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Our promise

We promise our clients the highest research quality and optimal support. Through our company analyses, we offer issuers added value that goes far beyond the content of traditional financial reporting or company announcements. We adhere strictly to the set deadlines and always communicate respectfully and openly with our clients and investor groups. Suggestions for improvement are important to us. With this approach, we strive for long-term, intensive relationships with all parties involved.

By focussing purely on research, we are free from the conflicts of interest that can arise in integrated investment banks due to the demands of other departments or financial holdings. Our analysts do not invest in companies covered by Sphene Capital GmbH. We draw attention to any remaining conflicts of interest.

Our concept

Founded in 2010, Sphene Capital sees itself as a quality leader for equity and bond research.

Our research coverage begins with a comprehensive initiation report of 50 to 80 pages. The central element of our research reports is the development of the equity or bond story, in which we work out the main reasons why an investor should invest in the company. The equity or bond story includes a detailed analysis of the company’s products and services, its value creation and unique selling points.

In commercial due diligence, we analyse in detail the company’s competitive position, the intensity of competition, supplier and customer structures, and the company’s regional and sectoral positioning.

When analysing the company’s key financial figures, we evaluate all available annual and quarterly reports. We attach particular importance to adjusting the financial and earnings position for non-recurring factors. Based on this, we forecast future financial data and create an integrated overall model comprising a segment analysis, income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

The next step is the company valuation. The key element is a three-stage DCF model, the results of which we confirm using further valuation methods. In doing so, we utilise all standard market methods (in particular enterprise value and peer group methods) and select those that are appropriate to the individual situation of the company; in individual cases, we also develop our own valuation methods.

Once we have started research coverage, we prepare regular updates following all relevant company and ad hoc announcements. These are usually published on the same day.

Thanks to our co-operation with leading information service providers in Europe, we are able to send our research products simultaneously to the various financial and business editorial offices, newsrooms, and traditional financial service providers such as Reuters or Bloomberg. The distribution lists also include several thousand institutional investors, asset managers, and family offices with an affinity for small caps in Germany and other European countries. We are also in regular personal and telephone contact with many of them and support them in their opinion-forming processes. We also use our contacts with capital market journalists and stock market newsletters to regularly produce our own articles on the companies we analyse.

On request, we organise non-transaction-related roadshows for institutional clients in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

In addition to our original research services, we offer management training in capital market communication and prepare company fact books and company presentations.

Our analysts

After studying economics at the University of Passau, Peter Thilo Hasler began his career as a financial analyst for electronic stocks at Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich. From the mid-1990s onwards, he was deputy head of corporate analysis and responsible for all of the financial institution’s IPOs. At the end of the 1990s, he became Head of Neuer Markt Research at HypoVereinsbank and later Head of Small Caps Research at UniCredit. In 2006, he moved to Viscardi AG, a Munich-based investment bank, before co-founding Sphene Capital GmbH in 2010, where he now works as a financial analyst. Peter Thilo Hasler is a CEFA analyst of the German Association for Financial Analysis and Asset Management (DVFA), the professional association of investment professionals in Germany. He has been a member of the DVFA Executive Board since 2018, is Deputy Chairman of the DVFA Commission for Company Analysis, and a lecturer in several DVFA training courses. He is also a member of the Financial Reporting Committee of the German Accounting Standards Committee (DRSC). Peter Thilo Hasler has been a lecturer at FOM Munich since 2014 and lectures on topics relating to company valuation and capital market research. He is the author of numerous articles and specialist books on company valuation and corporate bonds and writes regular columns for the financial press.

Susanne Hasler is Managing Director of Sphene Capital. She began her career as a strategist for the Eurozone equity markets in the mid-1990s at Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank and later continued her work at HypoVereinsbank. She was responsible for analysing fundamental market structures in the German and eurozone equity markets. In 2001, she switched to corporate analysis, where she covered companies from numerous sectors, including retail, consumer and luxury goods, construction, utilities and the then still new segment of renewable energies as well as transport and logistics.