April 2025 Portfolio Update
8% alpha to continue the 15% YTD outperformance
Hello and welcome to the Heavy Moat Investments newsletter! April was an extraordinary month with a lot of volatility and news flow. Proposed US Tariffs drove a crash in the US markets, which has now mostly normalized again.
Performance
April was a volatile month, but my portfolio managed to end the month up 2%, versus declining benchmarks. I’m very happy with this result and I’m finally caught up to the Nasdaq 100 and outperformed all other benchmarks.
The S&P 500 is my primary benchmark at the moment (given my diversified portfolio I should maybe change that to the MSCI World) and I managed to outperform it by 8.5% in April, my second highest monthly alpha after November 2023, where Adyen and Napco rebounded strongly as then large positions in my portfolio.
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HMI continues to grow—this month, we welcomed 466 new subscribers, over 1,200 new followers and reached 67,318 views. Unfortunately, the month was very soft and besides free subscriber growth all other metrics were negative: Views, open rate and paid subscribers fell. I’m trying to not let this demotivate me and will continue to post high-quality content in order to have better upcoming months.
New Content in March
Here’s what I covered this month:
Deep Dive: Eckert & Ziegler #1, Eckert & Ziegler #2
Earnings update: Edenred/Pluxee,
Strategy: Downside focus, tariff discussion, performance update, dividends in quality investing
Portfolio Retrospect: Reflection of past mistakes
New Investment Pitches: Dutch small cap 16.99% IRR
Quality Score: Texas Instruments
Podcast: Pluxee, with
Portfolio Update
In April I sold 2/3 of my Pluxee position and reinvested into Edenred. I discussed it here, but to summarize:
Rumors about Brazil regulations sent both stocks down.
Edenred fell twice as hard as Pluxee, despite having a much lower exposure to the Brazil situation than Pluxee.
At this point Edenred has a much better risk/reward ratio in my opinion.
I was fortunate to notice some large seller on the small German exchange my broker uses and was able to buy Constellation Software down 15% in a day during the tariff crash. Additionally I bought some more EVS Broadcast and Sartorius Stedim during the lows. Especially Sartorius Stedim worked out well, which I bought at my cost base of 150€ and has now risen to 200€ following great earnings.
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Let’s look at the top detractors and contributors to my X% performance.
📈 Top Contributors:
Nu Holdings +15%
Frosta AG +14.5%
Sartorius Stedim +11%
Mercado LIbre +9%
📉 Top Detractors:
Arcure -13.6%
Texas Instruments -13.1%
Edenred -11.7%
Danaher -7.3%
Napco Security -5.3%
What’s Next?
For paid subscribers, I’ll share my updated valuation matrix with this report—helping you see which stocks I currently find most compelling within my portfolio.
If you’re serious about identifying high-quality investments early, consider upgrading to premium and unlocking the full experience.