Independence, holdings and conflicts of interest

1. The principle

Opulion studies listed investment companies. Its author holds them.

We see no contradiction, and we refuse to pretend otherwise. It would be odd to defend the idea that these companies give private individuals an intelligent way into the markets, and to bar oneself from taking part in them. An analyst who never invests in what he analyses is no more objective: he is merely less exposed.

The guarantee we offer the reader is therefore not abstaining from holding. It is disclosure, abstaining from dealing around our publications, and the traceability of all of the above. This page states what we disclose, what we forbid ourselves, and how we prove it.

2. What we disclose

For every covered company, and in every publication concerning it, we state:

• whether or not the author holds securities in the company;
• the direction of the position, long or short;
• whether or not the net position exceeds 0.5% of the issued share capital, a threshold set by Article 6 of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/958 for the declaration of a position by whoever produces research;
• the date on which this information is fixed.

This disclosure covers the author, the persons closely associated with him, and the legal entities he controls, including Alfin Vestors SRL.

We publish neither the amount nor the number of securities held. Regulation does not require it, and the exact size of a private estate is not market information. What matters to the reader is the existence of the interest, its direction, and the fact that it stays well below the threshold from which it could weigh on the company.

The disclosure appears in the body of the publication, not merely behind a link. On this point we follow the position of ESMA, which recalls that a mere link to a disclosure page may not be sufficient.

Declaring the absence of a position counts as much as declaring one. A disclosure that appeared only on the companies held would itself be information: its silence would become a signal. The badge therefore appears on every sheet.

3. The register of holdings

Opulion's universe under coverage counts [N] companies. The list below declares, for each of them, whether or not the author holds a position. Alphabetical order; this is not a ranking.

[TABLEAU GÉNÉRÉ DEPUIS LA TABLE DE RÉFÉRENCE : Société / Statut déclaré]

This register carries no quantity, no amount and no portfolio value: the disclosure bears on the fact of holding, never on the size of the position. It is produced from the same reference table as the transparency badge on each sheet, so that the two cannot diverge.

Part of these positions is held through a family joint ownership, over which the author holds a management mandate. This holding is treated, in its entirety, under the same rules as directly held positions: disclosure, the 0.5% threshold, the abstention window. No information on the identity of the other family members concerned, nor on the split of ownership, is published: it has no relevance for the reader and is a matter of their privacy.

4. The thirty-day abstention window

This is the most important rule on this page, and the simplest.

One month before, one month after, we do not touch the stock.

When an Opulion publication carries an appraisal of a covered company, the author places no order on that company's stock during the thirty calendar days before that publication and the thirty calendar days after it, in any account over which he has the power to act. The window concerns only that company: publishing on one opens none on the others. Outside these windows, the author manages his estate like any other investor.

It applies to the author, to the persons closely associated with him and to the legal entities he controls.

Why thirty days before. Because an author who buys the day before publishing looks as though he bought in order to publish.

Why thirty days after. Because the gravest reproach that can be levelled at an author who holds is not that he bought before: it is that he sold after, taking advantage of the movement caused by his own publication. European law names this behaviour and ranks it among market manipulation. We have therefore calibrated the window on the offence itself: an author who cannot touch the stock for a month after publishing cannot, materially, profit from the effect of his opinion on the price. We prefer a rule harder than custom and easy to verify, over a rule that is compliant and unverifiable.

No text imposes this window on us. We impose it on ourselves.

5. What opens the window, and what does not

It is not the subject of a publication that opens the window, it is the nature of the content.

It opens as soon as we make a judgement, express an opinion or an appraisal on a covered company or on its stock, and as soon as we put forward a figure of our own making, that is, a figure resting on an assumption of ours where the data is not public. Our analysis notes, our ratings and our estimates fall into this case. Presentation counts as much as words: a chart that tells the reader where to place today against yesterday carries a judgement, even if no sentence says so.

It does not open when we report facts: what a company has published, when it published it, and what its own figures give when divided one by the other. A calendar record, a census of publications, a structure map, a historical series presented without comment carry no appraisal, and a division is not a judgement: the reader who redoes it finds the same number. A fact is not an opinion, and we refuse to pretend otherwise. A rule that also froze facts would protect no one: it would merely stop us from informing you.

In case of doubt, we treat the publication as an appraisal. And we do not leave you to guess: every publication carries, on the day it appears, a statement of what it is, and our notes and articles add the two dates of the window. That window is opened on the calendar before publication, and not recorded after the fact.

6. What we absolutely forbid ourselves

• No short position on a covered company. Ever.
• No derivative instrument and no leverage on a covered company: no option, no future, no contract for difference, no turbo, no warrant. We hold only shares, directly, without leverage.
• No transaction contrary to our own published analysis.
• No transaction on the basis of inside information.
• No undisclosed holding on a covered company.

These five prohibitions are not stylistic precautions. Taken together, they make structurally impossible the schemes of which a holding author may be suspected: one cannot organise a manoeuvre on the share price when one can only be long, directly, without leverage, and locked for a month on either side of every publication.

7. Inside information

Opulion works exclusively on public information. We solicit no non-public information, and we ask in writing, of every issuer we contact, that none be communicated to us, including in confidence or under embargo. We refuse on principle any wall-crossing and any market sounding.

If information liable to be inside information reaches us nonetheless, through whatever channel and even without our having asked for it, the rule is immediate and without prior assessment:

1. freeze on the line: no further transaction on that stock, for the author, the persons closely associated with him and the legal entities he controls, Alfin Vestors SRL included;
2. freeze on publication: no further publication on that company;
3. entry in the register, dated;
4. written notification to the issuer, informing it that potentially inside information has been transmitted to us without having been solicited.

The freeze is lifted only once the information has been made public by the issuer, or once the issuer confirms in writing that it was not inside information. In case of doubt as to the classification, we freeze. The cost of an unjustified freeze is nil; that of a transaction on inside information is not.

8. Covering a company and investing in it are two distinct decisions

Two twin rules, and both must be upheld:

• We do not cover a company because we hold it. A position is never a reason to bring a company into coverage. The coverage perimeter follows published criteria, prior and independent.
• We do not bar ourselves from covering a company because we hold it. That would be a false virtue: it would deprive the reader of the analysis of the companies we know best, and would create an absurd incentive, that of publishing only on what one does not understand well enough to invest in.

Every coverage decision is dated, reasoned and entered in the register before any publication. When a company already held enters coverage, the existing holding is captured as a snapshot, dated and disclosed from the first publication concerning it.

9. How the register is kept

We keep a dated register of holdings and transactions on all covered companies.

• It is kept by Quentin de Viron, personally, who is the named responsible analyst of every Opulion publication. This keeping is not delegated.
• Every transaction on a covered company is entered before the order is transmitted, then completed after execution. A transaction not pre-recorded is a breach of this policy, even if it is lawful.
• It records, for each line: the date and time, the company, the direction, the holding vehicle, the resulting net position, its proportion of the issued capital, the state of the abstention window at the moment of the order, and the reference of the latest publication.
• The corresponding contract notes and portfolio statements are archived and produced on request of any competent authority.
• The public summary of the register, which appears in section 3 of this page, is updated at every movement and reviewed each quarter.

A register kept is a defence. A register missing is a confession.

10. Family Partners and Alfin Vestors

Quentin de Viron is manager of Alfin Vestors SRL and works as a family officer at Family Partners, a Belgian family office.

Opulion is a distinct activity, carried out in his own name. It acts for no client, manages no assets, and none of its work is performed on behalf of Family Partners or any of its clients. The name of a Family Partners client will never appear in an Opulion publication.

From this follow three firm rules:

• no company is brought into coverage, set aside, or treated differently by reason of an interest, a position or a relationship of Family Partners or any of its clients;
• we never deal in a covered security in the knowledge of an intention or an order flow of a Family Partners client;
• any non-public information of which the author becomes aware in the course of his duties at Family Partners triggers the freeze provided for in section 7, on the same terms.

Management mandates. The author may be entrusted, by members of his family or by other third parties, with a management mandate over securities accounts of which he is not the sole owner, or of which he is not the owner at all. This policy applies in full to any account over which the author holds such a mandate: no transaction is executed, authorised or permitted there on the securities of a covered company during the thirty days before and the thirty days after any Opulion publication concerning it. This rule applies whether the position belongs to the author in whole, in part, or not at all.

Family officer activity. In the exercise of this activity, the author formulates, orally or in writing, no personal investment advice, no buy, sell or hold recommendation, and no opinion tailored to the situation of a given family or portfolio, on a company covered by Opulion or on any other listed security. What he thinks of a covered company is what Opulion publishes, nothing more said in private. He never shares, in this setting, an analysis or an opinion on a covered company before its publication by Opulion.

11. Remuneration

Opulion receives no remuneration, no payment, no benefit and no funding from the companies it covers, nor from anyone acting on their behalf. There exists no agreement with a covered company for the production of a publication. Opulion carries out no activity as market maker, liquidity provider, placement agent or adviser to issuers.

No covered company has any editorial say. When we submit a figure to the factual verification of an investor-relations department, that verification bears on the facts, never on our conclusions.

12. Why we apply a framework to which we may not be bound

This has to be said plainly, because it is the heart of this page.

European law regulates investment recommendations: whoever says to buy, to sell, or sets a price target, must disclose his interests according to a precise formalism. That is the object of Article 20 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 on market abuse and of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/958. Opulion says none of that. We do not recommend. We could therefore argue that this regime does not concern us, and say nothing about what the author holds.

We have chosen the opposite, for three reasons.

The first is legal. Another text, for its part, does not care whether we recommend or not. It targets the act of issuing a public opinion on a security one holds, then profiting from the effect of that opinion on the price, without having disclosed that conflict of interest. That is Article 12(2)(d) of the same regulation, and it sets no holding threshold. We publish opinions, the author holds: disclosure is therefore not a courtesy, it is the regime. And it does not have to wait until we one day cross the border into recommendation.

The second is intellectual. An analysis is judged on its arguments, never on the supposed purity of the one who writes it. But the reader can judge our arguments only if he knows where we speak from. To hide from him that we hold is to take away from him a piece he needs in order to contradict us. We want to be contradicted; we must therefore give him the means to do so.

The third is simple. A disclosure costs four lines. A concealment discovered costs a reputation. There is no trade-off.

We therefore do not endure transparency. We choose it, and we voluntarily apply the disclosure standards expected of investment research, even though we produce none within the meaning of the regulation.

13. On which texts this policy is built

On Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 on market abuse, in particular its Articles 7 and 8 (what inside information is and its use), 10 (its unlawful disclosure), 12 (market manipulation) and 20 (the objective presentation of research and the mention of interests). And on Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/958, in particular its Articles 2, 3, 5 and 6 (the identity of the producer, presentation, the interests to be mentioned, and the 0.5% threshold).

The abstention window, for its part, comes from no text: it draws on the historic standard of market analysts and deliberately toughens it.

None of this makes Opulion an investment-services provider or an adviser. See our legal notice.

14. What this page does not do

It does not turn our publications into advice. Opulion makes no buy, sell or hold recommendation, no price target, no personal investment advice. The disclosure of an interest has never made a bad line of reasoning acceptable: it merely gives you the means to judge ours.

15. Breach and contact

Any breach of this policy that comes to light is recorded in the register, corrected, and publicly disclosed on this page. We do not correct in silence.

For any question: research@opulion.com

Opulion is an independent research activity that publishes non-recommending analyses based exclusively on public information. It acts for no client, manages no assets, and provides no investment advice, price target or recommendation.