Tag Archives: Special Situation

Quick (and dirty): Cie Bois Sauvage Special Situation

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This is not Investment Advice. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH !!!

Bois Sauvage is a Belgian Holding Company that I owned in the past and have written several times about:

2014 Write-up Bois Sauvage

2014 Update on Bois Sauvage and Ackerman

In essence it’s main business is high-end Belgian Chocolate (Neuhaus, Jeff de Brugges) and a variety of other assets, from real estate, listed Belgian stocks and some VC/PE like investments.

What created my renewed interest in the stock was this passage in a recent “Newletter” sent out by the company:

These topics are part of a broader transformation. For several months now, we have been conducting an in-depth strategic review of all our holdings. This review will result in concrete announcements in March 2026. It reflects our desire to better focus our efforts on our areas of expertise, align our portfolio with our ambition for sustainable growth, and enhance the clarity of our investment profile.

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Bombardier – A potentially successful Aerospace turnaround shot down by Trump Tariffs ?

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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.

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Broedr. Hartmann (ISIN DK0010256197): A truly Egg-citing Special situation ?

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

  1. Introduction
  2. “Catalyst”: Lowball bid from Majority shareholder
  3. Delisting in Denmark – what I found so far
  4. Majority Shareholder Thornico
  5. What is Thornico’s ultimate goal ?
  6. Scenario Analysis, Risks & Summary
  1. Introduction

Broeder. Hartmann (not to mistake with Paul Hartmann AG) is a company I looked at during my All Danish Shares series in last July. I think it would be fair to call it a “hidden champion”. Their business model is focused almost 100% on egg packaging which as such is already something I like a lot. Their main product looks like this (only the box, not the content):

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Ahlsell (ISIN SE0009155005) – Interesting pre-Christmas Special Situation ?

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, only the personal opinion of an anonymous blogger. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH !!!!

Background:

Ahlsell is a Swedish company that distributes building / renovation related products mainly to craftsmen in the Nordic Region. In 2012, the company was taken private by private equity house CVC.

In 2016, Ahlsell was IPOed again by CVC at SEK 46 per share. They sold 1/3 of their shares in the IPO and then down to 25,1% just some weeks ago.

Then more or less out of the blue a few days ago, CVC offered again to take Ahlsell private at 55 SEk/share which translates into a valuation slightly north of 2 bn EUR for the equity.

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Special situation: Whole Foods (WFM) – “free options” anyone ?

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A few days ago, Amazon famously announced to take over Whole Foods Market for 42 USD per share (representing a premium of around 27%).

Markets enthusiastically welcomed this move from Amazon, with the Amazon share jumping almost 4% or ~13 bn USD, which coincidently was almost equal to the deal amount.

Whole Foods itself was “under siege” from activist investor Jana which had built up a 9% stake in the company. Just 2 days before the takeover, Whole Foods CEO called Jana “greedy bastards” indicating that he was not happy having such a shareholder.

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Special Situation Updates: Actelion/Idorsia, Gagfah, SAPEC & Stada

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A lot has happened over the last few weeks for my 4 largest special situation investments:

Actelion / Idorsia

The original Actelion idea was very simple: Buy an M&A target at a small discount which is relatively safe and get something (the Idorsia spin-off) extra which no one seemed to have noticed.

Although the case played out exactly as I thought and Idorsia even seems to be worth more than I assumed, I only made around +4% on it. Not bad for around 5 months but not great either.

Looking back I think I made 3 mistakes:

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HP Enterprise (HPE) – Spinning-off its way to happiness ?

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DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!

Management summary:

  • HPE, the enterprise arm of the old HP looks attractive on a sum-of-part valuation
  • following 3 spin-offs in 2 years, my model indicates an upside of ~40% in the base case and ~70% in an optimistic case
  • Some “soft catalysts” are on the horizon such as the upcoming Software “spin -off merger”, further share buy backs and a “normal” financial year
  • management acts shareholder friendly, has a clear strategy and has created significant shareholder value since 2011
  • major risk is clearly a further detoriation of the Enterprise solution business which had a bad start into fiscal 2017

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Sapec SA – follow up

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Annual Report 2016

So now Sapec is out with their annual report for the last year (or 15 months).

The report is in French, so I am not sure if understood everything by 100% but I try to summarize the relevant issues:

  • Book value per share at year-end was 191,6 EUR
  • The operating result of the business ex the sold business is slightly negative
  • The Agro business was sold at 318,4 mn equity value, resulting in a gain of 226 mn EUR
  • They provisioned the full 36 mn Novo Bank guarantee.

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Special situation: Liquidation of KANAM Grundinvest fund (ISIN DE0006791809)

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

Background:

This investment is not an original idea, but rather a “me too” investment. Ben from Wertart has a very good write up from November last year, so I spare myself to go into too much historic description.

Just the short version: Kanam Grundinvest is one of several formerly open real estate funds in Germany which have been put into liquidation. The major difference to almost all other funds is that in the Kanam case investors actually didn’t lose any money over the lifetime of the fund as the real estate seems to have been relatively high quality. As of December 31st 2016, the fund has sold 95% of its real estate and is now effectively a cash box with some remaining real estate exposure.

So let’s focus on what has changed since Ben wrote his post:

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