Ambitious targets

A good example of a fundamentally solid company with extremely high growth opportunities is wallstreet:online AG. The Berlin-based Company's roots is the user base it has built up over many years in the financial community via portals such as wallstreet-online.de, boersenNews.de, FinanzNachrichten.de and ARIVA.de. The four stock market portals recently achieved a combined reach of more than 455 million page impressions per month. This makes the Group by far the biggest publisher-independent financial portal operator in the German-speaking world. With the online broker Smartbroker, the transformation from user to paying customer is now to take place.

Becoming Germany's leading broker is the declared goal of the new CEO of wallstreet:online AG, Matthias Hach. Since the product launch in December 2019, more than 130,000 customers have already been acquired. The number is expected to grow to at least 200,000 by the end of the current year. The former Comdirect board member sees the recipe for success in the connection of the two products. In addition to a smartphone app, there will be a stronger linking of broker features on the in-house community pages.

Merging at all levels: In addition to the technical merger of the community with the broker, the Company also recently announced an increase in its stake in wallstreet:online capital AG by 19.3%. Following the successful transaction, the Company's total stake in wallstreet:online capital AG will exceed the 95% threshold. In the coming months, the management also intends to further expand this stake in the Smartbroker's operating company. The aim is to leverage financial synergies and simplify the organizational structure. The long-standing wallstreet:online capital AG board member and founding CEO of the broker, Thomas Soltau, who successfully launched the Company on the market, is also to remain on board and continue to help shape the growth course the Company has embarked upon.

The wallstreet:online share could not escape the current market correction. After reaching an all-time high in mid-February, the stock is currently trading at EUR 21.60 after bottoming out in the EUR 18.50 range. Even if this support can be tested again in the short term, the prospects for higher prices in the long term are more than given. This opinion is also shared by individual Supervisory Board members of the Group, who already made purchases in the area around the EUR 23 mark at the end of last month.

Steinhoff - Things are getting more concrete

It may not be the solution to all problems for Steinhoff International, which is suffering from high debts and accounting scandals, but it is at least a ray of hope: The Company used last week's virtual Annual General Meeting to philosophize about a possible IPO of the Dutch subsidiary Pepco at the end of April. Now the planned initial listing is scheduled for May 26 on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

If you want to call your bank advisor, forget about it. Only private investors from Poland and institutional investors can buy. The Warsaw stock exchange was chosen for strategic reasons. Pepco operates more than 3,200 stores in 16 countries, though more than 1,000 in Poland alone.
The offering comprises around 101 million shares, most of which come from Steinhoff, representing a good 17.5% of the Company's shares. In addition, there is an option to place just under 15 million further shares. The price range for the Pepco shares is said to be between EUR 8.35 and EUR 10.11, which in the best case would provide the parent company with gross proceeds of more than EUR 1 billion.

Freenet at a decisive point

After the reported quarterly figures, Freenet's share price reacted positively with a plus of almost 5% and pushed up to the important resistance at EUR 21.50. If the share price rises significantly above this level it will continue to be a sell candidate. If the share price significantly surpasses this level, it could now turn its attention to the EUR 28 mark. The figures for the first quarter were somewhat mixed. In the first three months of the year, Freenet generated revenues of EUR 619.2 million, a good 4.6% less than in the same period of the previous year, but profitability increased. EBITDA was up 4.4% year-on-year. The main reason for the higher profits was, among other things, the streaming service waipu.tv.

The Executive Board expects a stable revenue development and an EBITDA between EUR 415 and 435 million for the full year. Following the figures, analysts at Warburg Research left their rating for Freenet at "buy" with a price target of EUR 24, while the experts at Goldman Sachs continue to see Freenet shares as a "sell" candidate with a price target of EUR 16.