EVS Broadcast
EVS Broadcast reported 2024 numbers this week. After raising their 2024 guidance 2 times during the year, they came out at the upper und of the projected range. The Highlight page speaks for itself:
Recommended: Wexboy with his 2024 portfolio & performance review
A great video explaining the East 72 Dynasty portfolio with a lot of interesting “family owned” companies
Some deep thoughts from the Brooklyn Investor on the “Broken Markets” theme
Nat Bullard’s annual presentation is a must for anyone interested in the energy sector
An interesting analysis that shows that “real assets” were not good hedges against inflation following Covid
Fantastic post why you should never rely on Bullshxt Earnings errrr Adjusted EBITDA
Royce Funds Microcap 2024 review with some summaries of US microcaps
This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
Finally, after more than 18 months, I found a second candidate for my “Collector’s Corner” bucket after Laurent Perrier. Just as a reminder, the purpose of this bucker is as follows:
So here is the management summary and the write-up (which is a little bit “thinner” than usual.
Management summary
Robertet, is a 175 years old, 1,8 bn EUR market cap French company, owned and run by the Maubert family in the 4th and 5th generation that is active in natural flavors and fragrances. Although much smaller than its larger peers, Robertet is the leading player in natural/organic ingredients which they source globally.
The company has grown EPS by >10% for the last 5,10 and 20 years. Although not cheap (~19x 2024 EPS), the stock is in my opinion nevertheless attractive as there seems to be a good fundamental tailwind and the business is very stable and diversified with decent margins. I therefore decided to add it to my “Collector’s Corner” bucket next to Laurent Perrier with a 2% allocation.
Some deep thoughts on the relationship between material wealth and happiness
You can challenge any of Prof. Damodaran’s assumptions on Nvidia, but compared to the many clowns and scumbags that pose as stock analysts these days, his logic and level of transparency is just awesome. Well done Professor !!!
Nice wite-up on conglomerate Jardine Matheson from Emerging Value
Some interesting stats on UK take-over premiums from Klement on Investing
For anyone interested in the insurance industry, the Swiss Re Sigma reports are a great resaource
Interesting Sharescope article on small cap premium and a few UK Trust ideas
Philipe Luchesi with a new Video discussing Laurent Perrier (French, Youtube offers translation in subtitles)
Content:
This was clearly one of my “must read” books in 2024. The author, Lionel Barber, is the former editor of the financial times and as such clearly has access to people who might have otherwise not spoken to a more unknown journalists.
The book goes back to Masa-son’s very humble roots as part of the Korean minority in Japan which clearly was not an easy childhood. His father earned the first money by breeding pigs in their garden in a “slummy” area in their hometown. The father seems to have been quite an entrepreneurial character himself, moving into “loan sharhing” and then into Pachinko, low scale gambling game very popular in Japan. Similar to Masa later, his father used risky leverage and often risked it all to win. In any case, the family got decently rich with these gambling halls.
For various reasons, I was able to spend much more time on this topic since Sunday than I would usually have. On Sunday morning, the topic somehow picked my interested and I have been trying to understand as a Non-Expert what is going on here.
For full disclosure: I have no positions in any of the MAG7 stocks, but that might make me equally biased than someone who has mortgaged his family home to invest in NVDIA.
On Sunday Morning, I initially used mostly Twitter, but during the day this was overflooded with MAGA Crap. Twitter is still a good place at an early stage for “virally developing situations”, bit it gets washed with (AI written) turd pretty quickly.
The DeepSeek topic is interesting on many dimensions. Here are some facts (taken from Wikipedia, but confirmed by other sources):
Ben Evan’s “State of AI” presentation is a must read
Despite lackluster performance, David Einhorn’s Q4 letter is worth reading
Annual letter time: Partners Fund 2024 letter, Rubicon Stockpicker 2024 letter, Compound Interest 2024 letter
An interesting new Subtack called “Building Things that last” has just launched with a few great posts
For me, the story of the week: Chinese LLM Deepseek seems to be (almost) on par with the OpenAI &Co at a much lower cost. Maybe it’s just Chinese propaganda, maybe it’s not.
A very detailed Nvidia short case including an (expert) assessment of Deepseek
The “Behind the Balance Sheet” Substack and Podcast are both worth the time
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!
As mentioned in the Performance review, I had already build up a new position in late 2024 in a new stock. This time I will try something new: I will only post a few sections of the write-up and only those who send me an email will receive the full version (for free of course).. The reason for this is that I am really interested how many of the readers are actally reading the full document. The bonus song of course is included in this post at the end.
0. Investment meme
For some strange reason, I felt the urge to start the pitch with this rather “German humor” meme:
Jensen-Group, a company originally from Denmark, now listed in Belgium, is a 420 mn EUR market cap “hidden champion” that is the world market leader in “Heavy laundry” equipment and automation. The company is run in third generation by the Jensen family which still controls 40% of the shares.
Nice year end review from the “no deep dives” Substack with some interesting positions
Wintergem Substack with an update on Hingham Savings Bank
Famous short activist Hindenburg announced to stop operating
Are Cannabis spiked drinks really replacing alcohol in the US ?
I had linked to the study last time, here is a summary of how Ozempic/Wegovy seem to change people’s eating habits
Fascinating story about the development of the Video Game “Star Citizen” that might cross the 1 bn USD budget soon
FT Alphaville on how overvalued the USD actually is (Hint: a lot)
2024 overview
There is no way around it: 2024 was a in absolute terms AND relative terms really bad. The Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -2,5 % (including dividends, no taxes, AOC fund as of 30.09.2023) against +4,9% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends). Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.
Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2024:
Partners Fund TGV: 4,8%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +9,0%
Over the 14 years from 12/31/2010 to 12/31/2024, the portfolio gained +387% against +168% for the Benchmark (before taxes). In CAGR numbers this translates into 12% p.a. for the portfolio vs. 7,3% p.a. for the Benchmark.
value and opportunity 