Madara Cosmetics: Bet on entreprenaurship

Madara is fast growing premium organic cosmetics brand from Latvia. It started from garage in 2005 and is now the leader in organic cosmetics in Finland and Latvia. It has strong distribution position in the main cosmetic outlets and e-commerce sites in the two home-markets. It has started to expand to new markets, mainly France, …

9.2.2020 Investment Journal: Vente-Unique update

Vente-Unique is a rusty growth company that has been one of my genius stock picks, currently clocking -50 %, give or take, from my purchase price. I was down even more during last year so I have been fighting with some negative reinforcement here for a while. At the time of the original writeup, I …

Against the credit in Russia: Case Tinkoff

INTRODUCTION Tinkoff Credit, Russian fintech Low 6.4x P/E 2019E, based on guided profit for 2019, which management kind of indicated will be beaten Modern digital only consumer "financial supermarket", focus on credit cards Probably the biggest and most profitable digital-only bank in Europe (~8,4 m. customers) Excellent long-term growth track record, 38 % net profit …

Vente-Unique.Com: Rusty Growth Stock?

Vente-Unique is a French pure-play e-commerce furniture retailer, and seemingly a busted IPO after having been listed last spring: The company has good long-term growth and profitability track record, ~8x revenues in last 9 years: (Note: The data refers to the control shareholder CAFOM's e-commerce segment, which is mostly, but not all, Vente-Unique. I think …

Ibersol: It’s Okay to change your favorite pizza

Some of you might remember my older writeups and portfolio holding Kotipizza, the biggest national pizza chain in Finland. I have sold my shares few months ago (with about zero gains since the last writeup, not one of my best recommendations...). The reason was that Kotipizza decided to move on multi-concept strategy. I thought it …

Catella FY 2017 update: More robust than ever?

Catella is a real estate focused investment bank and alternative asset manager operating in the Nordics and Western Europe. I wrote about the stock some two years ago, asking whether the low valuation multiples at the time really signaled cheapness. The answer was "qualified" yes but with the 2017 full year figures out and the stock …

Installux: Switching Cost Competitive Advantage from France

Installux Aluminum is a French aluminum profile system provider. It's undervalued because it seems to have switching cost competitive advantage, average growth prospects and price tag that doesn't seem to be outrageous. Key figures (MEUR, rolling 12m) Revenue 116 EBITDA 15.6 EBIT 12.0 EBIT after tax 8.0 Market cap 100 Net debt -25 EV 75 EV/EBITDA 4.8 …

Drunk Uncles (and philosophy behind my investment strategy)

Reader sent me a question relating to my "secondary industrials" based investment strategy. I have mentioned it in my "About" page but not opened the reasons behind it. With (slightly edited) answer to the readers question below I try to give some clarity : "We too in the Nordics have very little preference shares and …

Kotipizza: Bigger Slice of Pizza Market

Introduction Finnish pizza franchisor Kotipizza updated its restaurant concept recently to communicate sustainability, quality and freshness, as per the latest food trends, and it seems to be working. Since the update Kotipizza has grown double-digit and outperformed the market by wide margin. Because only 60 of the 252 stores have been updated and there are 16 new …

Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve…hindsight wisdom re Kotipizza

I don't know why I'm doing this. I had done quite a lot of work on Kotipizza but did not make a decision on buying it. Waited and procrastrinated all that, waiting for lower prices etc. And did nothing, and now the stock had a big move (at the time it was below 5 and as …