Bergman and Beving (B&B), founded in 1906, is a 5bn SEK Swedish-listed B2B value-added industrial distributor and serial acquirer. It's the mothership of 5 listed entities, including Lagercrantz and Addtech that have compounded FCF per share 20%+ for over two decades.

B&B piqued our interest given its unique legacy and the relatively new board and CEO. More specifically, management has a proven track record of conducting accretive M&A over decades at Lagercrantz. B&B may find itself in a similar situation as Lagercrantz in the early 2000s, with the same team looking to replicate Lagercrantz's performance at the mothership.

We’ve been studying B&B’s legacy for a few years and the mothership more deeply for ~6 months. In March 2023, we visited Sweden and met with the management team and Former executives of B&B, Lagercrantz, Lifco, and many other Swedish serial acquirers. We’ve also interviewed the current CEO of B&B, as well as a number of former CEOs and executives of the spincos privately and publicly.

This profile untangles B&B’s messy history over the last 20-years and provides a framework to analyse and value the business today.