In a few days Christmas will begin, and one of the big beneficiaries of the holiday is the Swiss chocolate specialist Lindt & Sprüngli. From the perspective of the companies involved, Christmas is a festival of consumption and particularly rings the cash registers of the confectionery producers. I will give you some examples in this „final bell“.

The history of Lindt & Sprüngli Let’s look first at the corporate history: The origins of Lindt & Sprüngli lie in the two chocolate factories of Rudolf Sprüngli in Horgen and Rodolphe Lindt in Bern.

Rudolf Sprüngli Junior took over his father’s company in 1891. A year later, the Confiserie Sprüngli was then spun off as a separate company. In 1899, Rudolf Sprüngli built the factory in Kilchberg and converted the company into a joint-stock company in the same year.

Soon afterwards, Chocolat Sprüngli AG took over the Berne chocolate factory of Rodolphe Lindt with the patent for its Conchier process. As a result, the joint-stock company United Berne and Zurich Chocolate Factories Lindt & Sprüngli was born. In 1986, Lindt & Sprüngli was finally listed on the stock exchange, bringing in fresh capital and thus laying the foundation for international expansion.

In 1989, the production and administrative building in Stratham, New Hampshire, USA, was put into operation. In 1997, the Italian company „Caffarel“ was bought in Turin, as well as a Lindt & Sprüngli Company founded in Sydney.

At the beginning of 1998, the acquisition of the „Ghirardelli Chocolate Company“ in San Francisco, the oldest American chocolate factory, followed. Further subsidiaries can now be found in Hong Kong, Mexico, Poland, Sweden and Spain. The climax of the takeover series came in 2014 with the purchase of US rival Russel Stover.

Significant increases in sales and profits Lindt & Sprüngli’s business has been developing very solidly for decades. In the first half of 2023, sales rose by 10.1% to 2.09 billion Swiss francs (CHF). The operating result (EBIT) increased disproportionately to the sales by 37.7% from 185.2 to a smooth 255 million CHF.

The operating profit margin (EBIT margin) thus increased from 9.3 to 12.2%. The net profit even rose by 47.8% from 138.4 to 204.5 million CHF. The free cash flow (the free cash flow) reached a value of 137.3 million CHF.

Lindt & Sprüngli shares are among the most expensive in the world Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG is a joint-stock company traded on the Swiss stock exchange. The bearer shares of Lindt & Sprüngli Holding are among the most expensive securities in the world: the current price is around 105,000 CHF.

In addition to the rarely traded bearer shares of Lindt & Sprüngli, so-called participation certificates are also traded on the stock exchange. But even these papers are not optically cheap with a price of just over 10,500 CHF.

For securities portfolios with large volumes: In my opinion, the Lindt & Sprüngli share is worth a look, as Lindt & Sprüngli is a very solid company with a business model that is little to no dependent on the economic cycle.