The Opulion Quality Review
The method
How we read a listed investment company, that is, a company whose business is to hold a portfolio of stakes in other businesses. A grid that is published, sourced and dated, and that any reader can recompute.
This page tells the method at three speeds: ten seconds to grasp the essentials, two minutes to understand the structure, fifteen minutes to be able to verify everything yourself.
Analysis based exclusively on publicly available information for educational purposes (courtesy translation of the French original). It does not constitute personalised investment advice within the meaning of MiFID II. The Opulion score is a framework for reading the quality and the readability of a file, not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold, nor a forecast. All investment carries risk, including the loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
The Dial: a readability score for the file, its scale and its vocabulary.
The six pillars: what we look at, and with what weight depending on the type of company.
The full mechanics: how a score is assigned, evidenced, challenged and revised.
01 · Ten seconds
The Dial
Every file we study receives an OQS, an Opulion Quality Score, on a scale of 1 to 5. It measures one thing only: the quality, transparency and readability of the file. Not the stock's appeal, not the right moment to buy. Readability.
The formula, published
OQS = sum (pillar score x pillar weight) / 20
Six pillars scored from 1 to 5, weighted by the company's profile, with weights always summing to 20. An outside reader can recompute every score from the same public data: the opposite of a black box.
The OQS scores the quality and readability of the file. A first-rank file is not a recommendation to buy; a hard-to-read file is not a recommendation to sell.
An arc that fills up, with no speedometer needle: the shade encodes the density of the documentation, never an invitation to trade.
02 · Ten seconds
The scale: five contiguous bands
The number alone would say little. Every OQS falls into a band described in advance, from the hard-to-read file to the first-rank file. This vocabulary describes the documentation, never the stock's appeal: no band is called "buy" or "sell".
| 1.0 - 2.0 | File hard to read as it stands |
| 2.0 - 2.8 | Partial file |
| 2.8 - 3.5 | Readable file, points to examine |
| 3.5 - 4.2 | Solid file |
| 4.2 - 5.0 | First-rank file |
The major point of vigilance
An average can hide a serious weakness. If a single pillar falls to 2.0 or below, the reading is capped at "Readable file, points to examine", whatever the score: the weakness is named at the top of the company page, never diluted in the average. The number itself stays displayed as it is, and what would lift the reservation is spelled out.
No company score appears on this page: the method is published, and each file is scored one by one, case by case.
03 · Two minutes
Six pillars, weighed by company type
We look at six things, always the same, anchored in public documents. Their weight depends on the vehicle's profile: what matters for a family holding does not matter to the same degree for a trust run by a third party, or for a conglomerate. The pillars keep their French names: they are part of the grid's identity.
A listed company, often family-controlled, which itself publishes the value of its portfolio. The transparency of that value weighs more here.
The ten-year report card, not the first-day promise.
Long-run performance and its regularity: what management has actually produced over ten years, dividends reinvested, against a stable reference index. It is the only observed evidence in the file, and on the stock market it can be verified independently.
Who holds the wheel, and are they driving in the same direction as you?
Governance and alignment: who controls the company, whether minority shareholders are protected, and whether the people in charge commit their own fortune alongside yours.
Do you get a statement of what is in the basket, often enough and detailed enough to check it yourself?
The transparency of the NAV, the net asset value: the worth of everything the company owns, net of debt, per share. How often it is published, how reliable it is, and whether every figure can be traced back to its source.
Is the shop window clear or frosted?
The readability of the portfolio: can each holding be seen, what share of the value can a third party verify for themselves, and is concentration owned and documented rather than endured.
Does it know where it is going, and does it redeploy its money with discipline?
Capital policy: dividends, share buybacks (the company repurchases its own shares, which raises the value of each remaining share), the capacity to seize an opportunity when it comes. In short, the discipline with which money is put back to work.
How much does the journey cost, and is access easy?
Costs and access: the level and clarity of fees, the risk of a double layer of fees when the company parks part of its portfolio in third-party funds, and the liquidity of the share for a private investor.
The weights always sum to 20, whatever the profile: scores stay comparable from one company to the next. The weights are whole numbers, fixed over time, and shown here exactly as recorded in the current version of the grid.
04 · Fifteen minutes
A score is assigned in three steps
So that no score falls from the sky, every pillar goes through the same written discipline, recorded in the company file.
The balance
The facts pulling upward and the facts pulling downward are laid side by side, each dated, sourced and carrying its level of evidence. The fact first, the reading second, never both in the same sentence.
The boundary test
A score is only settled once we can write, with facts, why the pillar does not deserve the score above and why it does not deserve the score below. If either column cannot be written, the score is wrong and must move.
The trajectory
Every score carries what would make it move, in both directions, tied to a dated document: the next report, the next general meeting. The score moves when the evidence moves, never with the mood.
05 · Fifteen minutes
Five levels of evidence
A score is only worth the evidence behind it. Every figure carries a tag saying where it comes from, and the decisive distinction fits in one sentence: what a company says about itself does not carry the same weight as what a market or an auditor validates independently.
- ValidatedShare price, audited accounts, regulatory filing: publicly observable, independent of the company.
- ConfirmedPrimary but self-declared data: for instance, the valuation of unlisted holdings published by the company itself.
- IndicativeCross-checked secondary source: an industry reference, first-rank press.
- EstimatedA reconstruction of our own, with explicit assumptions, never presented as a company figure.
- Not availableThe information is missing: it is stated as missing, never silently replaced by an assumption.
Not available is a result, never a silence.
06 · The most counter-intuitive point
The discount: a fact displayed, never scored
The discount is the gap between the share price and the net asset value: there is a discount when the share sells for less than the value of what it holds, and a premium when it sells for more. We display it prominently, dated and sourced. But it never enters the score.
Educational illustration: fictional curves, no company.
Why? Because a wide discount is ambiguous: it can signal an opportunity, a lack of transparency, assets of lesser quality, or simply the market's mood. Turning it into a score would amount to saying "buy the gap", which this method forbids itself. A wide discount is an invitation to look closer, never a signal.
The trap we always investigate: a gap can narrow not because the price rises, but because the net asset value falls. Before writing anything about a narrowing, we look for its cause.
For context, the discount is compared with its own history: how far it sits from its five-year average. That context is a reading aid, never a signal: it says nothing about future returns.
07 · The non-negotiable rule
What the score is not
The FSMA is Belgium's financial services and markets authority. Our stance answers a precise legal framework, and it is deliberate: the grid describes the documentation of a file, never the opportunity of a trade.
- Not adviceIt never says to buy, to sell or to hold.
- Not a price targetIt sets no target price and no investment horizon.
- Not a promiseIt predicts no return: it measures readability, at a date.
- Not a rankingNo page sorts companies by score: each file is read on its own, in its own context.
- Not a score on the discountThe price gap remains a fact displayed on its own, never blended into the score.
This choice places the grid outside the scope of an investment recommendation within the meaning of the European market abuse regulation: no buy, sell or hold vocabulary, no horizon, no price target. The reader keeps the whole decision.
The Opulion Quality Review is an investment research method. It assesses the quality, transparency and readability of the file published by a listed investment company, through six pillars, one of which covers governance and alignment. It is not an environmental, social or governance rating within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2024/3005, produces no sustainability score, and issues no standalone assessment of an issuer's governance profile: the pillar concerned exists only as a component of an overall documentary quality score.
08 · What makes the framework credible
A governed grid
A method is only worth something if it forbids itself to move in silence. Four safeguards hold it.
Versioned
The anchors, the weights and the bands are fixed; any change goes through a numbered, dated and justified revision in a change log. An addition never rewrites past verdicts at constant information.
Back-tested
Every year, the scale is re-run on the files already scored. A verdict inconsistent with a past edition triggers a review of the scale, never a silent rewrite of the history.
Adversarial
A score on a company the analyst owns or favours is never finalised alone: an independent review argues the opposite score, and any personal position is disclosed on the file, including its absence.
Dated and revisable
Every score carries its date and the state of the information. A full re-scoring takes place every year and at any material event: a change of manager, a new shareholder agreement, a change of structure.
Current version of the grid: OQR v1.2
What next
See the method at work
The company pages apply this grid, figure by figure, source by source, with the discount displayed on its own.
Analysis based exclusively on publicly available information for educational purposes (courtesy translation of the French original). It does not constitute personalised investment advice within the meaning of MiFID II. The Opulion score is a framework for reading the quality and the readability of a file, not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold, nor a forecast. All investment carries risk, including the loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Opulion is published from Belgium by Alfin Vestors SRL (CBE 0772847696), under Belgian law and the law of the European Union. Its publications appear on a regular schedule and are available to everyone, with no selection of recipients and no adaptation to any individual situation. They are not intended for persons located in territories where their distribution would be restricted or subject to a local authorisation, registration or certification.