Quick Updates: Frosta, Alimanetation Couche-Tard, Bombardier, Bouvet & Robertet

This week was quite busy, with (at least) 5 of my companies releasing 2025 numbers, some more preliminary than others. Overall it was a "mixed bad". Some good, some not so good. Let’s jump in:

Frosta

Frosta made a premliminary earnings announcement that was clearly below my expectations and at the lower end of the guidance. Thanks god, I covered my Axx with that statement in my write-up from earier this week:

“One important thing to understand with Frosta is that they don’t try to smooth earnings much, at least not to the upside. So you might always be in for some surprise either at the 6 month mark or annual report. Their guidance is usually very wide. Sometimes they decide to increase marketing expenses significantly which lowers profit in the current year but boosts revenues in the next year. In the long run, this has turned out very well for shareholders but for “weak hands” this can be a little bit unnerving.”

I guess this was once again such an event. Net income actually declined -12% in 2025. On the other side, growth of the Frosta Brand with ~16% and the ready made meals with almost 18% in 2026 is far above the market growth. So Frosta is taking significant market share. The dividend will remain at 2,40 EUR. They guide towards overall growth between 4-9% and a net margin of 4-8% in 2026 which is of course again very wide but implies that growth will continue for the Brand.

According to the just released annual report , my Quick and Dirty analysis looks as follows:

• Gross Margin of Frosta actually slightly increased from 48,9% to 50%

• Personal cost in % of sales developed slightly negatively from -14,7% to -14,9%

• The big driver were “other costs” that increased from -21,9% to -24,1% (or a full -28 mn EUR before tax)

Frosta explains this as follows:

“Der Anstieg der sonstigen betrieblichen Aufwendungen ist zum einen auf die erneut erhöhten
Werbeinvestitionen in allen Märkten zurückzuführen, die notwendig sind, um zukünftiges
Wachstum im Markengeschäft zu sichern. Zum anderen wurden Maßnahmen zur Optimierung
der Lagerkapazitäten und der Sicherheitsbestände umgesetzt. Diese führten zwar vorüberge-
hend zu höheren Kosten in der Supply Chain, haben FRoSTA jedoch gut darauf vorbereitet,
auch in den kommenden Jahren ein hohes Servicelevel für unsere Kunden sicherzustellen.”

So they say that this increase is mostly driven by higher advertising expenses and “Supply chain optimization” to prepare for the future. You could also interpret this as investments into the future. In the notes this position contains an extra of 5 mn FX expenses (most likely Zloty) compared to last year.

Overall, my first verdict is that the numbers are much better than the look at first sight.

Alimentation Couche-Tard

ACT had their Investor Day 2 days ago with a brand new Investor presentation. A few highlights from my side:

The long term growth track record is still good, but the last 2 years were not good. What I like from ACT that they don’t hide it.

Owning ACT also means significant Tobacco exposure. I was surprised on how large their market share is in North America is. To be honest, I am not 100% comofrtable wiht this.

Also, Energy Drinks play a significant role at ACT:

Overall, my impression is that they now seem to focus again on “operational excellence” and store roll-outs after the broken Mega Deal with 7-eleven from Japan.

They target 10%+ EPS growth until 2030 (including buybacks). At a current P/E of 20xNTM and a dividend yield of ~8,8%, I do think that the Growth rate also equals more or less the expected return. The question I need to answer at some point is, if this is attractive relative to other opportunities or not.

Bombardier

Bombardier published 2025 numbers yesterday and especially Cash flow generation was significantly above guidance:

Margins increased nicley. Maybe only the guidance was a little bit on the conservative side:

A less than 5% increase in sales and in EBITDA is maybe a little bit on the low side for a stock that now trades at 24x NTM P/E. However, with the inreased backlog, overall the future still looks quite bright for Bombardier despite Trump’s recent attempts to hurt the Canadian Aviation industry.

Bouvet

Bouvet released Q4 2025 and 2025 numbers today. In a nutshell, Q4 2025 was not a good quarter:

Looking at the chart it becomes clear that despite price increases, they could just not sell enough consulting services.

On a full year basis, th weak Q4 lead to a slight decrease in slaes and earnings:

I think they still manage this quite well but for the time being, things don’t look so good. It explains the~-30% stock price decline over the past 12 monhts. At 14x NTM, the stock is not expensive but I think it is now important to undertand if this is temporary or more structural (AI).

Robertet

Robertet came out with 2025 revenue numbers yeasterday. At first sight they look good. Despit currency headwinds, Sales were up organically +4,5%:

Interestingly, this was driven by flavors and raw materials, not fragrances:

The most positive sentence of the release is the last one:

So overall, very decent numbers from Robertet, also especially compared to its competitors.