Both Belgian stocks in my Portfolio, EVS and Jensen published Q1 numbers in the past few days.
EVS Broadcast came out with a Q1 slightly below their own expectations and with EBIT guidance below 2024.
It is important to remember that EVS always guides cautiosly and last year had to revise their forecast upwards 3 times.
AI “Pioneer” Klarna paddles back on AI use for customer service
Highly recommended: Conversation between Nikolai Tengen and legendary investor Chris Hohn (TCI)
Wintergems has 3 new positions. I do like the Vintage year/Cohort approach a lot.
The “Wonder Stock” Substack has a great write-up on UK smallcap Kitwave
Arranging portfolio companies like players on a football tactic screen is a very nice idea
Robin’s Substack on Misitano & Stracuzzi, a potential “Mini Robertet” from Sicilly
Behind the Balance Sheet with (among other stuff) a deep dive into the catastrophic Walgreen & Boots take-over
The largest Battery company of the world, CATL, is going public in HongKong
The “Top 40 UK dividend stocks” list is a good starting point for dividend fans
A pretty pessimistic take on the future of Google’s search business from a former employee
Large language models are really hard to understand
For Offshore Wind farms, the so called “wake effect” can be quite relevant
Interesting article on Mytheresa’s CEO and their approach to online luxury shopping
Antti Ilmanen (AQR) with an interesting paper on return expectations
After 60 years running Berkshire, Warren Buffett announced that he will retire by the end of the year.
Verdad thinks that European equities, especially small & micro caps still have potential
Sparkline Capital with a nice overview on how to cluster stocks with regard to tariff exposure
UK’s THG Group has achieved mastery in adjusting its “profit” numbers (FT, search for headline)
Despite all the hype, the ability of robots to “manipulate” real world objects is very limited and will stay so for some time to come (Good luck for those Tesla shareholders who believe in Proximus to save them)
Great interview with John Cleese (Monty Python) about the 50th anniversary of the “Holy Grail”.
Interesting article on BTG Pactual, the Brazilian Bank called “Goldman of the Tropics” (FT Search result)
Robertet
After adding Robertet to my “collector’s corner” a few weeks ago, Robertet published 2024 results 2 weeks ago.
With 90 mn EUR Net Income or 43 EUR EPS, results came in a little bit lower than based on the 6M numbers that I assumed in the post:
The Bain Private Equity Report and the corresponding material is a must read for anyone interested in the space (in short: The industry is undergoing a very difficult time)
An interesting overview of listed UK Infrastructure Trusts
KKR thinks that empathic leaders do better
NEDAP, a Dutch tech company looks kind of weird but interesting
A very sobbering look from Apollo into the impacts on tariffs on the US Economy
Thomas Pueyo on why Canada is so sparsely and unevenly populated
Klement on Investing explores why Germans are so bad at (stock) investing
Quick Summary:
This post contains additional random musings about the current situation, plus an updated “portfolio check” at the end. So feel free to jump to the end if you are only interested in the portfolio check.
At the end of 2024, I wrote a first post about what might happen following both a Donald Trump win in the US election and a breakup of the German coalition. My takeaway was that maybe US stocks weren’t the great deal they were supposed to be.
Since then, two major developments have changed:
All of this has led to a significant outperformance of European large-cap stocks, especially in Q1.
I have absolutely no idea where this is all headed. But one thing is certain: uncertainty. Especially regarding the future direction of the US government, uncertainty has increased significantly.
In the first 3 months of 2025, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained +0,9% (including dividends, no taxes) against a gain of +7,2% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), EuroStoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all TR indices).
Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.
Performance review:
After 2023 and 2024, 2025 once again looks like a year where it will be hard to compete with my benchmark. This is how the individual parts of the benchmark performed in Q1:
Eurostoxx 50: +7,6%
DAX: +11,2%
Eurostoxx small: +3,1%
MDAX: +7,1%
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!
Background:
Bombardier is a Canadian company that after a colorful past as a conglomerate and an “almost bankruptcy” in 2020 is now fully focused on manufacturing Private Jets and until recently has been a poster child of a very successful turn-around. My friend @Govro12 from the Wintergems substack has written a very nice post on Bombardier just a few weeks ago which I highly recommend to read.
High level Presentation:
Although I only could convince myself to buy a small starter position (<1%, to keep me interested), I presented Bombardier as a potential interesting investment case in a private investor meeting some days ago. Here is the presentation which I admit is pretty high level. Spoiler alert: I would not recommend to invest right now.
If you have 2 hours to spare and want to know more about AI LLMs than 99,8% of your peers, then this video from Andrej Karpathy is what you should watch
Maynard Payton on Filtronic, one of the very few winners on the UK AIM Market
BYD shocked competitors with Super-duper fast charging some days ago. And it’s being rolled out in April.
The Private jet market is doing very well
Smoking Mariuana really seems to impact consumer behaviour. I wonder how that would interplay with Ozempic.
The Behind the Balancesheet Substack with a nice summary of a recent Value & growth conference in New York
The “Dividend anomaly” could be quite easily exploited
value and opportunity 