Ok, so brief summary, since that's a thing people seem to want in a longer post: [SCST.ST](http://SCST.ST) looks to me like a solid business, but it's not cheap. Not terrible for me, as one of my goals is to diversify, and not have so much of my portfolio tied to countries that have to issue massive amounts of debt each year, just to continue on operating as they have been.. but it's not a screaming deal. YMMV. I was also too slow in finding them. Almost all the information I look at here was available back when their FY 2025 results were released (Feb 5th, I believe), but the stock is now 26% higher than it was back then.. I bought a bit lower than the current price, but closer to today's than what it was back in Feb.
**The Business:** Scandi Standard is a (mainly) nordic chicken producer. They sell a type of product that, as a whole, is essential for human life. Their particular product is among the cheapest of proteins, assuming the world doesn't want to switch to plant-based, which seems all but certain. A small % of ppl will do so on a moral basis, but no one gets the same enjoyment from eating beans as much as they do from meat. So while a squeezed consumer might trade the ribeye for a chicken leg, I doubt there'll be a tonne of trade-down FROM chicken, unless things get quite bad. Unemplyment rates in their markets (specifics below, but primarily Nordics + Ireland) are relatively low, and the citizens are fairly well-to-do, so this seems unlikely. I should mention that they do sell some branded products, so there could be some price competition from private label. Looks like the majority of their sales are private label though, so not a huge issue.
**The Moats:** The main moats I can identify are all regulatory, so if taking a large position & if this is a large part of anyone's conviction, trade rules should probably be monitored. At the end of the day, they raise and kill animals, and then chop up the dead carcass into smaller pieces. There can be no insurmountable moat in that industry. Regulatory moats are not the same in all the regions they sell in. \[Note: this is long.. if you want to skip, go to the "\*\*\*\*\*" line. Suffice to say, moats are decent-ish\]
\# in brackets is each country's % of Net Sales by Country (from Q1 2026):
Norway (17%) - Norway has huge tariffs on food it can produce itself (ie - none on lemons), as they are willing to endure extremely high costs to make sure they are self sufficient. A chicken costs about double the EU avg as a result. Anyone looking to compete in this very small market will need to set up shop in the country.
Sweden (25%) and Finland (7%) - on top of EU moat below, they also enforce a "0 Salmonella" policy. This is non-standard in Europe, and means competition for these two small markets would come w a significant specialization burden to other EU producers.
Rest of Europe (which is the remainder of their sales) - EU has import tariffs for non-eu countries, and given the US has shifted the world to a much more protectionalist path recently, these seem unlikey to disapear any time soon. They are not affected by the new US/EU trade deal.
\- From a very brief look at production costs by country (used AI for this, so be cautios), it seems these tariffs are enough to raise all but the cheapest production (US) to higher than the European internal cost of production. So external supply may plug gaps, but all non-US production will just be the marginal amount needed, as it becomes more expensive after tariffs.
\- US production is also not a threat, though this is not due to just tariffs. In the US, higher rates of disease are made up for by washing the bird carcass in various chemicals. This is not allowed in the EU, so it is the barns that need to keep the rates of disease down. In theory, a US producer could do this, and export to europe just fine, but the higher barn standards required to not need the chemical rinses would errode the production cost advantage they currently have. I have no idea if they could do this and still undercut European production costs though.. but at the very least, when combined w the EU poultry tariff, it seems unlikey.
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Ok, so sorry about all the rambling, but that took a bit of explaining in case anyone out there wants to understand the rules. So, their business seems quite safe, their moat is decent (though only due to regulations). Now let's take a look at..
**Profitability:** First and foremost, I really like this way to graph things, though perhaps some ppl do not. To me, it shows how the share price has moved around relative to earnings, what analysts are predicting for the future, and also, how accurate analysts (who know a lot more than me) have been in the past at predicting EPS (should we trust them).
[https://imgur.com/a/t69OASV](https://imgur.com/a/t69OASV)
Now, I hear you.. "What happened in 2021 / 2022?".. Well, that was a couple different things by the looks of it, but short answer is: Bird Flu outbreak, oversupply issues, and big issues w slaughter lines running too fast for animal welfare shutting down facilities in 2021. 2022 was huge rise in feed costs due to russian invasion of Ukraine. It sounds like they have mechanisms in their contracts to pass on higher input costs, but they're only allowed to do so intermittently, so there can be a couple quarters where they have to eat the higher costs themselves. This is made up for by the higher sale prices lingering if costs fall.
The projected growth in earnings seems to be largely a result of expected margin growth (though volume is part of it). They measure this w EBIT/kg, and are targetting 3SEK/kg in 2027 (or maybe it was 2028.. I forget, but doesn't really matter). Since this forum doesn't allow images, and I'm trying to keep links to a minimum, I won't add the table, but it was 1.69SEK/kg in 2023, and 2.0SEK/kg in 2025. So they have been growing it already, and their goals are to continue/accelerate that growth. This looks to be done on the back of acquiring farms they used to buy from, expanding into higher margin products (breaded chicken, "Ready-To-Eat" (vs "Ready-To-Cook"), etc). Now, this seems almost unbelievable, but note the unit they measure it in, EBIT/kg.. this is a neat little way to not include the costs of debt-financed growth in your measurement.. Also, I should add here that the "kg" is measured as the total mass of the dead bird. They are also getting into selling previously unused bits of bird (not normally eaten by humans) to pet food manufacturers. So perhaps the unbelievable growth rate makes a bit more sense. Anyway, analysts have been largely right in the past (though not perfect), so it looks like their high capex recently is likely to pay off w higher earnings in the future. The higher capex rate is expected to continue for 2026, so don't expect an immediate rebound in fcf.
Ok, so now, the less good part.. Multiple expansion has already begun, which is to be expected if the market expects an increase in earnings growth rate. Here is a graph of the annual price range (I just use the highest and lowest weekly close, to eliminate a bit of the tails on either end), divided by the analysts' estimates for that year (so, forward pe range, but not using the 52wk high and low for each year).
[https://imgur.com/a/RkI5wS0](https://imgur.com/a/RkI5wS0)
**The Accounting:** As is the same w all non US-GAAP regulated companies, FCF may or may not include interest payments on their debts, depending on if they classify Interest Paid as an operating cashflow or a financing cashflow. These guys have it as an operating one, so FCF may be used just as if it were an American business.
**Interest Expense:** Not the end of the world, but they do have debt. Interest expense was about 40% of Net Income in 2025, so if their borrowing rates change dramatically, it will sting. Sweden crushed their inflation, now down well below 2%, but fallout from trump's foray into Iran are projected to make the Riksbank (Swedish central bank) raise rates by 0.25-0.5% by ye-2027 from what I've seen. I have made no attempt to estimate this on my own, as the ppl making the projections I found are likely far better equipped to do so than I am.
**Summary:** Business seems safe, and growth is expected to be great. But, price has already begun moving to reflect that. There looks to be a bit of seasonality to their Net Income, and Q1'26 was way above the same quarter in '25 or '24. Rising feed costs, which are a huge part of their CoGS can take a bite out of their bottom line, but temporarily. Trade policy matters to them quite a bit, as would large changes in borrowing costs. Their long term goal is to payout 60% of income, so if earnings to end up growing like projected, div should rise nicely.
