Don’t expect super efficient use of capital either. M&A activity (take overs ect.) is also relatively limited. French companies either reinvest or keep a lot of cash on the balance sheet. One usually doesn’t see a lot of share buy backs etc. – “shareholder value” seems to be still a kind of “dirty word”. Some stocks trade only twice a day at very small amounts. So many small caps have a large majority owner and several long term 5% stakes. I guess this has to do with a preferential treatment of 5%+ psoitions under French tax rules. – liquidity for French small caps is sometimes extremely limited. I know only of and the quality of posts there is usually quite low – there is hardly any blogging or internet scene for French stocks. – French companies, especially small caps are usually less leveraged and run more conservatively than their Italien or Spanish peers I am definitely not an expert in French stocks and the French investment scene, but I would summarize my experiences up to now as follows: General observations about French stocks: If we look at what I would call the “Small cap sweet spot”, 25-200 mn EUR market cap, we get 242 French companies against 498 companies in Germany. Not surprisingly, France has more “big” companies with market caps above 5 bn EUR (45) vs Germany (35). Total market Cap for French companies is 1.09 bn (European “billion” or Amercian Trillion), slightly higher than the 1.02 bn/tn currently shown for Germany. Weserwind managing director Dirk Kassen says the orders include EUR 60 million worth of firmly financed business, EUR 125 million of orders that are part of project financing deals and another EUR 200 million in joint deals with EEW-SPC.So far, I have been reviewing 4 French stocks in more detail:įrom those four stocks, only Tonnelerie made it into the portfolio as a “Hidden Champion”.įrance, as the second largest EUR economy has a lot of listed companies.īloomberg shows 847 listed companies based in France, a little less than Germany with 1110 companies, but more than Italy (304), Spain (201) and Portugal (67) combined !!! It is to consist of 80, 5 MW Multibrid turbines. Weserwind will also partially supply the German Borkum West 2 project developed by Prokon Nord. Areva is to supply the project with Multibrid turbines. The company says it has orders for 39 monopiles for the Baltic 1 and Nordergründe stations and for 87 tripods to cover part of the needs of the 105 MW Côte d'Albâtre project, developed off the French coast by Germany's Enertrag and Prokon Nord. At the same location, Weserwind is assembling transformer stations for four projects: Bard Offshore 1 the 60 MW Alpha Ventus offshore test station, being built by a group of German utilities and to consist of Repower and Multibrid turbines Energiekontor's near-shore 90 MW Nordergründe project in the Wester estuary, also to use Repower turbines and to start construction this year and Baltic 1 off the north German coast, at 52.5 MW to be made up of 21 turbines.Īt Weserwind's third factory, at Rostock on the Baltic Sea coast, it is cooperating with Erndtebrücker Eisenwerke Special Pipe Construction (EEW-SPC) in the construction of monopile foundations with transition pieces to connect to a variety of turbine towers. In total, Weserwind expects to make 80 foundations a year, using 80,000 tonnes of steel.Īt Wilhelmshaven, the company is currently building 12 tri-pile foundations for Bard Engineering's Bard Offshore 1 station, an 80 turbine development. Jackets will be made for Repower Systems, tripods for Multibrid offshore turbines and tri-piles for Bard Engineering. In Bremerhaven, the company will produce three types of foundation for all three offshore turbine competitors. Weserwind already makes foundations at a facility close to the new factory and also operates factories in Wilhelmshaven and Rostock. To serve the needs of the three companies, all of which expect to be supplying turbines to projects in German and French waters this year and next, Weserwind is constructing a purpose-built factory in Bremerhaven to build foundations from 2010. Weserwind Offshore Construction, part of the German Georgsmarienhütte steel group, is rapidly becoming a one-stop shop for both turbine foundations and transformer stations for all three of the country's budding players in the offshore wind sector: Repower Systems, Bard Engineering and French nuclear group Areva, supplier of the Multibrid turbine.
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