Geert Smet

The through-line

Everything Geert Smet says circles back to a single tension: the biggest returns come from a tiny handful of companies identified early, and the ordinary investor is being locked out of exactly that group. He takes the concentration argument seriously, that "wereldwijd gaat het over 1% van de bedrijven die zorgt voor de meeste toegevoegde waarde die de beurzen doen stijgen. Dus je moet op zoek gaan naar die 1%" [1], and he takes equally seriously the structural reason it is getting harder to act on: private equity has become so large that companies now list long after most of the growth has already been captured [1].

What keeps this from becoming a pure growth-at-any-price position is a hard personal discipline that he applies on top of it. Where the approach he admires ignores P/E ratios and short-term valuation altogether, mapping companies onto academic studies of world-changing trends and judging them on long-term cashflow potential [1], Smet draws a line of his own: "Ik stap in geen enkel bedrijf meer of ik adviseer geen enkel bedrijf meer waar de free cash flow negatief is" [1]. Vision about the future, cash discipline in the present.

On the 1% and the limits of diversification

The premise is that market returns are radically concentrated, so conventional diversification advice works against you and the real task is early identification of the small group of eventual winners [1]. That is a demanding standard, and Smet is candid that even the best practitioners of it miss. Apple is his example: it was sold too early because the iPhone's market potential was correctly seen but the ecosystem lock-in was not, nor was Tim Cook's cashflow-and-buyback strategy, which is where most of the value was actually created [1]. Seeing the product is not the same as seeing the economics that eventually compound around it.

On negative free cash flow as a hard filter

This is where Smet departs from the school of thought he otherwise admires. He will not recommend a company with structurally negative free cash flow, full stop, and he points to bpost as the cautionary case [1]. The rule functions as a brake on the concentration argument: hunting for the 1% is legitimate, buying cash-burning stories is not.

On the no entry zone

The most uncomfortable idea in his thinking is that the best assets are drifting out of public reach. The companies with the highest future potential are increasingly absorbed by private equity and accessible only to wealthy families, through vehicles such as Sofina, and for everyone else "als kleine belegger is daar een no entry zone, laat ons zeggen" [1]. SpaceX is the illustration, arriving on the market at a valuation around 2,000 billion dollars after the growth phase was already behind it [1], and then running up roughly 50% to 2.5 trillion on forced index buying [2]. The mechanism is a warning as much as an opportunity: the listing itself is the moment the earlier owners cash the growth.

On AI, chips and monopolies

He is bullish on the underlying substrate and blunt about the cost of riding it: "De chipwereld is gewoon hut van hut, want in de toekomst zal alles uit chips bestaan. En dan moet je toeslaan. Maar je moet echt wel stalen zenuwen hebben" [1]. Alongside that sits a structural worry that monopolies are re-emerging worldwide, with Nvidia in AI chips as the case in point [1]. The monopoly and the fragility are two sides of one position: Nvidia's profit growth rests on extremely high margins that become unsustainable once competition arrives, while hyperscalers pour money into data centers without knowing what they will earn on that compute [2]. Software, meanwhile, is the part of tech he treats as exposed rather than protected, on the warning that AI can genuinely disrupt software business models [1].

On the second half and not being the last wagon

On timing, his instinct is that the crowd arrives late: "Je loopt eigenlijk achter een trein die al ruim vertrokken is en die bijna in het station... je wil dat laatste wagonnetje niet zijn" [2]. There is a concrete liquidity argument behind the caution. Anthropic and OpenAI listings expected in the fall, together with capital raises by Oracle, Meta and Alphabet, will pull liquidity out of the market and could produce very volatile prices in the second half of the year [2].

On where the next decade of value comes from

Beyond the Magnificent 7, the bet he describes is biological rather than digital: "De combinatie van AI, big data, onderzoek in de farmaceutische sector en het ontrafelen van het menselijk genoom kan heel wat nieuwe medicijnen opleveren in de komende 5 tot 15 jaar" [1]. Elsewhere he sees value in food ingredients names such as DSM, Kerry and Corbion, which he reads as undervalued [2].

On Europe, regulation and fallen Belgian stocks

His view of the continent is unsentimental: "In Europa is er maar één land, dat is Zweden, die eigenlijk het ondernemerschap stimuleert" [1]. Regulation smothers innovation elsewhere, which is why capital keeps being pushed toward American companies [1]. That makes his interest in beaten-down Belgian names a deliberate exception rather than a contradiction: EVS and Energy Vision are worth a look precisely for their disruptive potential, the fallen angels a trend-driven investor might pick up [1].

Takeaways

• Hunt the small group of extreme winners rather than diversifying by default: "wereldwijd gaat het over 1% van de bedrijven die zorgt voor de meeste toegevoegde waarde die de beurzen doen stijgen" [1].
• Apply one non-negotiable veto on top of any growth thesis: no recommendation for a company with structurally negative free cash flow, with bpost as the warning [1].
• Assume late IPOs are exit events for earlier owners, not entry points; SpaceX arrived at roughly 2,000 billion dollars after the growth was captured, then added about 50% on forced index buying to 2.5 trillion [1][2].
• Treat chips as the long-term substrate and accept the volatility that comes with it: "je moet echt wel stalen zenuwen hebben" [1].
• Be wary of software business models, which AI can genuinely disrupt, and of Nvidia-style margins that competition will eventually compress [1][2].
• Expect a liquidity squeeze from Anthropic and OpenAI listings plus Oracle, Meta and Alphabet capital raises, and volatile prices as a result [2].
• Look to the AI, big data and human genome combination for new medicines over 5 to 15 years, and to food ingredients names like DSM, Kerry and Corbion for present-day value [1][2].
• Recognise the private-equity lock-out for what it is: for retail investors the highest-potential companies are "een no entry zone" [1].