“Our goal is to seek prosperity for our clients through participation in stable, growing companies in North America, led by strong management teams that we consider our partners for the next five years or more.”

Our style can be described as concentrated, disciplined, long-term growth stock investing. The focus is on established companies that generally have a demonstrated track record in revenue, cash flow or earnings per share growth, with strong managements and solid balance sheets. The current emphasis in the portfolio is on the equity of small to medium capitalization companies, defined roughly as $50 million to $5 billion in market capitalization, although the portfolio may include large capitalization companies if the right elements are there. Stocks are bought with a keen eye to valuation, so you’re not likely to find many high multiple stocks here. The portfolio will likely maintain a significant percentage in foreign securities, providing exposure to investment returns outside of Canada.

Breaking this down in more detail we have added some colour to each element of
our philosophy :

• Concentrated : “Why put money into my 100th best idea?”
  
  Many fund managers often own 50 to 100 stocks in their portfolios. We feel it is difficult to make a difference with the resulting 1% to 2% weighting that each of these stocks would have in the portfolio. We prefer to concentrate on 15 to 20 stocks where any one stock can have a large impact on the portfolio.
• Disciplined : “I have good reasons for owning each stock.”
  
  To control for some of the risk that might come along with a more concentrated portfolio, we do a lot of research on each name that we own.
• Long-term : “I don’t want to make my broker or tax man rich.”
  
  We aim to hold our stocks for periods of five or more years. If we trade stocks in the portfolio more frequently, we would be paying our brokers unnecessary commissions. If we are realizing a lot of capital gains along the way, we would be paying unnecessary taxes.
• Growth stock : “Prosperity through participation in a stable, growing company.”
  
  Though we pay close attention to the value of the stocks that we invest in, our names are all growing in some fundamental fashion, e.g. unit volume, earnings, cash flow or revenue per share growth. This is what generates the long-term compounding that can be so powerful in investing.
• Investing : « These people are my partners. »
  
  We are not just investing in stocks; we are investing in companies managed by people. As such, we feel that these managers are our financial partners.