I don’t have much experience with Hook, but F&B, to my taste, is the best fast food / premium burger. The only downside is that the places are sometimes a bit messy, but as a patron, I always give feedback. They have a feedback link on the table!
By the way, I recommend the burger of the month to everyone, Open burger
I also eat out quite a lot at restaurants; this week I ended up at a popular NON-NOHO restaurant, and I must say that neither the food nor the pairings were to my taste, and the pricing, in my opinion, was a bit more expensive than, for example, NOHO’s Laivakoira, where I also recently visited.
This was an important observation because I get too much feedback from my partner that I favor NOHO restaurants when choosing a dinner spot for us.
This thread can be found on the forum if one feels the need to update on how good or bad a burger was today and how it compares to McDonald’s. However, it has practically nothing to do with Noho’s investment story. There are currently 32 Friends & Brgrs on the BBS, and it is completely fruitless to ponder what the table cleanliness was like today or if the burger blew the bank.
If one looks at this premium fast food burger category, it is currently a three-way race at the chain level. In terms of taste, this race is led by Boneless, which has started to expand at a really significant pace within the last year and thus enters directly into F&B’s territory. Boneless is worth trying if that famous mind-blowing experience is a criterion. In second place in the same field, in terms of taste, comes F&B and Burgerjoint, acquired by Kotipizza a few years ago. Naughty Burger tried to profile itself in the same category, but as can be seen from their bankruptcy, their products simply did not compete well in terms of quality, and in addition, their products were slightly more expensive than these other competitors.
The Swedish Bastard Burgers, which expanded to Finland a few years ago, also competes in exactly the same segment, but they too have expanded very moderately so far and currently only have two restaurants. In my opinion, Bastard doesn’t quite measure up to a standard burger and F&B, especially regarding price. The burger scene is still alive, and the intense hype around this category seems to have subsided for now, which is more than healthy. Hopefully, summer will also start weather-wise sometime soon so that the terrace season can begin. The acquisition of Halifax specifically under Noho was a very interesting move a month ago, and let’s see if Denmark can also be put on a growth path. Jarno was very confident about this, and with the history that Jarno also has within Noho’s ranks, one simply has to believe that they know what they are doing.
Regarding the nightclub market, I could comment that at least in Helsinki, there have been significantly more people in nightclubs on weekends than at the same time a year ago, and the market’s bottom seems to be behind us in that regard. When combining this with the bankruptcy of Rekom’s Finnish operations, it significantly revitalizes the market, and in that regard, there might be pleasant surprises already in early autumn, especially if the unemployment trend could be reversed.
As for Noho’s stock, the low valuation continues to puzzle given the operational history the company has built since the pandemic. From this, one gets a better dividend for the coming years at the current price than, for example, from Sampo, in addition to which the company still has a very credible path for continued earnings growth. The biggest drawback here is the low trading volume, which makes it difficult to build any larger positions and which partly explains such a low valuation. When combining this with the decrease in risk level by gradually reducing debt leverage, the continued decrease in interest rates, which positively affects both financing costs and customer demand, as well as options for various reorganizations, one has to wonder why there isn’t more buzz about this.
The Nordea report available on Inderes’ service is also worth checking out, where a bullish value of as much as €15.8 was obtained for the DCF as the highest value in the latest update.
Iltalehti has interviewed Tuomas Piirtola, CEO of BBS:
According to Piirtola, the third determining factor is business expertise. There can be a burning desire for food and making it, but the expertise in running a business may not necessarily exist.
According to Piirtola, hamburgers have always been popular, and there is generally no customer loss in the industry. He emphasizes that burger joints have a rooted place in Finnish society. Especially domestic origin, freshness, and quality are in high demand today. Trending recently have been global flavors.
NoHo Partners continues to be the strongest company in OP’s Small and Mid Cap Monitor for the long term (2-5 years). In addition, OP has also raised NoHo to be among the strongest companies for the short term (1-6 months).
• NoHo’s earnings growth outlook is strong and operational efficiency is top-notch, in light of which we believe there is upside potential in the share’s valuation.
We have published our revamped website - go check it out and feel free to give feedback to ir@noho.fi A small prize will be drawn among all those who provide feedback
Our goal has been to particularly improve the discoverability of investor information and to describe our strategy and business model more precisely than before. We hope this is evident! Of course, continuous small-scale development work will continue in the future
We are entering a quiet period at the end of this week before our half-year review, which will be published on Tuesday, August 5th. If you have any questions you would like us to answer in connection with our results info or afterwards on the forum, please get those keyboards smoking.
Thank you also for the excellent feedback we have received regarding our new websites! A delicious summer surprise has been raffled among the respondents, and the winner has been notified personally. I am happy to continue receiving feedback regarding the site.
Summer is nothing but rain, at least in the south, but luckily not everything depends on terrace weather.
Hopefully, however, it doesn’t share the fate of Böle Arena, where not a single, at least larger, public event has been organized in 2025. The last social media updates are also from early January 2025.
A minor point came to mind overall, now that the event side is an even bigger part of Noho’s operations. Who bears the losses from cancellations?
As an example, consider the Conversation with Obama at Nokia Arena, which was cancelled 2 weeks before the event (April 30 - May 13).
Surely, contracts have varying terms, but how are the damages allocated? Is it the company behind Obama, the Finnish promoter All Things Live, or all parties involved (the arena lessor / arena company, the restaurant service provider / Noho, other service providers, and consumers (consumers did at least get their money back for tickets))?
It’s unlikely much money will come from insurance, as it’s not a case of illness or other compelling reason.
Card data released. Restaurants down nominally 5.5%. I expected a much larger decrease. Strong growth in culture has likely supported this as well. The silver lining for NoHo is that the industry’s elimination game will likely accelerate as terrace sales have been frozen.
Practically all Noho restaurants can be booked through dinnerbooking.com. Today it became clear that Dinnerbooking also produces content. For example, a list of the most booked restaurants, where Noho has a strong representation. There are a lot of reviews on that service, as a review request pops into your inbox after every restaurant visit. Many times more reviews there and generally better than on Google. Google reviews are of course easier to find when using maps etc. daily. Another similar competitor is TableOnline, which also has roughly the same number of restaurants (Noho’s places are naturally not here). Thirdly, there is the Japanese-owned Quandoo, which actually has more restaurants than the “largest in the Nordics,” Dinnerbooking. Fourthly, there are, of course, restaurants’ completely independent “booking services.”
Somehow these are very hidden, and the websites are not quite up to date.
A small prize will be drawn among all those who provide feedback 
I am happy to continue receiving feedback regarding the site.
