As anticipated in a previous post, after two and a half years (the first post debuted here on Substack in December 2021) and 36 companies analysed, I’ve decided it’s time to move to a paid tier.
I know that this will disappoint current free subscribers and that readership will likely decline (I’m not criticising anyone, just thinking out loud). But after pondering a lot about it, I realised this is the only way I can keep committing resources to this Substack: writing even just 1/2 company analyses a month consumes a lot of time, and having paying clients will “force” me to be more responsive and present.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed finding and sharing ideas, but the “If you're any good, why not just invest and share your knowledge for free?” line of reasoning only works in an ideal world: readers can’t/won't get consistent output if it's free.
For these reasons, I’ve decided to settle for a reasonable €15/month subscription, or €150/year for annual subscriptions: I hope subscribers will realise orders of magnitude more value than this. Most of the archived content will also end up behind the paywall, but I’ve left a few of the more popular pieces free.
What subscribers will get
Thoughtful analysis combined with the old-fashioned practice of turning over as many rocks as possible is in my view the best route to finding actionable ideas. I have a long list of companies I’m looking at, for which I have created detailed models but haven’t (yet) found the time to write about.
Going forward, my idea is to have two write-ups per month (but probably not exactly one every two weeks…), plus recaps/updates on significant events for all analysed companies: these “recaps” will still be available to all, not just to subscribers.
There is always a tension between writing shorter (and maybe more frequent?) analyses, and doing longer, deeper dives. I think the current “format” is a good compromise, but I’m also running a poll below to listen to readers:
Also, let me kindly remind again what this Substack is and – more important – is not:
This is not a stock-picking service: I do not provide recommendations to buy or sell any security, or – even worse – timing signals. The purpose of this newsletter is to share ideas that I find interesting (for different reasons…) and which readers might want to analyse further
It does not cover large cap names or “media darling” stocks: it will never cover Nvidia, ASML or LVMH or the latest trends in cybersecurity (unless there is some extreme market or corporate event worth discussing). Rather, the focus has been and will continue to be on unloved, underfollowed, overlooked or misunderstood European companies, with occasionally quality/multi-decade compounders. Companies will mostly span the small- and mid-cap space, but I will also touch some micro-caps as well.
Also: while I do provide some “valuation” of the companies analysed, I do not create complex spreadsheet models to determine the correct intrinsic value: there’s too much randomness in pin-pointing the value of a company with a DCF that most of the times they are useless. Where I provide a valuation, it is usually simple and straight forward
What you will also not find here are market calls on what will happen to equities, rates, commodities or countries; neither you will find daily comments on markets. It’s just not my approach.
On the other hand, there will be occasional “generalist macro posts” (see for example the recent one on China), book reviews and thematic pieces: one I’m currently thinking about is investing in private assets for retail investors
Finally, here is the table with all companies analysed and their performance from the day of the post.1
(*) SimCorp has been acquired by Deutsche Börse, so the performance is calculated on the take-out price
(**) Fondul Proprietatea listed Hidroelectrica in September 2023 and subsequently distributed all proceeds as a special dividend.
In any case, I hope you enjoy it: this is intended for education purposes only and is not financial advice in any sense.
PS: next post (and first one behind paywall) will be out tomorrow
As stated above, a post does not equate to a “buy” recommendation. For example, for OVH and VNV Global I clearly said I was staying on the sideline; for Bonheur I said that the price at the time of writing was very close to my estimate of intrinsic value, so not a bargain; …
You've done the right move. To write consistently, we need to feel like we're getting something back from it. Getting people to subscribe is difficult, so I'd suggest checking out the resources here: https://www.youtube.com/@substackinc
Also happy to chat over Zoom or similar