rubicon equities GmbH
Welcome
Who are we?
We are among others sub-advisor to Fiducia Treuhand AG which is the advisor of TGV Rubicon Stockpicker Fund, managed by Investmentaktiengesellschaft für langfristige Investoren TGV.
The objective of rubicon equities GmbH is to identify companies whose earnings potential is not reflected in the current market price. We actively look for skewed risk return situations, i.e. investments with a strong upside potential and limited downside risk. Our primary focus is on companies from the European small & midcap sector. The foundation of our work is an in-depth fundamental research process.
Lars Ahns
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Prior to rubicon equities, Lars was an Investment Manager for almost 10 years with Scherzer & Co AG, a Cologne-based listed investment company.
Lars has a special focus on growth/technology companies in the German-speaking area as well as a pronounced interest in contrarian investment strategies across different asset classes and regions.
In the context of his investment activities, Lars is a member of the Board of Directors of MEDIQON Group AG.
Lars holds a Master in Business Administration (Diplom-Kaufmann) from the University of Cologne and also studied at Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires
Thorsten Ahns
Co-Founder and Managing Director
After starting his career at the Boston Consulting Group in Cologne / Brussels and A.T. Kearney in Paris, Thorsten moved as Head of Business Development to Kieger Group in Zurich, a European Wealth & Asset Manager. As part of his activities within rubicon equities, Thorsten is also active in the start-up sector.
Thorsten holds as a Master in Business Administration (Diplom-Kaufmann) from the University of Cologne and also studied at the European Business Schools HEC (Paris, France) and ESADE (Barcelone, Spain).
Theory
Investment Philosophy
From our point of view, an investor can only be successful if he has developed an investment style that is coherent with his personal interests and his psychological constitution.
We believe it does not work to mimic specific techniques or copy select investors. But, we can say – after deep study and much trial-and-error – that we feel closest to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
Our principal duty is to identify a) the intrinsic value of a company or more generally speaking of an asset and b) a discrepancy of this value compared to the current market price. As a general approach, we will develop different future state scenarios for the company and assign probabilities/likelihoods. We will then aggregate this into an expected value for the company. The difference of the current market price to our expected value is our Margin of Safety. The market should correct the mispricing in the long run and therefore generate a handsome return for us as investors. The Margin of Safety should also protect us from unforeseen negative evolutions or any mistakes in our initial assessment.
We will pay special attention to situations where the market price reflects all negative scenarios for the company but neglects potential positive evolutions. If we identify these situations, we might well invest a significant share of our portfolio. These investments have a strong upside potential with limited downside risk.
We believe that companies can – at least temporarily – be mispriced. We therefore prefer to invest in a very focused way, i.e. in a small number of companies… our best ideas. We will monitor these companies very closely and continuously challenge our investment case. We will typically invest in 10-20 companies at a time and we do not actively seek a diversification across sectors. This has two main reasons: Firstly, we would not be able to cover more companies as closely as we want. Secondly, we do not want to invest our limited resources in our 21st best idea. We want to invest heavily in our best idea.
We have one objective: long-term wealth creation. Investors with a short- to mid-term horizon or a wealth protection mindset would certainly apply a different investment strategy.