Swedish investment companies ("Investmentbolag"), part 2
While Investor is a quite special company indeed, and the one I would choose first if creating a portfolio for a decade or more, it is not the one I like the best right now.
One nice aspect of investment companies (a kind of closed-end mutual fund called 'investmentbolag' in Swedish) is that they are quite easy to value, since they usually consist mostly of other publicly traded companies.
One of those companies is Lundbergföretagen.
This company is quite similar to Investor in many ways. It has a long history of market beating returns. Lundbergföretagen is also ruled by an old patriarch, Fredrik Lundberg, who inherited the company from his father. (F. Lundberg is only the second generation, however, while the current triumvirate of Wallenberg cousins who lead Investor is the fifth generation of Wallenbergs.)
This company, which in turn consists of well-run industrial companies with low valuations, trades at a 13 % discount to book. (Investor trades at a 3 % discount.)
There are a few other interesting Swedish investment companies that also trade at a discount: Spiltan, whose CEO is a Buffett die-hard (goes to the annual meeting regularly I think, and has written a book about Warren), trades at a 23 % discount. (Writing above sentence, I realize that I should probably buy more of this co...) This company is relatively new, only a couple of decades old. Still younger is Byggmästare AJ Ahlström, which trades (probably rightly so) at a 15 % discount. |
