Hospodářské noviny has revealed a new investment by Pale Fire Capital and fresh details on the growth in the value of its portfolio.
Another big bet by Barta and his partners: Pale Fire Capital invests in a French meal-voucher giant
22 December 2025, Hospodářské noviny, Michael Mareš
Discount platform Groupon, online marketplace Aukro, travel start-ups Daytrip and Davinci, cycling trainer Rouvy, Polish insurance comparison site Mubi, along with a broad slate of equity market investments. That, in brief, is the portfolio of investment group Pale Fire Capital (PFC).
Alongside holdings in energy and transport stocks and even banana producer Dole, Jan Barta, PFC’s co-founder and chief investment strategist, has embarked on another significant stock-market move. This time, his sights are set on a French provider of employee benefits that is well known in the Czech market: Edenred.
Edenred built its reputation on paper meal vouchers under the Ticket Restaurant brand, but in recent years has undergone a digital transformation and now operates primarily via mobile applications and payment cards.
Listed on Euronext Paris since 2010 under the ticker EDEN, Edenred is a constituent of the CAC 40 index. The shares peaked in the summer of 2023 at just over €60. Since then, performance has disappointed: since the start of this year alone, the stock has lost almost 40 per cent of its value and is now trading at around €19. It is reasonable to assume that Barta sees this weakness as an opportunity and a source of future growth potential.
In December, PFC notified the French regulator that its market purchases had taken its holding in Edenred beyond the 5 per cent threshold. Through the fund Pale Fire Capital Sicav AS, it now owns 12,023,963 Edenred shares, representing 5.01 per cent of the company’s share capital and 4.95 per cent of voting rights.
For the third quarter of 2025, Edenred reported an 8.2 per cent year-on-year increase in revenues. The bulk of its income, €2.85bn last year (approximately 69bn CZK), comes from employee benefits under the Ticket Restaurant brand, including meal allowances and contributions towards culture and sport.
A second pillar of the business is the sale of fleet management solutions and fuel cards, for example under the UTA brand, as well as services related to toll payments and vehicle maintenance. Additional revenues are generated by corporate payment solutions, such as tools for managing travel expenses and employee reward programmes.
Edenred’s financial performance is also boosted by the substantial volumes of cash already paid in by employers but not yet spent by employees. These funds are invested short-term, enhancing
profitability in an environment of higher interest rates.
A strong year for PFC
PFC has capped off a successful year in 2025. Co-founder Dušan Šenkypl, who is also chief executive of Groupon, wrote on X that the value of the group’s portfolio had risen by 46 per cent. He highlighted particularly strong revenue growth, by tens of per cent, at Rouvy and itrinity.
Itrinity was founded seven years ago when Pale Fire Capital helped Slovak entrepreneurs Peter Hrbáčik and Martin Toma acquire the US service UptimeRobot for several hundred million Czech koruna. The platform enables website administrators to monitor uptime and is the largest service of its kind globally. It is used by millions of users, with paying customers including the US space agency NASA.
Šenkypl also pointed to growth elsewhere in the PFC portfolio. “Aukro has entered five new countries and completed its first foreign acquisition. Mubi has become the number one e-insurance platform in the large Polish market. Great job, team! We are on fire…,” he wrote, also drawing attention to a turnaround at Groupon.
“Over the past four quarters, we have added more than one million active customers and are heading towards our first year of growth since 2016. This is the result of the hard work of many people involved in this mission and I am encouraged by the fact that more highly experienced and
ambitious partners are joining us.”