(News Bulletin 247) – Two years ago, we selected around twenty stocks which could replicate the performance of the famous bearded man if he were a conglomerate. How has this basket of securities evolved over a year?

If Santa Claus were a listed multinational, which stocks would need to be invested in to replicate the stock market performance of the “Santa Claus Company”? We asked ourselves this question two years ago and, with the help of several managers, we tried to answer it by defining a portfolio of around twenty stocks (21 exactly).

Its composition turned out to be heterogeneous: champagne (LVMH, Laurent Perrier, Vranken Pommery, Lanson BCC, which owns the brands Champagne Chanoine Frères and Champagne Lanson), toys (Mattel, Hasbro) video games (Nintendo, Electronics Arts) music (Spotify, Universal) and commerce (Amazon, Fnac Darty and Ceconomy, a German group that closely resembles Fnac Darty).

We also selected the chocolatiers Nestlé and Lindt, Walt Disney and Netflix for streaming, the sports hall specialist Basic Fit (“for New Year’s resolutions”, explained Thierry Gautier, of GSD gestion), as well as Compagnie of the Alps and its high altitude resorts for winter sports. Without forgetting Coca-Cola, a company renowned for having fixed the imagery of Santa Claus.

But the company whose presence will surprise you the most is probably Stora Enso. “When you think of Santa Claus as a company, Stora Enso immediately comes to mind. Like Santa Claus, it is Finnish, and it makes wood in Northern Europe. This company specializes in paper pulp and its derivatives, it’s THE company of Santa Claus,” explained Nicolas Descoqs, financial manager at Clartan Associés.

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A portfolio that atomizes the CAC 40

Last year this “Santa Claus” basket jumped 17.67% over one year (between December 23, 2022 and December 21, 2023), beating the CAC 40 by a narrow margin.

What about 2024? Did it do better or worse than the flagship index of the Paris Stock Exchange?

Answer: since December 22, 2023 (last listed day before Christmas last year) the 21 stocks in the basket have increased on average by 10.9%, which is much more than the CAC 40 which for its part fell by 3. 9% over the same period.

Certainly, comparing our Santa Claus portfolio with the Parisian index amounts to setting the bar low. The CAC 40 significantly underperformed the major global indices in 2024 due to political uncertainty in France linked to the dissolution of the National Assembly, and the slowdown in China which weighed down the luxury sector, a large sector. of the Parisian index.

However, our Santa Claus portfolio also beat the Stoxx Europe 600, which gained 5% over the same period. However, it remains far from the performance of the S&P 500, the major American index (+25%).

This shows that our basket has a virtue: it is relatively diversified, which explains why it ultimately evolves in a manner comparable to the major indices. Even if certain large compartments are completely absent from this portfolio, such as heavy industry and the financial sector.

Spotify drives performance

In detail, a few lines clearly showed the performance of our Santa Claus portfolio in 2024. This is the case for Spotify, which recorded an increase of more than 140% over one year. The Swedish music streaming specialist listed in New York has further gained subscribers, with the number of monthly active users at 640 million at the end of September compared to 574 million a year earlier. Above all, the group has produced “extraordinary” work to improve its margins in 2024, Bank of America noted last month. This resulted in price increases but also cost reductions made possible by the job cuts made in 2023.

In addition to Spotify, Netflix (+88%), which delivered a succession of robust results this year, and Amazon (+47%), which also improved its margins in 2024, sign the big progressions in the portfolio. Nintendo, whose price still seems very linked to speculation on a new generation of the Switch console (+31.5%), and Walt Disney (+24%), which benefited from better results in its streaming and box office activities. films “Vice-versa 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine”, also recorded good performances.

In terms of underperformance, our portfolio was not helped by the marked drop in LVMH (-14.9%), which was penalized this year by the slowdown in demand for luxury products, as well as champagne specialists Lanson-BCC, Vranken Pommery and Laurent Perrier, which each lost between 13% and 19.6%.

Nestlé (-23.9%), which suffered this year and was forced to issue a profit warning, and Stora Enso (-26.4%), which was undermined by weak demand for dough. cardboard, also weighs down the entire portfolio.

Ultimately, if you had invested 1,000 euros in each of these 21 stocks a year ago, your portfolio would amount to approximately 23,839 euros (excluding commissions and taxes), or a gross gain of 13.9%. The difference with stock market performance is explained by positive exchange rate effects (especially on the dollar which has appreciated significantly against the euro), our basket including several stocks listed in the United States, in Zurich as well as one in Japan (Nintendo).

Over 10 years, the portfolio displays a performance of more than 265%, far superior to the CAC 40 (+71%) and this time also to the S&P 500 (+185%). This outperformance can again be explained by the rather dizzying leaps of tech groups. Netflix took more than 1,770%, Amazon 1,390% and Nintendo 610%. We can also add LVMH which gained 375% over the period, despite its poor performance in 2024.

Assuming that you invested 1,000 euros in each stock listed 10 years ago (17 in total, because Ceconomy, Basic Fit, Spotify and Universal were not present on the stock market at the time), your portfolio would reach more than 69,000 euros…

*Methodology note: for comparisons over 10 years, we used the price of a stock in December 2014, and for one year we took the price of December 22, 2023. We took the same dates for the stock rates. euro-dollar, euro-Swiss franc and euro-yen exchanges.

For practical reasons, share prices and exchange rates for the year 2024 were decided on Friday December 20, shortly after closing.