ok, I see… If I’m not an expert or at least have some experiance in evaluating stocks, it’s just like lottery. Maybe it’s better to just stick to an ETF or pick some top from the ETF.
(I really don’t want to spend all the time questioning my decisions or reevaluating… maybe all 2 yrs or so).
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KNIN: Slightly overvalued, unsteady dividend, high payout ratio (~80% of the earnings go into the dividend).
Side note: The founder – Mr. Klaus-Michael Kühne – was one of the big time investors into Benko’s Signa holding but apparently managed to pull out before Signa went into bankrupcy.
NESN: it’s been discussed recently somewhere above in this topic.
UHR: ditto, though the discussion is a little more dated (but is probably still accurate today).
Here’s a fresh FASTgraph:
UBSG: Slightly overvalued, but the earnings trajectory looks fine (since the GFC).[§, §§]
If they move out of Switzerland (or let themselves be acquired by a foreign bank) I’d expect the stock price to go through the roof.
SIGN: Looks like a bond with occasionally missing coupon dividend payments. 
Conclusion: the only ones investable to me would be UBSG and probably NESN (given your 20 year horizon and their portfolio of strong brands I feel that they’ll eventually recover from their current issues).
I would additionally look into (assuming your universe is Swiss companies only):
ZURN: Reliable albeit somewhat slow grower (since the GFC). Only slightly overvalued.[§§]
RO: Slow but steady. Currently fairly valued.[§§]
NOVN: ditto. Currently fairly valued.[§§]
If limited to 5 picks I’d pile into UBSG, NOVN, ZURN, RO and NESN.
I’d personally just do equal weights,[V] but you could also sector equal weight (Finance: 1/6 UBSG, 1/6 ZURN; Pharma: 1/6 RO, 1/6 NOVN, Consumer Staples: 1/3 NESN).
Good luck![§§§]
§ I own them (bought them in January 2020).
§§ I bought them for my son’s portfolio.
V None are currently crazily over- or undervalued, otherwise you might adjust your weights to buy a little more of the undervalued ones and a little less of the overvalued ones.
§§§ If you follow this advice, I expect Two and Twenty.
(I’ll DM you my Bitcoin address)
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Many thanks for the checks. I think I’ll set for NESN, UBSG and NOVN and then soon RO and ZURN next. I think I’ll keep KNIN on my watchlist and flush SIGN.
I have this odd feeling that I need to add some smaller, industrials… something like Geberit or Straumann. But I think I’ll wait for the next occasion.
2 & 20 - Uiii… that’s too complicated for me to calculate 
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What a great idea that would be to maintain a short list of (long term investment) stock picks within the community. MPForum ETF! 0%TER! Mustachian after all 
Given the expertise here, history and experience, a set of 10-15 of wisely selected Swiss and US stocks could do it and gather a large public.
Buffet will not last much longer, we need a new story. Let’s build it here.
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Totally get the urge to own stuff below the radar (outside the large indices). I personally truly enjoy owning some micro and mini-caps that I know the pros can’t own because the companies are too small (e.g. CTBI[1] or WEYS[2] or NVDA … ok, just checking on whether you’re still awake with the last one).
For Geberit and Straumann: both viable businesses, able to continually grow their earnings, but chronically overvalued. Probably more my personal flaw, but I just cannot bring myself to buying an over-priced company.
GEBN: Somewhat only moderately fast growing business (maybe like RO above). Currently quite overvalued even against the valuation the market has historically attributed (a 23xP/E, the blue line).
If it just returns from its current valuation (of 33xP/E) to its normal valuation you’ll be looking at negative returns over the next couple of years. If it returned to its fair valuation (attributed given its growth, the orange line), you’d loose almost half of your investment.
I admit I keep thinking about buying Geberit everytime I see their logo in some public toilet … but when I look at FASTgraphs I just piss away forget about that impulse.
I could be talked into buying them below the blue line, but only if there were no other more beautiful undervalued brides/grooms available.[$]
STMN: Man, I dunno … Slightly better deal if it returned to its “normal” valuation of 29xP/E (and assuming earning projections are correct – which, given the analysts’ track record are a bit iffy) you might look at making some money …
but if somehow the valuation would return to its fair multiple (given the company’s growth), this investment looks uppercase iffy.
When there are more beautiful brides and grooms like RO, NOVN, NESN, UBSG and ZURN on the market, I’d stick to those for now.
As mentioned, I like the smaller names as well, but I’m not well versed in the Swiss companies to name any that seem attractive currently.
1 CTBI: Community Trust Bancorp, regional bank with an USD 1B market cap.
2 WEYS: Weyco Group, shoes distributor an USD 280M market cap.
$ I have bought so-called overvalued companies before, e.g. Coca-Cola
or more recently Pepsico
and most recently Keurig Dr. Pepper
but these are really only the exception to the rule (and because I miss Dr. Pepper, the soft drink
).
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Here’s the thing, though …
Let me – within a day – look twice over my proposed list and I’ll disagree with half of my first round suggestions.
Bring in other forum participants and the short list of wisely selected securities is nilled within a day.[
]
Ok, bring @cubanpete_the_swiss into the mix and we’ll have a reliable and stable list for centuries to come based on the mechanical investment rules he established.
However, given Goofy eventually figures out those mechanical rules, he’ll front run them and ruins everyone’s profits.
This is why we can’t have nice things …
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Thanks. Yep, I’ll stick to those.
NVDA… I took notice. But every stock started small. So it’s not totally out of context.
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This is the table you were thinking of, right?
While it didn’t really do great in the past 5 years, the results seem acceptable longer term.
(Source)
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It’s not just me!
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Well, the exercise is quite different. It’s more an alternative for a buy and hold for dummies strategy with some home biased, if this kind of strategy can exist, outside of ETFs. It might not be the strategy adopted by you or 
, it aims at potentially less return for some simplicity trade-off.
You are quite convincing on Swiss stocks and I doubt those would change in two days. For what would be “our” intl stocks, i.e. US and world ex-CH, big cap, it may be more challenging but there are some candidates… (which might as well be brk portfolio or brk itself).
Since diversification does not need thousands of stocks and ETFs have their… ahem…flaws, we might think of mustachian v2 investing.
Haha, me three, I’ll expand @Your_Full_Name ‘s quote to “everytime I see their logo in some toilet between Oslo and Cape Town!”
Ubiquitousness to rival brands like Coca-Cola etc.
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I love Geberit. I used to own it. The numbers are good, but the problem is that the company is distributing 60% of earnings (more at the moment) and is using about 25% of earnings for buybacks, that they do at any price. It is overvalued. They destroyed value in 2021 with their buybacks. I’d love to control it and reinvest their earnings into more interesting opportunities directly on the group level.
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After the last vote, I wouldn’t buy GEBN. I am not sure what will happen after the Eigenmietwert will be removed and you can’t detract some costs from taxes. People will stop updating their house or try to save some money when building it. Or not.
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In 2024, sales in Switzerland accounted for 11%. Assuming that half of sales are for private households, changes to Eigenmietwert are a rounding error for Geberit I would think.
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I just saw it in the new “Action” store.
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Sold PEP for KDP today.
Hope you did it after the 4% pump I saw happened yesterday!
I’ve owned Holcim in the past and would like to own it again but consider it too expensive for now. So started looking for alternatives and found Persimmon: lower PE, higher div yield, analyst ratings point to upside potential on the price (vs. downside on Holcim), low debt… am i missing something? any other alternatives in this space?
Yeah, Holcim looks a little expensive.
Persimmon …
A little too cyclical for me, personally.
I prefer to look at earnings estimates as those tend to be more accurate.
These look fine even though the estimates have been trending down over the past 6 months (for the earnings next year and in 2027).
If the stock price returned to its fair multiple (of 15xP/E) then you’d look at nice returns.
How do folks like FactSet? It powers the data behind FASTgraphs (and probably every quantative financial instituiton with more than two equity portfolio managers) and came down recently because of an earnings miss and (probably?) some AI fear.
The AI fear is (IMO) overblown. I’ve for the past year or so kept asking the different LLMs about historic financial data of various companies and they always disappoint me, not just slightly, but almost always annoyingly.
Anyway, too little of a dividend for me at the current valuation, but maybe someone else finds this interesting.
Edit: I came across FactSet via Chuck Carnevale who did a more detailed analysis on his YouTube channel here: FactSet: Evaluating the Recent Decline — Time to Buy or Stay Away | FAST Graphs
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I’m not sure why it was valued at 26x, but at 17x it is worth a bite.
And for those who want a degenerate gamble, they can join me in buying SOC. It’s an offshore oil company that has been banned from landing its oil. So this is a pure bet that they can resolve the legal issues and send the oil.