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One Group Hospitality is a restaurant operator of 4 main brands that includes STK a high end steakhouse, Kona grill a sushi grill bar, and recent additions Benihana and RA Sushi. The company over the past two quarters as been struggling as same store sales numbers have turned negative year over year and on top of that the companies acquisition of safflower holdings which was the holding company of Benihana and RA sushi has saddled the company with a lot of debt in a not so great interest rate environment. On the positive side, the company’s two main brands STK and Benihana have excellent unit economics with stores averaging 20% restaurant level operating margins.

It’s been over a year since I last wrote about Vinci Partners(VINP) and so It’s time for an annual review. For the most part most of Vinci financials have improved from the last time I wrote about them even after adjusting for the Real. AUM increased R$6B from 2022 to 2023 but has remained flat in 2024. AUM growth would have been better but Vinci’s IP&S segment hasn’t been doing great, down from R$26B in Q2 2023 to $25B in Q2 2024. With R$4B in net outflows. Though the IP&S segment is only 25% of revenue. Management expects AUM to increase as rates in Brazil continue down. Other segments such as Infrastructure, private equity and credit are doing much better.

It’s been two years now since I first invested into Onex(TSE:ONEX) and it’s been a bumpy ride bottoming in late 2023 at $59 CAD vs the current price of $96 CAD. Since my last article things operating wise have been much more stable though not exactly positive. On the positive side PE portfolio performance and invested capital per share growth both improved over the prior year. But the FEAUM is slightly down and FRE is still negative.

Deutsche Beteiligungs or DBAN is a small German based middle market private equity firm that currently manages 2.5B in AUM. The company is valued below book value which assigns no value to its investment fee income which makes it attractively valued. Peers usually trade at a premium to book and 10 to 20 times fee related income. The company has recently expanded to Italy and into private debt which will allow the company to continue to grow AUM. I think DBAN is probably a nice place to park my money for the future.

Every year I move through my current portfolio positions and evaluate them against the original thesis. I first brought Village back in Feb of 2022 back when it was struggling profitability wise. Since then net margin has expanded from .98% in 2021 to 2.34% in H1 2024.