Tag Archives: Sixt AG

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….

Re-underwriting Sixt AG:  Family owned & run long term compounder with a great US growth story at a “bonkers bargain” price

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DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice. The Author is known for making lots of mistakes in his write-ups and will frontrun you whenever possible. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!

As always in my longer write-up, this post only contains selected sections of the write-up- A full pdf is embedded below.

  1. Management Summary

Sixt AG, a family-owned and -run Car rental company from Munich, has been compounding profits and shareholder returns at a double digit CAGR for the last 20 years. Following Covid, they accelerated their organic growth in the US which now represents ⅓ of their business and is growing rapidly at 20% plus p.a.. 

As most of their competitors (Hertz, AVIS, Europcar) are overleveraged, they will continue to take market share from them in the coming years. The recent (temporary) issues with residual (EV) car values depressed valuation multiples so that Sixt trades at a very low P/E for 2025 (~8 times for the Prefs, 11x for the common) for what I consider a high quality company resulting in an attractive risk return profile.

  1. Background 

Sixt is a company I owned several times in my investment career, unfortunately never long enough. During the initial Covid panic, I bought a “half” position as a part of a wider Covid basket” without any deep fundamental research at that time. Initially, this turned out to be a brilliant investment and almost tripled until the end of 2021, however since then, the stock struggled. 

When the Pref Shares hit 50 EUR I tweeted that I couldn’t believe how cheap the stock is.

Following that Tweet, I thought it’s a good  time to dive a little bit more into the rental car industry and see if I should “re-underwrite” Sixt or not.

3. Sixt History & some KPIs 

3.1. Company history

Sixt was founded in 1912 and so technically is the oldest of the large car rental companies. However, only with Erich Sixt, who became CEO in 1969, Sixt started to expand significantly. Sixt went public in 1986 and opened the first US Branch in 2011. In 2021, Erich Sixt after 42 years finally passed to lead over to his two sons who now run Sixt as Co-CEOs in the 4th generation.  

3.2. Some KPIs

We can see that over 10 and 20 years (based on 2023), Sixt has been a great compounder. Only over the last 5 years (EPS 2018 adjusted for DriveNow one off gain), EPS growth slowed. But one has to remember that this time period includes a beginning recession (2019), Covid, interest rate increases etc.

It’s also worth mentioning that all that growth was achieved organically. To my knowledge, Sixt never acquired another company.

Full PDF:

Sixt AG write up 25.10.2024 finalDownload

10. Why is the stock cheap ?

As always, when a stock is cheap, the question is: Are there any perfectly good reasons for the stock being so cheap ?

Despite the general weakness in European small and midcaps, these factors might play a role:

  1. A common theme I hear is that the rental car business is a shitty one. I think this is mainly due to the fact that the problems of AVIS, Hertz and Europcar are very public, but the success of Enterprise is not. On a P/E basis, both Hertz and Avis have traded at similar multiples (but with a lot more debt). As Enterprise is not publicly traded, some analysts might look at Sixt and decide that it is even “expensive” compared to  Hertz and Avis.
  2. Falling residual values for cars have impacted Sixt in 2024. Initially, an EBT of 400-520 mn had been forecasted. After Q1, where they had to book a loss because of unexpected depreciation, they had to cut the guidance again with the Q2 results in May to 350-450 mn EUR. In Q2 once again they again reduced the outlook to 340-390 mn EUR. So investors might be afraid that Q3 might contain more negative surprises.
  3. Investors might still not fully trust the two sons to continue what Erich has achieved over  more than 40 years. I have to admit that I am also not 100% convinced. Only time will tell.
  4. Sixt is clearly also exposed to the overall economic situation. A deepening recession in Europe might soften the demand, both for vacation rentals and business customers. Or customers might trade down from Sixt’s premium offer to a cheaper competitor.

11. Summary & conclusion

The initial question that I asked myself before writing this post was: Should I re-underwrite Sixt despite the quite disappointing performance over the past months ?

Thea answer after this exercise for me is clearly YES.

Sixt is a stock that offers an interesting growth story, a strong track record for a very low valuation which in my opinion creates a very attractive risk-return profile on a mid-term time horizon.

There are clearly some risks, as mentioned my main concern is how the sons will perform once Erich is not around anymore.

In any case, I decided not only to “re-underwrite” the stock but to increase my exposure by buying an additional 1% of the portfolio of Common shares.

I might add further, both to the Prefs and the Commons in the future if no negative surprises happen. The date for the release of Q3 earnings is November 11th.