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Speaking as a chemist and finance guy, I cannot praise this analysis enough. Not only informative and deep, but a thoroughly enjoyable read. I am not ready to buy yet but have been watching Croda for a couple of years. Previously, I just thought they were too expensive.

Another chemical company, operating in an interesting space, that you might like to look at, is Norwegian company, Borregaard, which I have owned for several years in my portfolio. They are listed on both Oslo and Stockholm and can be settled over a UK platform (SEDOL: B9134C0).

Thank you once again for sharing your insights.

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Many thanks Alastair for your kind words.

Borregaard is a name I knew fairly well back in 2017-18. In other words I am hopelessly out of date! Thanks for the suggestion to revisit. It's good to see they appear to have been doing well in the meantime.

(Liquidity of just below $1m/day is not great relative to the $1.8bn market cap, as with so many European midcaps.)

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Jul 8·edited Jul 8Liked by Alex Sweet

Verdad put out an interesting piece of research today - or at least it popped up in my email box today - which questions whether the price to be paid for the enhanced liquidity in the US market is worth it. It is not yet published on their website:

https://verdadcap.com/weekly-research

As a manager of a family SIPP and ISA's, it is rare that I am unable to deal in the volumes I wish, although I totally understand different constraints apply to fund managers managing larger pools of capital. I am minded of the approach of Rockwood Strategic to illiquid equities at the smaller end of the UK market. A lot of their exits have to be corporate in nature, given the size of stake they usually take

To some extent, the illiquidity issue and both the resulting bid-offer spread and ability to get out of a position, also depends on one's investing approach. Some of our investments have been held for more than 10 years, a good example being Investor AB.

Regards and thanks for all your hard work and willingness to share it.

Alastair

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Aug 20Liked by Alex Sweet

Thanks for this. Great detail

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Another great write-up Alex. Great to see what lies beneath the surface. This was part of a very large group of companies I used to cover over ten years ago in the materials space. Great to see the transformation and how the quality stand out from the average within that sector in a somewhat similar way as with Borregaard.

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