Energiekontor
Energiekontor has been one of my worst performing stocks in 2024, the performance was much worse than the borader renewable peer group. To be honest, I am not sure why the stock performed so bad. On part of the explanation is clearly that the overall political shift to the righ (Trump, Germany etc.) might be bad for renewables, which explains the overall bad performance to some extent. It didn’t help either that they announced a 2024 profit warning some days ago.
However, they didn’t adjust the mid term guidance (2028) and it seems that the profit warning was clearly just a short term timing issue with a required approval of a purchaser for a large UK wind farm. So next year could look very nice especially for the developer segment.
Despite the political uncertainty, I still think that Energiekontor is one of the best bets in the sector. Here is a table I did some weeks ago showing that Energiekontor, among a European peer group, is both the cheapest and the least leveraged player:
Fuchs
A few days ago, I had the pleasure to actually attend the Fuchs capital markets day that was held at one of their clients factories (DMG Mori in Pfronten). The presentations can be found here.
My overall take way was very positive. A few highlights:
- the exposure to (European) ICE automobile production is very limited, Fuchs has a glbally well diversified portfolio of clients and applications
- the company culture seems to be very strong and etnrepreneurial with an extrem customer fucos (Fuchs Capital market days are always held at client’s sites)
- Many applications have high barriers of entry to to certification and regulation
- The potential successor of Stefan Fuchs made a very good impression
Although the stock is not super cheap, I think that especially the cheaper common shares offer a lot of value due to the high quality of the company.
Eurokai
Just 2 days ago, Eurokai in typical understated Hanseatic fashion released a Positive profit warning. It seems that they have been forced to write up the value of the Wilhelmshaven terminal which they seem to have written down to zero in 2020. Although this is oncly an accounting effect, it clearly shows that things are improving. I am very much looking forward to 2025, when the new shipping aliance between Maersk and Hapag will direct significant traffic to the Eurokai terminals.
Hermle
There was an interesting (German language) interview with the CEO in a specialist tool publication. A few weeks ago, Hermle also issued a trading update. Despite (much) better numbers than the competition, investors might got spooked by the fact that Hermle countercyclically invests more into R&D and hiring more people which will clearly lower the result. Personally, I really like that countercyclical approach a lot. We will see how this turns out but Hermle is clearly a great company however in a very tough environment.
Laurent Perrier
Already some days ago, Jon Neuscheler published a fantastic (German language) write-up on LAurent Perrier. A few days ago, LP issued a trading update, which at a first gance didn’t look so good but is clearly in line with the industry. Since then the stock recoevered a little. Overall clearly a more difficult time but in my opinion still a stock to hold for the longer term.
