We spend a lot of time thinking about what our point of difference is.

We have concluded that it is not reading tonnes of research, regularly meeting management teams, rapidly analysing the most recent quarterly or semi-annual earnings releases.  It is not building excel models that can analyse our earnings projections six ways from Sunday and it is not scouring the internet for the terabytes of information on that particular company or industry.

We do all of those things but so does everyone else (or at least they should do) so we don’t expend excessive energy on them.

We pride ourselves on deep dive, proprietary research. Meeting multiple layers of management and team members within a company, meeting that company’s competitors, meeting that company’s customers.  Meeting industry experts. Really understanding what makes the industry and company tick so that we can further our goal of thinking about our companies like a business owner, not like a financial analyst.

That is what we think our point of difference is.  That helps us see what is not well understood by the market or what the market may be missing. It better prepares us for curve balls the company or the industry may throw at us in the future. It means we can take advantage of situations when a company is punished for the wrong reasons and buy when others are fearful.

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