Safety First Investing
We believe it is often what you say 'no' to that determines the level of your success.
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Our processes focus on growing wealth whilst preventing loss. We invest where we see greater certainty around returns and longevity. Macroeconomic conditions are constantly changing but the core business requirements to survive and grow do not. We focus on investing in businesses incorporating these proven factors for success and longevity and filter out those that do not.
Our safety first process includes:
Low Net Debt
Debt can help a business grow but it can also wipe it out in adverse conditions. Loans that can’t be refinanced or repaid can result in shareholder capital being eroded or permanently lost.
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Our investment focus is on companies with more cash than debt (Net Cash) or at least a high debt coverage ratio.
See our insights for more information.
Accountability
Businesses that have management incentives aligned with shareholder incentives reduce the risk of loss.
If the management have minimal personal loss for poor performance, their decisions are more likely to be riskier for shareholders.
We filter out companies with poor incentives or low employee shareholding to reduce the risk of poor management causing loss.
ESG
Many of the companies in our portfolio are proactive with environmental, social and governance issues (ESG). As at Nov 2021, our Growth portfolio has a strong Morningstar ESG weighted average rating of 19.76 out of 50, or approximately 4 out 5 globes.
Our focus on the values of the management demonstrates the positive outcomes possible.
High Quality
We view quality is more important over quantity. Our highly concentrated portfolio holds high quality companies in its core aiming to reduce risk by excluding lower quality investments.
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Our strategy is prevention of loss where possible and the smoothing of returns though share prices bouncing back faster after market corrections.
Wide moat
How secure a business is also dependent upon its competitive advantage: those with a wide (moat) advantage are more secure.
We filter the investment portfolio to focus mainly on businesses that have a wide moat and strong forecast growth.
Capital Raising
We avoid companies who primarily use capital raising to grow the business as we do not wish to see our investor's value diluted.
Generally, we prefer businesses with strong positive cash flow that buy back shares thereby naturally increasing the value of the shareholders investment.
Taxation
Taxation can be the highest cost to a portfolio and erodes individual investor returns.
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Our buy and hold core provides excellent tax advantages through the 12 months capital gains tax discount. Other investments with high internal trading can have their returns cut by up to 45% when they finally reach the investor.
Dynamic Currency Hedging
We hedge the Australian dollar based on reversion to mean strategies. This dynamic process enables our investors to hold their investment and benefit in rising and declining AUD conditions.
For advisers and investors, they do not need to switch to either hedged or unhedged and incur switching costs and taxation.
