Weekly: Do We Even Matter?
Weekly 30 2025
This week
This week, we processed results from three companies:
Bonava: figures hide real improvement
Investor AB: remains a top holding
Sofina: mid-year letter
There’s also plenty of short news to go through, including updates on Somero, Cake Box, K+S, Stellantis, Luceco, Manitou, and Exor.
Do We Even Matter?
It’s no secret that I have a preference for smaller companies—simple, clear stories you can assess like an entrepreneur. For me, investing started out of a passion for business.
I’m also a big advocate for investing in family-owned businesses or companies with a committed strategic shareholder. I want someone genuinely invested in the company’s future, not just professional managers, no matter how competent or well-meaning they might be. I want to know who lies awake at night thinking about the business, just like small business owners do.
Of course, those two aspects can also backfire—as we’ve seen a few times recently, both close to home and farther away.
You know my view on what happened with Euronav, now CMB.Tech. I saw—and still see—that as a blatant disregard for minority shareholder rights. The Saverys family offloaded their overvalued CMB.Tech into shareholders’ laps while selling off the tanker division they had just bought into.
Another family member now wants to delist Exmar. When met with resistance, he pulled a dirty trick: using a dividend payout to discourage small shareholders. He needed the cash to fund the buyout, hence the dividend, with the choice between cash or shares. The kicker? Small investors pay 30% withholding tax on that dividend, while he doesn’t. He’ll take his dividend in shares and collect the 30% in cash to fund the deal.
Due to the size of the dividend—35% of the offer—small shareholders are suddenly significantly poorer just because of that withholding tax.
We saw something similar at D’Ieteren: a massive dividend because one family member wanted to buy out another. Once again, retail investors footed the bill—literally—via withholding tax.
That Marc Coucke is delisting Smartphoto at, in my view, a rock-bottom price, is hard to blame him for. We as investors, offered up that opportunity. And to be fair, he’s handling it much more cleanly than others.
In the UK, we’re now seeing something different at Anexo. The majority shareholders want to take the company private. They’ve set up a new entity, Bidco, to acquire the shares in exchange for unlisted credit notes or shares in this non-public Bidco. The offer is just GBp 60, based on a pricing low right after the Trump tariff chaos, while the stock has since bounced back sharply.
Because there’s resistance, Anexo has now launched a tender offer for 20% of the shares at GBp 60—13% below the trading price before the announcement. Where have we seen a tender offer below market price before?
The only reason investors are even considering this is that if enough shares are tendered, they can still force through the delisting with those worthless credit notes. It’s a straight-up hold-up of minority shareholders.
Minority shareholders have now contacted the regulators and the stock exchange. If Anexo’s majority shareholders succeed here, the AIM market in London becomes uninvestable overnight.
I’m following this closely via Iggy on Investing on X and his Substack.
Investing is meant to be for everyone, but I’m starting to believe Professor Emeritus Roland Van der Elst when he said: “The stock market isn’t made for you.”
And yet, it was that same professor who taught Belgians how to invest.