Argonautica

Despite being Europe’s biggest stock by market capitalisation Nestle is often thought to be either too boring or too expensive to warrant much attention. We disagree. We think the “expensive” valuation of 18x 2012 earnings does not take into account the balance sheet strength, the likely future compound earnings and dividend growth or the high probability that these growth ambitions will be achieved. Nestle reported its financial results for H1 2012 this morning. These highlighted that 2012 will…

We at Argonaut have consistently argued that the Euro-zone was uniquely vulnerable to a sovereign debt crisis – not because of high levels of debt and fiscal deficits – but because there was no central bank buyer of sovereign debt as a last resort. No sovereign should ever default on debt denominated in a currency which its central bank can print. But within the Eurosystem it is the ECB which controls the printing presses, not the national central banks. As a result, Euro-zone sovereign debt has…