As a public markets investor, one of the joys is the continuous feedback we receive. At the end of each trading day, we have immediate access to a report card that explains how our investments performed. It's this real-time feedback that keeps us accountable to our objectives.
This constant report card must, however, be aligned with our time horizon. In our case (and yours?), we maintain a long-term horizon, which means these quarterly and semi-annual updates serve as feedback notes, rather than concluding report notes.
Another area I appreciate in public markets is the transparency. Everyone has access to the same information, simplifying and providing clarity to our actual performance.
The primary aim of these portfolio updates, my report card to you, is to provide an overview of how our investment write-ups and picks are performing, in a transparent and accountable way.
The portfolio updates are reserved for premium members, but given that this article is the first in our series, I thought it would be a good idea to open this update for all readers. I'll structure this update into two parts: the performance update and the fundamentals update.
Performance update
Over the past 5 months, I initiated investment pitches on five companies:
Note: You can view all the detailed spreadsheet valuation models in our valuation models page here.
These 5 companies operate across 3 industries and are from 4 countries (global in true Jenga IP approach), but share one common feature: high-moat companies, that I believe are undervalued relative to their long term potential.
So how are they performing?
In the table below, I included the following indicators:
Each company's article publication date (for complete transparency)
Investment verdict (buy or wait? - note, all pitches have been buys so far)
Share price change since the publication date
Holding period in days, years/months/days
The average return across all deep dives
From the table above, there are a few things we deduce:
To date, we’ve been bullish on all deep dives (green colour code for a “buy” investment verdict).
Performance: All companies have positive share price returns (green colour code, on the right) since we published our deep dives. However, ASUR just marginally escaped negative share price territory with a return of 0.5% over 4 months.
Holding period: The holding periods so far, range from 22 days (TSMC) to 4 months, 24 days (Alphabet) - way too short for any meaningful conclusions.
Overall, the companies on the Global Outperformers buy list seem to be tracking well with an average return of 12.5% in 3 months. As always, I expect lots of volatility and wouldn't be surprised if we have a different story in the next portfolio update.
Given that all five companies have now reported their Q2/H1 2025 earnings, we now have some colour on how fundamentals are tracking relative to my estimates, and next, I'll review their quality, growth and value.
Fundamentals update
I was generally pleased with the H1 earnings updates across the portfolio companies, but first, let's review the numbers split into quality, growth and value.
Quality
Here, I'll highlight some key metrics I consider essential in providing some perspectives on the quality characteristics of our companies:
Jenga IP quality rating (our proprietary quality scoring system)
Return on capital (trailing 12 months)
EBIT margin (trailing 12 months)
Net income margin (trailing 12 months)
Free cash flow margin (trailing 12 months)
Net debt/EBITDA
In the table above, the five companies are each tracking well. I believe all five are high moat companies (>75 on the Jenga IP quality index), and this was reflected in the profitability with above-average margins and return on capital. We had just one underperformer, Alphabet's free cash flow margin, driven by the big tech mega Capex cycle. I'll discuss this further in my next article, exploring the big technology earnings updates.
These five companies have an average net income margin after tax of 34.9%, more than quadruple the global average for listed companies, and it will be interesting to see how stable these margins remain over the investment period of 5 years.
Growth
H1 2025 revenue growth
H1 2025 EBIT growth
The Jenga IP 5-year earnings growth estimate (2024-2029)
For the first half of 2025, all five companies grew their revenue and EBIT, ranging from TSMC's explosive 61.4% EBIT growth to ASUR's 6.6%, which was the only company below our long-term earnings growth average, as calculated in our valuation models, hence its red colour code.
I will discuss more information on each of these over the transport infrastructure (ASUR, OMA and ICT) and big technology (Alphabet, TSMC) earnings updates in the coming days. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the 4 greens and 1 red in the growth segment. H2 2025 will be the bigger challenge, and there are still many years to look forward to.
Value
The final segment of the investment equation is value and here, I examine:
Trailing and forward EV/EBIT
Trailing and forward P/E
The Jenga IP 2029 target exit multiple (green colour code for companies currently priced below our target exit multiple
The valuations of our five companies still look attractive despite their share price appreciation, as none is currently valued above the price-to-earnings multiple I had estimated for each valuation model. As you see, the faster growing and higher quality companies (Alphabet and TSMC) have been assigned higher exit multiples, while the slowest grower, ASUR, has the lowest exit multiple (17x).
A good sell signal would be if these companies are well ahead of the target exit multiple, and as this isn't the case, I still feel comfortable holding each of these companies from a valuation lens.
International Container Terminal's +16% share price run in the past 2 months has the port operator with little room for earnings multiple expansion, so going forward, its story in our view will be predominantly an earnings growth (+9% per year) and a dividend yield (3% per year) story. You can read my highlights on their Q2 results yesterday here.
Final thoughts
Overall, all five companies, in my view, continue to perform well. That said, we still have a long way to go; we've only crossed 95 days of a 1,826-day journey.
We also have a long way to go in terms of the company list. By the end of 2025, we should have at least 10 companies - a deep dive a month keeps the investment brain active!
For premium members, please do watch out for my big technology and transport infrastructure earnings notes, discussing all five companies and their peers in depth.
Compliance note
My goal with Global Outperformers is to share my research process, and I hope that the deep dives, earnings updates, and this portfolio update have achieved that goal so far in an accountable and transparent manner. From a compliance note, while I'm optimistic about the company we are conducting a deep dive on, it's important to note these aren't recommendations for you to buy or sell their shares.
As always, it's essential to do your own research. I might also buy or sell shares before or after I publish the deep dive reports. For example, we began buying shares in the Mexican airports at Jenga IP months before we published the deep dive. As a result, performance here will differ from the Jenga IP Fund and our managed accounts.
For access to the portfolio update spreadsheet file, see below the paywall.