For the new year, one of my todos was to check the other two listed Champagne Houses in France, Vranken-Pommery and Lanson BCC.
As I mentioned in the original post, my main motivation to buy Laurent Perrier was that it’s name always showed up when I looked up Gerard Perrier.
Using TIKR as a quick comparison tool, one can see, that the two other players; Vranken-Pommery and Lanson-BCC trade at even lower PEs than Laurent Perrier:
Financials
However, we can also see that the other players are much more indebted that Laurent Perrier. The next table that I have compiled from TIKR numbers shows that Laurent Perrier ist both, more profitable ad a lot less indebted than the oher two:
One could argue that the potetnial of Vranken-Pommery could be higher if they manage to improve their margins. However their EBIT margin is currently at the 15 year average and was only better some 20 years ago. I honestly do not fully understand why their margins are so much lower than Laurent Perrier’s (and Lanson’s), but I am not sure if it is worth finding out. The high debt load also inserts some existentia risk into this businesses if, for some reason, they would have a really bad year or two.
lso the 10 yearchart shows a clear picture: Over then years, Laurent Perrier (black) outperformed its peers clearly.
Logos
My final, subjective criteria would be the Logo. Here are the three logos:
I am maybe biased here, but for my, only Laurent Perrier’s logo has real class. The other logos look more like logos for fireworks.
Taste:
One thing I will not discuss here is taste. I did a Champagne tasting once and I was surprised how different different brands of Champagne are actually tasting. However, taste is a very subjective thing and I am not sure what amount of Champagne is actually bought for taste. Myself, I only drink Champagne very occaionally, maybe once a year so I am definitely not qualified to come up with an opinion here. Even worse, personally, I do actually prefer a good Prosecco if I would have the choice. Much better value for money.
Summary:
This was clearly not a deep dive and as mentioned, my Laurent Perrier position is only a small position for me that I own more for fun. It is however interesting to see that based on a couple of KPI’s, Laurent Perrier looks much better than the other two “pure play” listed Champagne houses. Therefore I’ll stick with LAurent Perrier for the time being…
