Fuchs SE:
Let’s start with a negative surprise: Fuchs released 2 days ago that they will fall short of their (downward revised) 2025 forecast.
“For the financial year 2025, FUCHS now expects sales and EBIT on previous year’s level (financial year 2024: Sales at €3,525 million, EBIT at €434 million). The previous outlook for 2025 expected sales at around €3.7 billion and EBIT at around €460 million. Consensus for the financial year 2025 stands at
€3,660 million for sales and at €459 million for EBIT.”
Last year, when I decided to invest into Fuchs, the 2025 EBIT forecast was 500 mn EUR:
With the new forecast, we are now ~-13% lower than back then and this already requires a recovery in the second half of the year as the 6M EBIT is around -4,5% below the previous year.
In combination with the two Board members that left unexpected in the beginning of the year, I decided to sell my position at a small profit including the dividend and watch from the sidelines how this develops. Fuchs is still a very good company but this deteriotion in the forecast really worried me, especially considering that the stock is not “super cheap”. So far it looks that I have sold too early, but I do see continuig risk for short term disappointment here.
EVS Broadcast
EVS Broadcast had a nice little 6% jump yesterday with no financial news available over sources like Euronext or Bloomberg.
Interestingly, on their Corporate News side and on Linkedin they published that they won the contract to be the exclusive provider for the FiFa Football World Championship in 2026.
Although this is a one-off contract, from a strategic angle it clearly shows that they are able to win such contracts in the North American markets against their main competitors there, which might be also a hint that their US expansion could work out quite well.
What I find additionally interesting, that in this case as in other cases (i.e. Jensen, Eurokai) these kind of news is not picked up by the large information providers.
Although EVS is already one of my largest positions, I consider adding after the 6M numbers, unless they disappoint significantly.
STEF SA
STEF published yesterday very encouraging 6M sales numbers, despite persistence
What I do like is that the “other activitiws” i.e. Food services seem to grow really nicely. This was part of their strategy to add services around the warehouses and it seems to pay off nicely, at least from a sales perspective. The shareprice interestingly reacted very little. STEF is a position where I might add in the coming days/weeks.
SFS
SFS is always quite early with their results. They published their full half year report yesterday. Sales in CHF were constant vs. 6M 2024, EBIT was lower, mainly driven by the distribution segement.The Engineered componetn segment did surprisingly well, Fastening OK. Interestingly, the distribution segment did better than the overall market, so they seem to gain market shares.
Investors seem to have expected worse and the shares gained a few percent yesterday. In addition, SFS announced quite significant restructurings, both operationally, but also in the management.
On the plus side, cashflow was very good and they could further reduce net debt. The indsurtry is tough but SFS seems to execute well.