decliningorganic sales and mention of “speculative developments” in the cold storage industry.

Also Lineage reported declining sales in 2025.

Both US peers are extremely highly leveraged (8x EV/EBITDA) and therefore very vulnerable to negative economic developments. However, also STEF’s net debt to EBITDA ratio increased from 2,5x in 2023 to 3,5x in 2025. Still manageable but if interest rates increase, this will represent another headwind for them.

My conclusion at this stage is that Stef clearly has over-extended itself with its acquisitions in the neighbouring countries and has not been able to integrate them successfully so far.

Management mentions that things should “normalize” in 2026 and Q1 revenue looked ok, but experience shows that the full integration of the newly acquired company can take much more time.

Although I am not ready to throw in the towel yet, I do think that my initial 5% allocation (currently 4,5%)  was too high and reduced the position by 1% of the portfolio to ~3,5%.

The positive aspect of this story is clearly that I bought cheap enough which protected me against a significant loss of invested capital.

Gerard Perrier

On the surface, Gerard Perrier is a little bit similar to Stef insofar as 2025 was a year when earnings went down slightly:

Despite still growing sales, EPS was -8% lower than in 2024. 2024 again was more or less unchanged from 2023.

In Gerard Perrier’s case however, the explanation is not that they didn’t integrate new acquisition but a temporal weakness in their Energy segment which comprises mostly the servicing of the French nuclear fleet.

This is the translation (from Gemini) from G. Perriers report:

“The activity of the Energy division (ARDATEM, TECHNISONIC), which includes services for the nuclear sector, saw its production decrease by 8.2%, falling from €89.8 million to €82.4 million. This slowdown is mainly explained by the transitional effect of the reduction in reactor outages and maintenance activities at power plants this year, as well as by a rationalization policy of nuclear operations in France, although the sector remains on a positive dynamic in the medium term.” 

In addition, even without much growth in the Energy segment so far, G. Perrier had a great start into 2026 with sales up by +10% yoy:

As we can see, especially the “Installation Maintenance” and the Aerospace/Defense segments are doing well.

What I found interesting is that there was almost no reaction to this news in the share price:

What I do like is that their recent acquisitions look very interesting. With N-Cyp they acquired a small specialist company for industrial cyber defense, with OFATEC they get access to the Data Center market and with the acquisition of the three companies AQLE, SOMALEC et SOMALEC SUPPLY they strengthened their defense/aerospace segment, including components for the Ariane Space missile program.

Another data point that I found interesting is that G. Perrier has still around 230 open positions as per their web site:

Most of the jobs are open at Ardatem (137), the Nuclear service company, which seems to imply that they expect a lot more work going forward.
Overall, I do think that Gerard Perrier offers a very attractive return/risk profile especially on the basis of the currently accelerating business numbers, therefore I increased my position from a previous 3,5% weight to 5% of the portfolio. The additional 1,5% were bought at an average price of around 83 EUR per share.

Quick updates: Jensen, SFS, Italmobiliare & Bois Sauvage

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As promised last week, part 2 of the updates from the very busy week ago. Let’s go.

Jensen Group

Let’s start with an extremely positive one. Jensen Group had a “blowout year” in 2025. 

Sales up 19,3%, EPS up +45%.  The Dividend will be 1,50 EUR, up 0,50 EUR from the year before. The only not extremely positive number was order intake which was only slightly up. I think it would be foolish to think that Jensen can grow 20% sales every year, but Management sounded quite confident for 2026 as well:

At a trailing PE of 11, the stock is now exactly as cheap (LTM) as when I published the initial analysis in January 2025, despite a 50% plus share price increase.

I have added a little (0,4% of portfolio) to my position at Friday’s price as I think the stock is still way too cheap given the quality. I should have waited until today, but such is life.

SFS

SFS, the Swiss parts and tools manufacturer/distributor also published preliminary results last week. Given the difficult state of many of its end markets, organic growth of ~3% before FX is quite impressive.

Unfortunately, profit suffered a little more as we can see in this table (before “normalisation”):

To be honest, SFS is quite behind against my expectations from 3 years ago, even factoring in CHF/EUR development. 

I think back in 2023, I was too optimistic about manufacturing in Europe which really is struggling:

The stock is now much more expensive despite EPS being lower. So I really need to think about whether I should continue to hold the stock.

Italmobiliare

Italmobiliare’s preliminary 2025 numbers were a “mixed bag”. NAV increased (incl. dividends) by 6%, but for the two largest stakes, Borbone (Ebitda down because of high Coffee prices) and Santa Maria Novella (only single digit growth), the results were a little bit disappointing.

On the plus side, they managed to acquire an additional 5% stake in Bene and Casa de Salute grows nicely.

The stock reacted quite negatively which lead to an increase in discount to NAV.

At least for Borbone, things should look a lot better in 2026 as Coffee prices have come down again:

It will be interesting to see if SMN can grow double digit again.

Cie Bois Sauvage

Finally, my “special situation” Cie Bois Sauvage announced preliminary 2025 earnings and the result of their “strategic review”.

On the plus side, the NAV increased by 10% in 2025, mainly driven by the Chocolate business:

Also positive is that they will acquire the remaining 34% of Jeff De Brugges, their second Chocolate Brand.

Less positive was the disappointing development of the Real estate pillar (NAV -10%) and the decision to discontinue industrial participations and invest into PE funds instead:

This is really a downer in my opinion. As much as I like the Chocolate business, I do not understand this “new pillar”. As I mentioned in the initial post, this was meant to be a short term special situation. Therefore I decided to exit the stock at current prices (318 EUR). This was a decent Short term special situation with a 20% plus return in 3 months.

Quick Updates: EVS Broadcast, Thermador, Eurokai and Sixt

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The last few days are super busy with 8 (or more ?) of my companies reporting 2025 numbers. That’s why I do only the first 4 right now, the others (Jensen, SFS, Bois Sauvage and Italmobiliare) will follow soon.

EVS Broadcast 2025 preliminary results

EVS released preliminary numbers last Friday. At first sight, they were a little bit of a “mixed bag”. Revenue was up which is good for an “odd” year, EPS slightly down. 

EVS explained that that they have invested into people to penetrate especially the US market. The second half of the year was really good, the first 6 months were weaker, mainly because of the “Tarif tantrum” from Uncle Donald.

The outlook for 2026 was quite good:

In the call, the CFO mentioned that for 2026 they don’t plan big additional investments into staff and that more M&A could be possible.

According to TIKR, analysts expect EPS of 3,36 for 2026. So far, the development is roughly within the initially expected case from 2024. Knowing EVS, there is also a good chance that they will revise 2026 numbers upwards during the year.

The 1,20 EUR dividend will compensate for waiting a little bit longer although Belgian withholding tax is not nice.

Thermador 2025 preliminary results

Thermador followed this week with 2025 results. As to be expected, sales were slightly negative y-oyy as construction and modernization is still weak in France:

What I find very surprising is how well the result kept up:

They managed to reduce working capital so they have a decent net cash position which should allow them again some M&A. And maybe, maybe the sector looks a little bit better in 2026. Analysts are quite positive. Thermador itself mentions a couple of Government programs which could be positive for them.

Thermador is a “hold” for me at the moment. Nothing to change here.

Eurokai preliminary results 20025

Eurokai also came out with an “Estimate” of the 2025 result. Typically for Eurokai, the result for 2025 will be significantly better than the revised estimates during the year.

They estimate now that 2025 Earnings will be above the 2024 earnings of 88 mn EUR (which included a 19 mn Non-cash positive one off).

Depending on what allocation the Golden share gets at Holdco level, this could result in an EPS of up to 6 EUR . Which means that despite the significant increase in the share price, Eurokai is still very cheap.

Investors should prepare once again for a very cautious outlook for 2026, although in my opinion, there are a lot of factors which indicate that 2026 could be once again better than 2025, even before any “juicy” one-off profits from partial sales to Container shippers.

The share price is now slowly approaching the historical ATHs from 2006/2007.

Eurokai is now by far my largest position but I leave that one untouched. 

Sixt Preliminary results 2025

Sixt was the fourth company that week that released 2025 results. Although the results ended up to be a little bit below the forecast from Q3, it clearly seems that analysts have expected worse as Avis and Hertz both showed huge losses and declining revenues.

Sixt in contrast managed to grow also in the US:

And a significant increase in Profits:

What analysts seemed to have really liked was a quite optimistic outlook for 2026:

That seems to have surprised analysts and led to a “decoupling” of the share price from those of the weaker US competitors:

With a trailing P/E of 9 and a dividend yield of 5,8%, the pref shares are really “good value” in my opinion.

To be continued soon….

Paypal – Too old for Rock n’ Roll and too young to die ?

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Management summary:

In this post I try to explore if Paypal is suffering only from temporary issues or if they have structural problems. My take away from a rather short analysis is that the problems are indeed structural and therefore the stock is not of interest to me for the time being.

Introduction

Paypal is one of those stocks that is both very present on my “”TwiX” timeline as well as has been mentioned in a couple of recent discussions with investors that I value highly.

At first sight it looks like a decent “Value” stock. Single digit P/E, large share buy backs, high free cash flow, good margins, decent ROE, hundreds of millions of clients etc. So what is not to like ? Here is the TIKR overview:

Paypal is also one of those stocks where everyone has an opinion as almost everyone has a Paypal account or is using other payment services frequently So at first sight, it looks like an easy to understand business which might lower their “barrier to entry” even for more inexperienced investors

Personally I have to admit that I find the payment space super complex and not easy to understand.

What problem does Paypal solve ?

Paypal’s main business is to allow retail customers to pay online for E-commerce activities and/or send money from one user to another within the Paypal network or via their additional  P2P service Venmo. 

Paypal has become successful because for consumers it used to provide a very convenient way without a lot of friction as compared to typing in your credit card details every time you use a new online merchant for instance. Paypal was also one of the first widely available services to send P2P money. You just need to know the Email address of the recipient.

Paypal describes itself as a “2-sided market place” connecting retail clients with E-commerce merchants.

For merchants, this was initially also very attractive as Paypal removed friction and increased the probability that a customer would actually finalize the purchase.

What Problems does Paypal have ?

When a widely known stock such as Paypal looks obviously cheap, my first thought is always the following:

What obvious problems does that company have and do I have a “variant perspective” ? 

Especially for larger US stocks, assuming that everyone else is just stupid and you are the only one who can identify a single digit P/E ratio is naive to say it in a friendly way.

For me, temporary problems would be an invitation to dig deeper, whereas structural problems are much harder to handicap.

Paypal has some obvious issues, one of them being having a new CEO with little experience in the actual business and having guided to lower sales and profits in 2026

The new CEO since March 1st, Enrique Lores, is a long time HP Executive, who, according to Linkedin, has no direct payment or financial services experience.

Lores has some strong incentives directly linked to the share price. He will achieve the maximum amount if the share price hits 125 USD until 2029. His maximum compensation would be ~125 mn USD. This sounds like a large sum, but for Lorres, an long term HP executive, even that might not be life changing.  He seemed to have earned around 19 mn USD and his net worth is estimated to be at least 50 mn USD. So he is rich already.

The bigger problem is clearly that the 2026 outlook looked very bleak. Especially compared to competitor Adyen which guided to 20% revenue growth in 2026 and beyond and not to speak of Stripe which has grown gross transaction volume by +34% in 2025.

It’s especially interesting to look at the 2025 investor day presentation. Back then, the former CEO Alex Chriss, who had at least some financial services background from Intuit actually made a pretty convincing pitch positioning Paypal as a “commerce platform”. This was their ambition back then:

After shrinking in 2023, Paypal delivered some growth in 2024 and also some growth in 2025 but as mentioned above, next year looks like shrinking again.

2025 results looke d“okayish” but on a quarterly basis, growth decelerated each quarter which most likely led to the dismissal of the old CEO-.

One of the major issues seems to be that Paypal runs at least 6 different platforms within Paypal according to this slide:

According to this slide, one user might have 4 different IDs across the Paypal services which are not connected so far:

Technical debt: Separate & outdated technical infrastructure vs, competitors on the merchant side

The chart points to one of the main weaknesses of Paypal: Paypal can be considered already a legacy player in the payments space. They have created separate platforms for separate use cases that are now just very difficult and expensive to handle.

The newer competitors from the merchant side like Stripe or Adyen all have one platform that runs all of their activities which makes it a lot easier to react and improve upon.

What is also interesting is that Paypal employs more than twice the employees of Stripe and Adyen combined. This is a table that Gemini compiled for me.

Additional attacks on the retail client side: Google Pay & Apple Pay, Revolout, Wise, Cash App etc.

As a “2 sided market palace”, Paypal unfortunately is also subject to massive disruption on the retail customer side.

If you are a mobile user, the probability is high that if you purchase something offline or online it is most likely down directly via your phone. You either hold your phone to a POS terminal in a physical shop or you confirm the purchase with a finger print or face scan of your phone which is even more convenient thant the Paypal Check-out.

At P2P level, both Paypal services are subject to a lot of competitors, such as Block’s Cash app, Revolut’s free transfers or Wise’s international transfers.

So simply said: there is no place to hide for Papyal.

Paypal is the most expensive option

Some people will argue that Paypal is currently maybe the most profitable of the payments players. The main driver of this profitability is that Paypal charges significantly higher prices, both to merchants but also for instance for international transfers.

What looks now as a strength could turn out to be a weakness. “Your margin is my opportunity” was the famous motto of Jeff Bezos. The “take rate” of Paypal is heading down for quite some time (Chart from Gemini) as growth comes mainly from lower margin products:

Paypal is under attack from all sides

Bringing it altogether is this graph that I asked Nano banana to create:

Paypal is the legacy player that gets attacked from all side from very agile and large competitors who have a much more modern infrastructure,

That’s the reason why Paypal is cheap. The last CEO tried to counter that but obviously was not very successful.

The Stripe take-over rumour

In the past few days, suddenly a rumour came up that Stripe might buy Paypal. To be honest, these kind of “someone told Bloomberg” rumours are often false.

As far as I understand Stripe’s business model, Stripe would have little to gain from a takeover. As a pure B2B company, I am not sure that the retail client base is of interest to them and if they could leverage that.  And on the B2B side, Stripe can already do what Paypal is doing and I am not sure if they want to clean up the technical debt.

I guess Paypal would be a more interesting target for someone who might be able to leverage the retail customer base, but at 40 bn plus market cap plus premium it is maybe to big to be swallowed by most of the Fintech players.

“Too hard” for me

For me, the outcome of this quick exercise is that Paypal’s problem seems to be much more structural than temporary which for me makes it “too hard” to invest into.

Maybe the new CEO will pull all the levers and manage to turn around the business. But maybe he will not. It will be interesting to see if he will be able to implement a “kitchen sink” approach and maybe sacrifice a few quarters with really bad results or if the pressure is high to keep up share buy backs which will make it difficult to pay off the “technical debt”.

For the time being, Paypal looks similar to the hero of Jethro Tull’s song “Too old to Rock’n Roll”:

The old rocker wore his hair too long

Wore his trouser cuffs too tight

Unfashionable to the end

Drank his ale too light

Death’s head belt buckle, yesterday’s dreams

The transport caf’, prophet of doom

Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams

In his post-war-babe gloom

Now he’s too old to rock and roll

But he’s too young to die

Yes, he’s too old to rock and roll

But he’s too young to die

But anyway, this does not look like something that I would be comfortable to be invested in despite the superficially attractive “value KPIs”.

If someone has a very different view from the business perspective with regard to the competitive landscape, I am willing to listen 😉

Bonus Soundtrack:

Of course my choice is Jethro Tull – Too old to Rock n’Roll

Jethro Tull – Too Old To Rock’n’ Roll (Supersonic, 27.3.1976)

Short Updates: Innoscripta & Nomad Foods

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Innoscripta

Innoscripta, a company at which I looked a few days ago, had a few news items over the last few days. 

First, they announced that they plan to pay a 4 EUR dividend for 2025 in 2026. At a current share price of ~70 EUR, that’s a dividend yield of 5,7% which is quite substantial.

Then they finally come up with a guidance for 2026 which looks as follows:

Munich, 25. February 2026 – innoscripta SE (ISIN: DE000A40QVM8, the “Company”) expects an increase in revenue and earnings for the 2026 financial year based on current business development and continued high demand.

The Company’s Management Board currently expects the following for the 2026 financial year:

  • consolidated revenue of at least EUR 140 million and
  • EBIT of at least EUR 80 million

The guidance is based on the current order situation, the scalability of the business model, and stable regulatory conditions.

This guidance represents an expected +36% sales growth for 2026 (vs. + 60% in 2025) and +27% EBIT growth (vs. +70% in 2025). The implied 2026 EBIT margin is 57% against 61%.

Overall, despite the slow down in growth rates, these are still very impressive numbers. The stock trades currently at around 14x 2026 P/E. Still, investors don’t seem to be convinced that this is a good investment.

Maybe the “AI fear” is the driver here. To be honest, I find it very difficult for now, to get the conviction to invest into the currently very negative share price momentum, but I will keep watching and hopefully be able to attend the AGM in Munich in person.

Nomad Foods

Nomad Foods is the frozen food competitor of Frosta that I mentioned in the Frosta write-up. Nomad released 2025 numbers yesterday.

The picture was not pretty at all. Sales down, margins down, earnings down. Unadjusted they actually made a GAAP loss in Q4.

The guidance for 2026 doesn’t look much better either, but rather worse:

If we compare this to Frosta who have increased sales double digits, improved gross margins and only have shown lower net margins because of higher advertising spend, it is pretty clear that Nomad Food and especially the Iglo brand seems to be losing market share.

My gut feeling is that in Nomad’s case, the focus on Cash generation and share buy backs has maybe led to underinvestment into the brand which is not so easy and quick to reverse. Pretty much the same “playbook” and issues like Kraft-Heinz or Anheuser-Busch.

In the consumer space, the safer long term bets are those guys who invest long term into the brand and not the spreadsheet jockeys.

With a further EBITDA decline and current Debt/EBITDA of 3,8x, I am not sure for how long they can continue to pay dividends and buy back shares. 

This one looks really vulnerable. For Frosta, there could be a msall risk that if Nomad gets really desperate and needs cash, that they start to dump their products into the market. So I think it makes sense to look at Nomad updates as a Frosta shareholder in any case.

Quick Updates: Frosta, Alimanetation Couche-Tard, Bombardier, Bouvet & Robertet

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This week was quite busy, with (at least) 5 of my companies releasing 2025 numbers, some more preliminary than others. Overall it was a “mixed bad”. Some good, some not so good. Let’s jump in:

Frosta

Frosta made a premliminary earnings announcement that was clearly below my expectations and at the lower end of the guidance. Thanks god, I covered my Axx with that statement in my write-up from earier this week:

“One important thing to understand with Frosta is that they don’t try to smooth earnings much, at least not to the upside. So you might always be in for some surprise either at the 6 month mark or annual report. Their guidance is usually very wide. Sometimes they decide to increase marketing expenses significantly which lowers profit in the current year but boosts revenues in the next year. In the long run, this has turned out very well for shareholders but for “weak hands” this can be a little bit unnerving.”

I guess this was once again such an event. Net income actually declined -12% in 2025. On the other side, growth of the Frosta Brand with ~16% and the ready made meals with almost 18% in 2026 is far above the market growth. So Frosta is taking significant market share. The dividend will remain at 2,40 EUR. They guide towards overall growth between 4-9% and a net margin of 4-8% in 2026 which is of course again very wide but implies that growth will continue for the Brand.

According to the just released annual report , my Quick and Dirty analysis looks as follows:

Pages: 1 2

Quick Update Innoscripta (Company Conference Call)

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My timing of my Innoscripta write-up was a little bit unfortunate. Just a day later, Innoscripta held a conference call explaining the 2025 numbers. I think I need to better check the calenders of the companies I write about in the future….

The presentation can be found here.

I listened to the Call on Quartr. My main (and of course subjective) take-aways:

  • as a relatively new initiative, they develop a “safe storage” for R&D data
  • the arguments about LLMs and their limitations did not overly convince me. The arguments rely on today’s abilities of LLMs, but the question is how this will develop in 1,3 or 5 years. Especially I do not see that the LLM in the hand of a client itself is the competitor but competitors (especially other consultants) using AI to rapidly develop (cheaper) alternatives
  • Cash conversion (to EBIT) is currently around ~60% but they try to improve cash collection
  • They are bullish on the Government increasing the programs in general (regulatory tailwinds)
  • They claim that they see increasing revenue from the same clients which I find quite surprising. They didn’t however provide any concrete numbers
  • The clarified that the overall proces from application to cash collection is 9-12 months (3 months for innovation approval, 6-9 months for tax credits)
  • They claim that the “front loading” of 4 year applications seems not so significant
  • There is a clear seasonality that companies hand in filings mostly in Q4 in order not to lose credits for T-4 projects
  • Revenue in Q1 2026 should look good (whatever that means, not sure if they compare this to Q4 2025 or Q1 2025)
  • The currently do not consider M&A for international expansion but try to grow organically in 4 different countries (UK & US was mentioned)
  • The question if the 40% growth for 2026 is relevant was somehow confirmed but very indirectly. A “real” guidance should be expected for the AGM in April
  • Interestingly, the overall growth in the German Tax Credit market was +60% in 2025 which means Innoscripta’s growth is in line with the market and they want to grow with the market. More details again shall be provided at the AGM. The analyst mentioned that the market will grow less than 40% in 2026
  • The question how big the “4 year front loading effect” actually is, they were quite evasive. They mentioned that there will be growth internationally and through “Software” and Tax Credits is described as a “Milestone” or “trojan horse” to get other business.
  • Cash usage: No additional cash is needed for growth. Buy backs limited due to limited liquidity but rather distributions.

Overall my impression is that at least 2026 should look pretty Ok, but further out it gets a little bit vague. International expansion is clearly more risky than increasing market share in Germany.

But overall it remains a very interesting and dynmaic company and I am looking forward to the Annual Shareholder Meeting which I hopefully can attend.

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