Derichebourg SA (DBG.PA) fair value

ACCE thesis

Derichebourg runs a French and European waste collection and recycling business alongside metal recovery (ferrous and non-ferrous scrap processing) and an industrial services arm, so its earnings are partly tied to recycled metal prices and partly to contracted municipal and industrial volumes. The structural case rests on the tightening of European recycling rules and the scarcity of licensed recovery capacity, which favours incumbents with permitted sites. Revenue growth of 7.8% is running ahead of what a business of this type usually delivers, but the 5.3% operating margin is thin, so the investment question is whether that growth is converting into profit or just adding volume. At 9.2x trailing and 7.3x forward earnings, with an ROE of 11.9%, the market is pricing a cyclical, low-margin operator, not a compounder. That makes it worth a deeper look if you can get comfortable with metal-price exposure and want to test whether margin expansion is coming through the forward numbers.