Italmobiliare
Italmobiliare published preliminary numbers already some days ago. The first reaction of the market was not so kind:
To be honest, I do not fully understand why the reaction was so negative. NAV development has been quite solid including the dividend as this chart shows:
One reason for disappointment was maybe the relatively weak margin development at Cafe Borbonne where the impact of rising coffee prices clearly had an impact:
My impression, after ordering my latest pack of Borbone capsules is that they increased prices less than competitors and that the value proposition has even improved for consumers. As Corono has shown, increasing prices quickly can backfire pretty quickly.
Also Tecnica only had a so so year. On the other hand, Santa Maria Novella performs great, Italgen had a great year and Casa Della Salute still grows like crazy.
At the current share price, I would rather cautiously add to the position. And in orther to boost the share prcie, I just ordered a box of Caffe Borbone capsules to fill up my depleted storage 😉
TFF Group
TFF recently published 9M sales numbers, but that was enough to push the share price even lower. It seems that after a not so good first 6M of their fiscal year, the last quarter was even worse:
This is clearly not such a big surprise if one looks at the share price of the big customers like Pernot-Ricard or Brown-Forman which are euqally struggling, especially now with the crazy trade war:
If we look at the stock price chart, it is actually suprising that TFF kept rising until the end of 2024 wheras their main customers had already be suffering for some time:
I would assume that on the way up something similar could happpen: That the alcohol stocks start rising and TFF will again lag, which could then offer an interesting opportunity to add. Let’s see what happens, but here I don’t do anything at the moment and sit on my hands.
STEF
STEF released 2024 numbers last week. While top line growth was decent (+8% including acquisitions), net income declined as we can see in this chart:
Higher financing costs and lower operating earnings. Interestingly, the operating profit in the non-French subsidiaries declined more than in France, but this seems to be driven by costs for integrating acquired businesses:
The outlook was, let’s say more qualitative than quantitative:
The market seems to have expected better numbers and sent the stock down around -10%. Personally, I do like that STEF used the current situation to expand and invest. However, it might take 2 or 3 years to see if this was the right decision. For investors who want to make a quick buck, this is clearly not the right company. If STEF performs like they did in the past, the coming years could see a significantly improved result.
CK Hutchison Ports Deal
Already a few days ago, Blackrock and CK h Hutchinson dislosed a deal that would transfer all of CK Hutchinson’s non-Chinese port activities to a consortium lead by Blackrock for a total consideration of 22,8 bn USD.
Although the Chinese Government deosn’t seem to be very happy about this, it is always interesting to see at what multiples such a transactions has happened.
Looking at CK Hutchisons 2023 IR presentation, the ports business is presented as follows:
We don’t know a lot of details on the deal, only that the Mainland China and Hongkong assets are not part of the deal, which includes the HPH Trust.
So for 22 bn USD Enterprise Value, the acquirers received ~ 0,86*13,6 bn HKD in EBITDA or 11,7 bn HKD based on 2023 numbers. At an exchange rate of 7,77 HKD/USD, this would imply a 14,6x EV/EBITDA Valuation for the deal.
This seems quite expensive, on the other hand, this is clearly also a unique collection of assets. And an interesting “cross read” to Eurokai.