Aevis Victoria: A 50% Discount, Three Catalysts, and a Capitation Model Switzerland Can't Copy
Swiss Medical Network margins leap to 21.6% as the Viva integrated-care bet turns black — but the whole story still trades at half its parts.
AEVS.SW · Earnings Call · 2026-09-17
A holding company trading at half its own math
The headline at Aevis Victoria's H1 2026 call wasn't a blowout quarter — it was the gap. The group's net asset value printed at CHF 26.75, up nearly 7% year on year, while the shares sit at a discount north of 50%. CFO Michel Keusch framed that as the whole equity case: a investment company whose market price has decoupled from the value of what it owns. “The NAV for H1 2026 is CHF 26.75. This is an increase of almost 7% versus last year... The discount to NAV, as you see on the right side, is now more than 50%.” — Michel Keusch, CIO and CFO · 2026-09-17 His four-pillar pitch — focused investing, hard-to-replicate assets, a 15-year track record above 10% annualized, and that unprecedented discount — is only useful if there are catalysts to close the gap, and management named three: crystallizing value by selling stakes to strategic holders, better investor relations, and a liquidity improvement that has quintupled average daily volume in two years.
Where the operating engine actually improved
The genuinely new piece this quarter is margin, not narrative. Swiss Medical Network lifted its EBITDA margin from 18.6% to 21.6% in a difficult industry environment, driven by ramping unprofitable hospitals and tight material and personnel cost control. The sharper turn came below the hospital line: ambulatory services jumped from a 7.1% to an 11.8% margin and, for the first time, crossed into profit. That matters strategically because ambulatory is the plumbing of the group's integrated care build-out — a segment management explicitly tolerates as margin-dilutive in exchange for future profitability.
The crown jewel is Viva, the group's capitation model, and here CEO Fabrice Zumbrunnen leaned into a claim of genuine differentiation: “We are very proud of this second year, 16% cost improvement, a very, very good performance, the best in class in the market.” — Fabrice Zumbrunnen, Executive (likely CEO or similar senior executive) · 2026-09-17 Management is targeting a third integrated care region (Bern) next year, aims to double membership annually, and is walking toward a 10,000-member breakeven. This is a company-unique theme — a Switzerland-only accountable-care structure — not sector boilerplate.
Hospitality: resilient optics, pocket-to-pocket accounting
The hospitality arm tells a deceptively weak story. Reported margins dipped, but Keusch was quick to defuse it: rents were raised on hotels at the end of a CapEx cycle, and since the properties are 100% owned by Swiss Hotel Properties, the money moves "from one pocket to the other." The real stress was guest mix — a sharp decline in Asian and Middle Eastern travelers — yet the group held turnover roughly flat by replacing them with U.S. and European visitors, outperforming the wider industry. On the occupancy question, Keusch was disciplined rather than promotional: “There is no occupancy target... We think in terms of RevPAR... pricing is more important than occupancy at this stage.” — Michel Keusch, CIO and CFO · 2026-09-17 The Zermatt and Interlaken iconic hotels give the group enough local density to shape destinations, including retail, which is an unusual moat.
The one caveat worth circling
Not everything is clean. The turnaround hospital bucket slipped from 5.4% to 4.4% EBITDA margin, a move traced partly to decisions to halt activity at certain sites and partly to a genuine geographic oddity: Réseau de l'Arc reclassified from Canton Bern to the much poorer Canton Jura, resetting tariff economics. “It's the pleasure to have a confederation with different realities in canton, and obviously, Canton Jura is the poorest canton in Switzerland, and it's our job now to improve the profitability.” — Fabrice Zumbrunnen, Executive (likely CEO or similar senior executive) · 2026-09-17 Management expects that unit back in the positive by year-end. The Nescens longevity venture and the Genolier Innovation Hub remain loss-making but narrowing — and both were flagged as assets that could attract outside investors.
Why it matters
The through-line is that Aevis is converting a sleepy, illiquid holding structure into a monetization machine. The recent Infracore IPO, the announced search for strategic investors in Swiss Medical Network, and interest in Nescens all point the same direction: cash cow real estate and improving hospital margins generating the value that the discount currently hides. There is no price tape supplied here, so the market's verdict on whether the re-rating has begun isn't visible — but the fundamental ingredients (higher NAV, better margins, fresh catalysts) are now on the table together for the first time in the group's history.