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Sell diapers over the Internet?
Why not.
If people buy books, shoes or groceries this way, why not buy everything that young parents need?
Especially since they often have little time and should be happy about the home delivery.
In this respect, windeln.de's IPO in 2015 was certainly accompanied by optimism.
But what has followed since then has been a single debacle.
The share was listed on the stock exchange at 18.50 euros, falling below it on the first day and falling to 14 cents by the end of December 2019.
After that, things went up a bit, but that doesn't help: in the next five and three years, the company will be Germany's worst capital destroyer.
Windeln.de has awarded this title by the German Association for Protection of Securities Holdings (DSW).
The investor advocates compile the list of the biggest capital destroyers on the stock exchange every year.
It is a single document of horror.
Many small companies are represented on it, such as windeln.de, but also much larger ones, even three Dax companies.
They all show what can go wrong when incompetent board members run a company.
Source: WORLD infographic
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For the list, DSW looks at the performance over different periods of time.
The worst company over five years receives 500 minus points, the worst over three years 300 minus points and the worst over a year 200. The further points are then distributed in relation to the worst flop share.
Theoretically, up to 1000 minus points are possible, with Windeln.de at least 765 - and thus not even at the top of the list of shame.
Because from a one-year perspective, the share has risen from an extremely low level.
The less glorious first place, on the other hand, goes to the biotech company Epigenomics, which specializes in technologies for the detection of cancer, with 885 minus points.
Unfortunately for years with very limited success.
And it doesn't get any better.
"In the 2020 course watchlist, Epigenomics already landed at number 7, in 2019 it was at number 20," says Marc Tüngler, Managing Director of DSW.
Now it was even enough for first place.
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Close behind is the Finnish financial services provider Ferratum, which specializes in granting small loans.
This, too, went public in Frankfurt in 2015, after initially failing the 2014 plan - which was then stopped by the exchange supervisory authority.
But despite this bad omen, Ferratum sold his shares to men and women for 17 euros in 2015.
Today their rate is less than six euros.
"In contrast to many other companies, Ferratum has not been able to make up for the corona-related price drop in March 2020," says Tüngler.
The two newcomers at the top of the flop list are followed by Leoni, a manufacturer of wires, cables and wiring systems.
The company was already in third place last year and was unable to reverse the negative price trend in 2020.
After all, the share price has almost doubled since the beginning of the year.
Is that the turning point?
Investors should be careful.
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But not only small, mostly unknown companies are on the DSW list.
There are also three DAX companies among them.
Bayer appears in 23rd place. It is the embarrassing premiere of the company on this list.
"Here there is a dramatic mix of the consequences of the Monsanto takeover and the corona pandemic," says Tüngler.
Also new this year among the biggest capital destroyers is Fresenius in 37th place. Three places behind, on the other hand, is a Dax member who, in Tüngler's words, is “almost part of the inventory of the DSW watchlist”: Deutsche Bank.
“After all, the financial institution is showing an upward trend,” he says.
Source: WORLD infographic
There are also other big names on the list, often former Dax companies, such as K + S, ThyssenKrupp, Commerzbank or Lufthansa.
"This shows that size alone is no protection against a decline in the stock market," warns Tüngler.
But neither is the dividend.
Investors always like to see dividend payers as particularly safe and lucrative investments.
But that's not always the case, as the DSW list shows.
Because it also contains a number of companies that paid dividends, not least Bayer.
"The dividend can come from the substance or it can be based on special effects," says Tüngler.
And even if it was actually generated, it still needs to be clarified whether the company's business model is really sustainable in the future.
"Especially high dividend yields should make investors vigilant, not careless," warns Tüngler.
He also recommends the DSW list to all investors so that they can review their portfolio and their investment strategy.
If a company appears there, it is a warning signal.
“The companies that were already ailing before the crisis are now in a particularly precarious situation,” he says.
"The problems increase and deepen."
Conversely, the shifts that have resulted from the crisis do not pull troubled companies out of the swamp.
The best example of this is again windeln.de.
After the low point at the end of December 2019, the price quadrupled at the height of the Corona crisis around a year ago - after all, internet-based business models are the big winners of the pandemic.
But this fantasy only lasted for a short time at windeln.de.
The share is now back to the level it was at the end of December 2019.
“Everything on stocks”
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