Cevian's rough patch

As a long-term investor with the right credentials, Cevian is big and increasingly visible in the AlphaValue European equities coverage … due to its exposure to difficult assets. The tribulations of ThyssenKrupp (on which we have a Sell recommendation roused our interest further.

Crossing the coverage of AlphaValue with what we know of the shareholdings, we end up with 9 “Cevian” stocks and a c. €10.5bn portfolio in mostly Nordic companies that the professional investor presumably knows inside out.

A summary view of this 9 stocks portfolio shows a universe with a constrained upside potential, mediocre quality stocks, mediocre yield and mediocre balance sheets. Presumably this may be the point: helping those businesses see the light and capture the value.

Summary metrics on 9 stocks portfolio

Detail of individual holdings

So far the going has been a rough one with a c. 20% loss over the last 12 months. Again this may not matter if assets are made to rethink how to extract value tomorrow. The following chart only assesses the performance of the 9 stocks that AlphaValue covers.

This partial coverage of the Cevian assets cannot be a full story. The point here is to highlight that “active ownership” is just as difficult as the more mundane passive sort. This is a point we routinely make when gauging listed holding companies.