French Hidden Champions

I am a French private investor running a concentrated portfolio. I have been investing our family money for several years in select French micro, small, mid and large caps for a sizable portion of my liquid net worth.

These companies are mostly family-owned and/or owner-operated and active in (sometimes obscure or unglamorous) niches they tend to dominate nationally or internationally. This universe is still overall undiscovered, under-followed and under-researched in the English-speaking world. That said, we believe this (small) space also offers a unique opportunity and edge for the independent-minded small investor/fund eager to outperform. 

The purpose of this newsletter is to share an investment journey, some insights and lessons learned through company deep-dives and updates about these French hidden gems and champions. The stock write-ups will only cover publicly listed companies of which I am currently a shareholder or which are on my watchlist.

I like to invest in well-run companies when their share price looks cheap or very reasonable and hold for the long-run. Alignment with management/ownership and a demonstrated (long, if possible) track record of profitability, robustness and resilience are also key ingredients in the« skin-in-the-game » approach.

I do not plan to provide many ideas every month or year (I don’t have that many anyway...). All the ideas published concern companies which I consider interesting and are at least on my watchlist. I will focus instead on those which are interesting and will try to delve into and follow up on regularly and diligently.

I hope you will enjoy reading this and also look forward to keeping the dialogue going online and offline.