Pumas, Dinos and SaaS stuff
Puma, The Platform Group, Dino, Pfisterer, Dermapharm, Unifiedpost
Puma (PUM): Pinault Weighs Options as Puma Enters Transition
Puma’s stock recently briefly spiked on reports that the Pinault family, which owns roughly a third of the company, is considering options, including a potential sale. Conversations with possible buyers such as Anta Sports and Li Ning have reportedly taken place, though the chances of a full takeover still appear slim.
For now, Puma remains focused on its own transition, as new CEO Arthur Hoeld takes the reins and looks to stabilize performance. The coming year is set to be a rebuilding phase, with an emphasis on reviving growth and shoring up profitability after a stretch of disappointing results.
The company cut its outlook with second-quarter results, now guiding for a double-digit sales decline and a negative EBIT this year. That backdrop underlines how challenging the turnaround will be. Puma is trying to find its footing in an increasingly competitive sportswear market where Nike and Adidas are refocusing on wholesale, one of Puma’s traditional strengths, and ramping up affordable “take down” product lines. That leaves Puma squeezed, needing to reinvest in its brand identity and product pipeline to regain lost ground.
Still, history offers a potential playbook. Investors might remember Anta’s acquisition of Amer Sports in 2019 and its subsequent successful relisting.
Puma has the brand recognition and distribution reach that, if revitalized, could carry meaningful upside over the longer term. For now, though, the immediate reality is one of transition: a company under new leadership, tackling declining sales, and fending off rivals in a crowded field, while its largest shareholder openly weighs whether to keep or move on.
The Platform Group (TPG): Building Scale Across Verticals
The Platform Group entered 2025 with impressive momentum, delivering sharp growth across gross merchandise volume, sales, and profitability. Net sales were up nearly 50% year on year, on strong organic growth of almost 60%. A big part of the story is scale: more partners joined the network, more industries adopted the group’s solutions, and customer activity accelerated. The platform now touches close to 16,000 partners across 27 industries, proof of its ability to expand laterally into new verticals.
Seven acquisitions in the first half added further breadth, ranging from pet supplies to software solutions. This steady roll-up strategy is giving TPG both additional product depth and more active customers, with order volume surging by nearly 40%. Profitability kept pace, with adjusted EBITDA almost doubling on the back of higher margins and an ongoing efficiency program. The only blemish was cash flow, which turned negative due to the investment and M&A activity – a trade-off management seems comfortable making as it builds scale.
The consumer goods segment remained the star performer, driving the bulk of sales growth and margin expansion, while other divisions like industrial and freight goods also chipped in.
Looking ahead, management kept full-year guidance intact, with the company on track to nearly double GMV and meaningfully improve profitability. With a long-term ambition of becoming a billion-euro-plus platform spanning multiple verticals, TPG is showing how a marketplace model, once rooted in retail, can steadily expand into adjacent industries and evolve into a broader B2B ecosystem.
Dino Polska (DNP): Steady Growth, Tweaked Guidance
Dino continued to post solid growth in the second quarter of 2025, with sales up nearly 20% year on year, driven by a mix of strong same-store sales and rapid store expansion. Comparable sales rose close to 9%, boosted by the timing of Easter and coming in well ahead of food inflation and the performance of rival Biedronka.
Expansion remains a key lever: Dino opened almost 90 new stores in the quarter, bringing the total footprint to nearly 2,900 outlets. Margins also inched higher thanks to stronger gross profit, helping EBITDA grow by a healthy 25%.
Despite the solid delivery, results fell slightly short of consensus expectations, especially at the earnings level, where higher labor and marketing costs weighed. Net income missed forecasts by almost 10%, a reminder that Dino’s breakneck expansion comes with rising overhead. Still, gross margin trends remain encouraging, reflecting both supply chain stability and rational competition in the Polish market. The company continues to show that it can expand rapidly without sacrificing profitability entirely.
Management nudged down its guidance for same-store sales growth to mid-single digits, acknowledging softer summer demand due to unfavorable weather, but confirmed an ambitious store-opening plan. Capex expectations were also raised slightly to support that growth.
With store coverage across Poland still highly uneven, the company has plenty of room to expand into underserved regions. The short-term guidance adjustment may cool expectations, but Dino’s long-term growth story remains one of relentless network build-out, supported by disciplined pricing and consistent margin management.
Pfisterer (PFIS): Orders Drive Momentum, Margins Hold Steady
Pfisterer’s first half of 2025 underscored the strength of its order book, with intake rising nearly 45% compared to last year and growth even accelerating from the first quarter. Book-to-bill remained healthy at above one, ensuring a strong pipeline for the months ahead. Revenues climbed sequentially, with second-quarter sales topping €110 million versus €100 million in the first quarter, showing that the company is steadily translating orders into top-line growth. The overhead line business, hurt last year by a fire, continues to be a weak spot, but momentum in other areas more than offset the drag.
Margins held up well despite some quarterly variation. Adjusted EBITDA reached nearly €40 million in the half, with an overall margin of about 18%. Sequentially, profitability dipped in the second quarter as the mix shifted, but this was expected given the softer contribution from overhead lines earlier in the year.
Management is also laying groundwork for the future with investments in a new HVDC laboratory, positioning Pfisterer to enter the cable systems and connectors market in 2026. These steps show a company that isn’t just delivering today but actively preparing for tomorrow.
With half-year revenues already covering about half of consensus full-year forecasts and a strong order backlog, Pfisterer looks well placed to accelerate in the second half.
Expectations are climbing alongside the share price, raising the pressure to sustain this momentum. But so far, the combination of robust bookings, sequential sales growth, and solid margins suggests a business on the front foot, benefiting from strong demand in power infrastructure while investing for the next wave of electrification needs.
Dermapharm (DMP): A Steady Hand in a Transition Year
Dermapharm’s first half of 2025 highlighted both its resilience and the growing pains of a portfolio in transition. The company’s strength remains firmly in Branded Pharma, where demand in allergology and international expansion kept growth intact despite a tougher overall environment. This segment is now the clear anchor of the group, providing stable earnings and a platform to expand internationally. In many ways, Branded Pharma has become the steady engine that keeps Dermapharm moving forward, even when other parts of the portfolio wobble.
Elsewhere, the story was more mixed. Other Healthcare Products posted flat sales but a drop in profitability, weighed down by the ongoing restructuring of Arkopharma in Spain. The short-term pain is obvious, but management is already pointing to the first benefits of those changes, with margin improvements beginning to show once currency headwinds are stripped out.
It’s a similar picture in Parallel Import, where sales continued to decline as the company deliberately trims its portfolio, even accepting short-term losses from restructuring costs to pave the way for a leaner business. Both of these areas are being reshaped, and while that process drags on results, it is also setting up a cleaner, more profitable structure.
Taken together, the results show Dermapharm balancing strength and transition. Branded Pharma provides the consistency, while Arkopharma and Parallel Import are being retooled for the future.
Management’s decision to stick with its full-year guidance suggests confidence that the pieces are falling into place. What emerges is a company less dependent on low-margin parallel imports and more focused on branded therapies and international growth.
It’s a story of a business tightening its focus while keeping its most important growth engines running steadily, and that combination bodes well for the next stage of its development.
Unifiedpost (BANQ): Shedding Old Skin, Growing Into SaaS
Unifiedpost, now branding its SaaS activities under Banqup, spent the first half of 2025 reshaping itself into a leaner and more focused company. Subscription revenue — the lifeblood of any SaaS model — showed strong growth even after adjusting for divestments, while transaction volumes added a steady contribution.
Project-based revenues slipped, which is natural given the company’s pivot away from one-offs and toward recurring revenue streams. Margins were pressured by higher staffing and platform costs, but management is aggressively cutting overhead, slimming down functions and selling off non-core businesses to streamline the model.
That restructuring comes with short-term pain. The group is still loss-making at the EBITDA level, showing how far it needs to go before reaching scale and profitability. Yet the sale of assets like 21 Grams and the UK print business has both simplified the business and injected cash into the balance sheet, giving Unifiedpost more breathing room to pursue its SaaS ambitions.
What remains is a company that is smaller in scope but clearer in direction: focused squarely on digital invoicing and payments, with a strategy to ride the regulatory wave pushing European businesses toward e-invoicing.
And that wave is gathering force. Belgium’s mandate in 2026, France’s rollout on schedule, and Germany’s confirmed 2027 deadline all point to years of rising demand ahead.
Unifiedpost is positioning itself to capture that growth, reiterating a goal of 25% subscription revenue growth this year and turning free cash flow positive before year-end. It’s not there yet, but the trajectory is clearer than ever: a slimmed-down SaaS specialist betting on inevitability — that invoicing in Europe is going digital, and soon.
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