MI295: From Numbers to Riches: Return On Equity’s Impact on Investments w/ Jason Donville and Jesse Gamble

26 Sep 2023 · 58 min

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

The Intrinsic Value Podcast - Episode MI295 Summary

Episode Overview In this episode of *The Intrinsic Value Podcast,* hosts Kyle Grieve, Jason Donville, and Jesse Gamble discuss their investment strategies and insights focused on Return on Equity (ROE) and its impact on investment decisions. The conversation covers their views on small-cap markets, the future of specific companies, and investment philosophy in general.

---

Key Topics Discussed

  1. Introduction and Background
  2. Jason Donville and Jesse Gamble are fund managers at Donville Kent Asset Management.
  3. They emphasize a long-term investment strategy focusing on high and sustainable ROE businesses.
  1. Outlook for Constellation Software
  2. A central holding for Donville and Gamble since its IPO.
  3. Discussed its consistent growth and strategic acquisitions.
  1. Understanding ROE
  2. ROE is pivotal in their investment strategy; they look for companies with a high and sustainable ROE.
  3. The challenges of accurately calculating ROE due to distorted balance sheets.
  1. Investment in Small-Caps
  2. Canadian small-cap stocks are considered inefficiently priced compared to U.S. markets.
  3. Less competition from institutional investors allows for more enticing opportunities.
  1. Market Characteristics
  2. The unique advantages of Canadian small-caps, including their potential for growth.
  3. Discussion on how market conditions can lead to drastic stock price fluctuations based on small earnings misses.
  1. Investment Strategy
  2. Focus on fundamental analysis rather than short-term share price movements.
  3. Long-term holding strategy, typically looking for investments to be held for five to ten years.
  4. Mentioned the importance of management meetings and consistent performance monitoring.
  1. Challenges and Opportunities
  2. The current market environment presents challenges, including high volatility and dramatic price movements in small-cap stocks.
  3. Activism and potential buyouts as catalysts for narrowing the valuation gap in small caps.
  1. Selected Investments
  2. Hammond Power Supply: Discussed as a promising investment due to increasing demand for transformers amid infrastructure upgrades.
  3. Decisive Dividend: A diversified manufacturing company with good management and cash flow.
  4. Ready Shred: Highlighted for its growth potential and operational efficiency.
  1. Future Outlook
  2. Optimism about the growth potential of their investments despite recent market challenges.
  3. Continued focus on finding high-quality businesses with strong fundamentals, especially in the tech sector.

---

Key Takeaways

  • Long-Term Focus: The investment philosophy revolves around long-term sustainable growth rather than short-term gains.
  • Importance of ROE: ROE is a critical metric for identifying high-quality businesses.
  • Market Inefficiencies: Canadian small-cap markets present unique opportunities due to lower institutional competition.
  • Active Management: Regular management engagement and thorough analysis are vital for successful investment outcomes.
  • Macro Factors: Interest rates and macroeconomic conditions play a significant role in stock valuation, particularly for small-cap stocks.

---

Resources Mentioned

  • Books:
  • *What Works On Wall Street* by James O'Shaughnessy
  • *How To Make Money In Stocks* by William O'Neil
  • Investment Tools:
  • TIP Finance for stock analysis and portfolio management.

---

Conclusion The episode provides valuable insights into effective investment strategies, particularly in the realm of small-cap stocks and the significance of ROE. Donville and Gamble emphasize the importance of focusing on business fundamentals and long-term growth prospects in navigating the market effectively.

For further information, you can subscribe to their newsletter at [Donville Kent](http://donvillekent.com) or follow them on LinkedIn.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00You're listening to TIP. The challenge though that's happened in my investing career is that balance sheets are getting distorted by a lot of different things, which means calculating the true return on equity of a business, which can still be done, is not a five-minute exercise with a calculator and the financial statements. You would have to go back over almost the history of the company and re-add everything in and all that kind of stuff. So we're increasingly looking at things like the relation between margin, sales growth, that kind of stuff, and saying, if this company had a normalized balance sheet, it would probably be a 25 % ROE company.

0:34On today's episode, I chat with Jason Donville and Jesse Gamble. Jason and Jesse are fund managers at Donville Kent Asset Management. They write a highly informative and entertaining newsletter called the ROE Reporter. Articles date back to the great financial crisis, and they do a wonderful job of discussing individual businesses in their portfolio, as well as what they are seeing from a macro economic perspective. Today, we'll be discussing their investing strategy based on finding high and sustainable return on equity businesses, why small caps are inefficiently priced, the future of Constellation Software, the importance of focusing on fundamentals over share price, and much, much more.

1:10I first heard about Jason Donville from his chapter in Chris Mayer's 100 Beggars book. After scouring through his ROE reporter newsletter, I really enjoyed his emphasis on ROE. Jason and Jesse's long-term approach is apparent when you consider they've held Constellation Software since it IPO'd. Now, sit back and relax as we get right into this week's episode with Jason Donville and Jesse Gamble. You're listening to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network, where your hosts, Robert Leonard, Patrick Donnelly, and Kyle Greve interview successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.

1:57Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Grieve, and today we bring Jason Donville and Jesse Campbell onto the show. Jason, Jesse, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Kyle. Nice to meet you and Christian. Thanks for having us. For listeners who are unfamiliar with Jason and Jesse, they run Donville Kent Asset Management, a fund based in Toronto. On your website, you have one of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes. If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes. Can you give the audience a broad overview of your fund and your major investing philosophy?

2:33Yeah, sure. That's kind of a good introduction. We're ultimately looking for compounders, like Buffett, looking for stocks that we're not trying to catch a two or three month pop. We're looking at stocks that we think can grow at a rate that is well above where the stock market is growing and to do so for a long period of time. And typically that business has some kind of a moat built around it. It's got some kind of competitive advantage. So for us is to try to look at a company and figure out what that sustainability is. And if we think we have a compounder, we ease into the position and ideally we try to hold it for as long as we can.

3:06And so with your investing process, obviously, you guys are only looking for businesses that are going to be compounding preferably for many years I assume. Yeah, we're generally not, let's say you called me up and said, hey, there's a company coming out. I don't have insider information, but just based on all the circumstances, I'm pretty sure that they're going to beat, they're going to surprise the market in two weeks' time, right? And I look at the business, I say, okay, but long-term, I don't really want to own a business like this because it doesn't have a competitive advantage, whoever.

3:32I wouldn't react to that call, I would say, thanks, but I'm not looking to buy those trades on just stocks where there's a positive development coming, that kind of thing. We're looking for, like Buffett is, he's also said in a similar vein, if you were required to hold everything that you bought for five years and you weren't allowed to sell it for five years, you would view stock selection way differently. And we try to do the same thing. You guys specialize in smaller market cap businesses, but as you grow assets under management, smaller cap businesses won't move the needle as much. Will you have to adjust your strategy on small cap businesses as assets under management grow?

4:09Jesse, you want to take that with me? Yeah, it's a fair question. And Jason could probably give you some exact examples of hedge funds that did exactly that. They outgrew their specialty and guess what? Performance declined. We've seen that again and again, and there's studies out there that'll show you kind of what the ideal size of a fund is. And for us, we've done that math and we're not going to go over the size that precludes us from that small cap area. We very much, our own money's in the fund. So we very much err on the side of performance versus empire building. It's a very good point.

4:43We're very aware of it. I think more people should be aware of it, but yeah, that's not an issue that we're kind of have front and center for us right now. And you mentioned a couple of names that Jason's gone through. Can you provide those names? I don't know if you want us to name specific funds, Jason, And that kind of got too big for their britches. How about just, you know, what was the process like for them? We've seen companies like, let's say in our space in Canada, where they were 100 million, 150 million AUM, and they got really successful and they suddenly they were at a billion dollars, right?

5:16And they couldn't get enough of those small undervalued names that could drive their portfolio. So they got forced into the TSX 60. They ended up owning the same large stuff that everybody else owns. And guess what? Their performance kind of went that way as well. What are your average holding periods like for your funds? Do you always look for businesses that you think you can hold for five to 10 years? Or are you sometimes looking at maybe special situations or any type of arbitrage type deals? No, we're always looking for the long-term, but here's what happens. Particularly when you have a company like a large cap, which we have in the portfolio called Constellation Software, it's got a long track record, easy to analyze, and easy to see that it's just going to keep on chugging, right?

5:56When you look at a small company, you don't have that track record. So you think you might be buying a compounder and then a year later, six months later, you realize that they've got issues. We go in with the idea of, yes, it's a compounder, five, 10-year outlook. And then you could ask, well, why is your holding period five to 10 years? And like Jason said, sometimes your investment thesis doesn't necessarily play out. And that's why we start small. We start with what we call kind of like a total position. And then if they do what they say they're going to do, then we add over time. So for a stock to end up being a large position, we've owned it for most likely multiple years.

6:33So that's kind of on the risk mitigation side. And then what can also happen is new names come up or you need funds. So you rank your stocks and one ranks well above other ones and you use that stock as a source of capital for your new investment, right? That's kind of why there might be more turnover, but on average, it is multiple years on average holding. So you mentioned that toehold investment to kind of get started. What does that usually look like before you gain enough conviction and an idea to go into a full position? Yeah. So they start out with half a percent waiting in the fund and you meet with management, you do your models, all that kind of, and then you see their next quarter, it's as expected or not and then you reevaluate and if the stock starts to perform then you add so it's a combination of you know is there momentum you know our revenues and the margins and execution what you thought it would be and if that's the case then you know you can slowly add over time so like kind of like we said so like by the time it's a larger position you've met management 20 times or more and you've gone you know through all the calls and you've updated your model 20 times.

7:46And so you get to know the company. We argue we would know our largest company is better than anyone else kind of out there. And that's because it's years and years of research. So you mentioned Constellation Software, which is a business that I highly respect. With the success of their business model, why do you think other businesses haven't attempted to copy their model in different industries? It's a great question. We've had Constellation going back right to the beginning of the fund. So when we started, the first time we bought the stock, it was a$20 stock. And for your listeners, it's now almost a$3 ,000 stock.

8:22Plus, there's been two spin-outs from it, right? And it was only a$500 million market cap. So it was a true small cap when we started investing in it, right? There have actually been a few people who said, oh, we're going to do what Consolation did. But it requires a lot of discipline. Mark Leonard has put in a system there of how to look at companies, kind of companies that fit, et cetera, et cetera, and how to integrate them into the broader whole that is, it's really, really interesting. And you look at it and go, well, anybody could copy that. And then they try it and they don't. There is something in terms of the internal culture that I think is hard to put your finger on it.

8:53But that being said, the two spinouts, Lumine and Topagus seem to be operating exactly the same way. It is on some level replicable, but sometimes you'll hear people comparing it, for example, to Danaher or something like that. And you look at Constellation's numbers over the last 15 years versus Danaher and it's not even close. I think it's a good question because the company over the years has put out a lot of information on process and what they look for. So it's not like it's a black box, but it is their discipline and it's the machine. But to be fair, there has been off the top of my head like Alimentation Couchard or MTY Food or Boyd Group Automotive, which for maybe not as long as a period did have kind of a similar type of strategy and growth and success, but not on the same scale as Constellation.

9:42It's a good question. It kind of gets to the point of like vertical market software. So they're vertical market software consolidator. And the idea about VMS software is the fact that it is extremely small and niche, right? So they're doing hundreds of acquisitions a year of six, seven,$8 million plus some larger ones. And that's the whole idea is private equity will play in a niche BMS. And then again, the idea of having a system in place where you can do that many deals is very hard to do, right? And also get in front of that many companies. So it sounds easy, but I think, yeah, I think like Jason said, they're like, they're disciplined and I think they have a machine in place that allows them to do it.

10:23Yeah. And one additional follow-up on Constellation as they've grown now, I mean, it's pretty impressive. They're still doing like$5 million deals, but now obviously in order to really move the mark, they're starting to move up to deals that are 500, I think$700 million. What do you think about their internal rates return on these types of acquisitions? Are they going to be able to maintain their hurdle rates going forward? That's a great question. And here's how people who are listening in who are do-it-yourselfers can look at it, right? Is when they have a company that's growing over, you know, through acquisitions, so let's say any company, Constance Reynolds, and they're doing 10 acquisitions per year, what you do is you start looking at over time, what's happening to their margins?

11:04Are their margins going down? Are they going sideways? Are they going up? Because if they're going down, then that means incrementally, they're adding probably weaker businesses into the mix than what they already have, right? We were quite attuned to that because 50 % of the growth through acquisition or roll-up companies turn out to be crap. Just when someone says, oh my God, they're doing a roll-up strategy on the dry cleaning business, don't get all excited because half the time these things turn out to be crap, right? So that is one of the ways you can look and say, incrementally, are they on average?

11:31Because that constellation does a lot of averages. Are they on average adding businesses that are roughly as attractive as the ones they're running? Or are they worse or are they better? Equally, if they buy a company that's okay in the first year and then turns out to be crap, same thing, you'll get this fading in their margins and in their return on capital. So when you take that criteria and you look at constellation or top-class or luminous, Generally speaking, the margins and the return on capital are stable or rising. They're incrementally adding really good businesses. And that's not what you'd expect because before Berkshire Hathaway and companies like Consolation and Danaher, there was a belief and teaching that conglomerates were inefficient, that they were, you don't want conglomeration because individual investors want to pick their own pieces kind of stuff.

12:10And a conglomerate would become this mediocre basket. And that's clearly not the case with Consolation. not to focus on constellation too much but to to get to your point of we've had this discussion and this discussion has been brought up about constellation getting too big right like and we had this 80 dollars a share at 200 dollars a share 500 like we've had this along this whole entire path and just to kind of put some numbers to it in their funnel of bms software businesses they have it's like 300 000 that they're tracking and it's estimated that there's about a million out there. So if you do that, if they continue on their pace, Mark Leonard, we had a meeting with the CFO and he was saying their issue isn't enough VMS targets.

12:54It's getting in front of them when those targets look to sell. A mom and pop at$5 million valuation don't know who Constellation is unless Constellation was knocking on the door and sitting down with them and that's their issue. And they seem to have reorganized the business a few years ago where they accelerated that. So again, we're harboring a constellation, but the idea that they'll have to go up market for acquisitions isn't the case, but they do opportunistically get acquisitions on the larger scale, but they don't drop their internal IRR on those acquisitions. And again, we're harboring a constellation, but the idea that they'll have to go up market for acquisitions isn't the case, but they do opportunistically get acquisitions on a larger scale, but they don't drop their internal IRR on those acquisitions.

13:42So institutions can go in and buy stocks once they reach a specific market cap size. So some small caps with less than$50 to$100 million market caps just simply can't be purchased by institution. but you've said that they can come in around 100 plus million dollars. Then as more eyeballs come on the stock, the stock can often re-rate. So do you guys have a specific market cap range that you'd consider your sweet spot? We'll look at anything, but historically that the sweet spot in the Canadian market has been kind of starting at the 250 to 300 million market cap, where you buy a stock around there and you ride it as it goes from 300 million to two and a half billion.

14:23and you get that over four or five years, you get that combination of the company, let's say, growing at 16 % or 17 % a year plus the multiple expansion. So it gives you something compounding at 21%, 22%. We're comfortable coming in earlier than that. We're just not going to bet the farm on a stock that's earlier because even if you find a stock that's growing, let's say you find a stock that's on five times earnings and it's growing at 20 % a year, even if there's no re-rating a year from now, it should still be on five times earnings. So if nothing else, you're still getting the growth rate, whereas the lottery ticket comes from the potential that it comes onto more radar means that it gets that multiple lift.

14:54So we have a few stocks under$100 million in market cap, but we also have companies like Constellation, which is now, I don't know,$60 or$70 billion market cap. So we're not obsessed with small caps. We just tend to have more of them because that's where the value is. For the audience, it's really interesting these days specifically, because as the market cap grows, then all of a sudden you can pick up the analyst coverage, which obviously gets more eyeballs and some investment advisors can't own a stock unless it is a buy from an analyst, et cetera. So you see that market cap step function. But what's very important these days is index inclusion.

15:29And Jason and I were just talking about this because you get included with the increased passive investing, the amount of money in ETFs, soon as you get, say, included in the Russell or booted out of the Russell, the implications are big, right? So if you have a$200 million market cap company that you think in two or three years, we'll get to a size that'll get included into an index. That is a massive catalyst. But then with that comes more volatility and all that kind of stuff. But the idea of getting into indexes as you grow is considerable. So I'd be interested in knowing what are your exit signals for your holdings?

16:06Do you prefer using specific price targets or are you looking for cracks in the fundamentals, nonsensical valuations, or better opportunities as your sell signals? Yeah, pretty much the latter, what you described, right? So either the return on capital is starting to fade, valuation has got ridiculous, or if we feel like management, for some reason, we feel like we can trust management. Every now and then you get a management team that just suddenly it's obvious that they're taking care of their own needs first and shareholders second. So those are the three criteria. Basically a change in that we no longer view it as a compounder that we want to own, the valuation gets crazy, or a question of integrity.

16:46And I think a third would go along with the fundamentals. They take on too much leverage. So they do a deal, they take on too much debt. Because as soon as you take on too much debt, even if it's a good deal, your optionality is gone. Now you don't have that optionality anymore, you brought up risk. So that's another reason. A couple of examples I would say was we owned for a long time was both FTY Food Group and Dollarama. So Dollarama, Dollar Stores, as mty food court restaurants and what happened is phenomenal growth phenomenal economics on an individual basis those each of those units is still very good economics but then they just they ran out of runway so their growth starts to slow they start to for dollar m like their growth is pretty much just the growth of suburbs canada now and then for mty they had to expand to more restaurants u.s along with that their roe started to drop so we held them for years but then we rank other stocks and we kind of move on because they're kind of past their growth that we're looking for.

17:47Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make peer feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas. That's why we built the Intrinsic Value Community. It's a place to connect, share ideas, learn, and get feedback. Nobody ever wishes they'd spent more time buried in spreadsheets, but connecting and building relationships with others who may be smarter on a topic than you, but who are also schooled in value investing, that's valuable.

18:24We make spots in this exclusive community available in cohorts every few months. And last time around, our 30 available spots filled up pretty quickly. If you're interested in our next cohort, which will be even smaller, you can join the waitlist at theinvestorspodcast.com slash intrinsic value community. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash intrinsic value community. Support for the show comes from public.com. You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic option plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and public gets that.

19:01That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus, industry-leading yields on your cash with no fees or minimums. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com slash T-I-V-P and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures in podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on.

19:46But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors. And now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with. With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long-term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more.

20:25To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. So how do you guys view cash in volatile markets? Do you tend to stay fully invested through market cycles or do you increase your cash holdings when markets begin heating up and driving up a valuation so you can hopefully try to take advantage of large corrections? We're pretty much always fully invested and people ask us, well, if you say you're net 80 or you're net 200, so you're twice on cash or you're a hundred percent levered or you're timing the market, you're implying that you're timing the market, right?

21:14Like you think the market's going to correct or it's at a bottom. And we don't think we have that expertise. So we stay fully invested as long as our companies continue to grow revenue and earnings per share and have a high ROE, then we continue to hold. And that can be painful. I'm sure we'll talk about how markets declined, especially in the small cap space in Canada over the last two years. But guess what? Record revenues, record earnings per share, high ROEs. So it's one of those things where, yeah, it can be painful in the short term, but the companies are performing. Most of the greatest investors I've researched tend to be very optimistic in their outlook on investing in a life.

21:54How do you guys view optimism as part of your outlook on individual stocks in the market? It's a good point because the people who are the opposite were cynical or highly skeptical, right? And they put that out as one of their virtues. And then we look at their numbers and they're always crappy, right? I think Buffett, once again, has written about you have to see the possibility in commerce. You have to see the optimism in a business, right? And you have to also recognize what a company has challenges that they're soluble, that there's good people in there, right? For example, when we get into an inflationary environment, sometimes people will worry or forget that a company can adjust its pricing fairly carefully.

22:30When you look at a large company like an Amazon or a Walmart or whatever, we've just gone through an inflationary cycle and their margins haven't changed that much, right? So their ability to adjust to a changing environment is excellent. So I think I am optimistic. I don't think I'm stupidly optimistic. I also think there's a couple of key things in the stock market. There's always a worry about the consumer, right? Consumer debt, consumer this, that, and the other thing. The consumer is you and I. And when we have a problem in our lives, most of us adjust really quickly to that problem. So when people say, well, I'm really worried about the consumer right now because of this, that, and the other thing, governments and some large kind of stale corporations can be very, very slow at adjusting to problems.

23:10Households adjust to them right frigging now because that's the reality that we all live in. I'm not worried about that. I tend to be way more optimistic on the consumer. And yeah, I think my optimism is that I think the world is geared towards growth. It's geared towards inventing new things, making new things, making the world a better place. But I don't think it takes me away from the judgment of saying, this is crap, or these guys don't know what they're doing. I think I got that side. That side of my brain is fairly well developed as well. It is hard because sometimes it's the pessimists that sound smart on TV, right?

23:44And that's what makes good headlines. That's what makes good media. But that's what Jason, like over time, it's wrong. It's a hard balance of like, do you want to sound smart or do you want to have some good investments? So that's the world we live in. Like the stock market in general is not a coin toss. It's not 50-50. At the start of every year, if you just own the index, it's not a 50-50 chance that you're going to make money. It's skewed towards going up. It goes up more years than it goes down. And in the average year that it goes up, it goes up by more than it goes down in the negative years.

24:17So the cumulative effect of owning an ETF or a portfolio for 10 years, the probability that you're not going to make money is extremely low. It's not a 50-50 coin toss the way some of the cynics will point out, right? Jason, you mentioned in Chris Mayer's 100 baggers that returns on equity, which I'll just refer to as ROE. I'm pretty sure the audience is going to know that, but it is a decent proxy for the returns you can get from investing in businesses over the long term. And then in your interview in Market Masters, you mentioned that growth in book value is a good indicator that a stock is increasing in value.

24:50Do you think this concept applies to all businesses in all industries, especially in respect to, say, a tech versus a CapEx heavy retail type business? First of all, let's go back to the first part, which is return on equity and growth and book value is more or less the same thing. If your book value goes by 20%, your ROE is essentially 20%. So in a sense, it's just two different ways of saying the same thing. The challenge though that's happened in my investing career is that balance sheets are getting distorted by a lot of different things, which means calculating the true return on equity of a business, which can still be done, is not a five-minute exercise with a calculator and the financial statements.

25:27You would have to go back over almost the history of the company and re-add everything in and all that kind of stuff. So we're increasingly looking at things like the relation between margin, sales growth, that kind of stuff and saying, if this company had a normalized balance sheet, it would probably be a 25 % ROE company. One of the other sort of metrics that investors can look at is this rule of 40 that people use for software companies, but it's actually worth looking at any company with, which is just basically saying, look at the profit margin of the company, and in this case, we would call it the cash earnings profit margin, let's just say it's 20%.

Read the full transcript

25:59It's not that different from EBITDA. So let's just say it has a 20 % EBITDA margin, and it's growing by its revenues by 20%. Those combined pieces come up to 40%. With a lot of companies, that rule of 40 number is not too far away from where their ROE is. And so if you have a low margin company that's low growth, even though it's on five times PA, it could be a value trap, right? Equally, if you have a high ROE company, and this is not one in the portfolio, but it's an example that everybody can look at, which is Apple. Apple has super high margins, but not a lot of growth right now, but it has like a 50 % margin.

26:31So they're growing to some extent by buying back their stock every year because they're so profitable. That means every dollar that you spend at Apple, 50 % of it goes to profit. That's how big their mode is, right? So those... Now, ideally, what you want is a company that, let's say, has a 30 % profit margin and 20 % growth. But looking at that metric, that rule of 40 metric, where you add together basically the revenue growth rate of the company and the margin as another excellent proxy for looking for a high quality business. And Jason's used Apple as an example. So I pulled it up just to kind of give the listeners an idea of what we're talking about.

27:05Businesses don't necessarily operate their companies off their balance sheet, right? Like financials do. But with Apple, so Apple has 60 billion in equity on the reported balance sheet, and they're going to make 100 billion in earnings. So 167 % ROE. Do they have 167 % ROE? No, they don't, right? But that's what if you just took your textbook calculation would tell you. But what you will have to do is Jason and I, if we were digging into it, we would go and say, what's their real cash margin? What type of leverage factor? So that's where that DuPont analysis comes in. What type of leverage factor?

27:41What type of asset turnover do they have? So like Jason said, they have a really high net margin. So they're going to have a high ROE. Their stocks compounded the last 20 years at like 39%. So that probably gives you in the range of what their ROE has been with some multiple expansion, right? Now, Constellation Software at times has had negative equity on the balance sheet. So how do you calculate an ROE then? It's the same type of idea. You break it down into your parts. So it is a lot more cumbersome than your finance 101 class would kind of tell you it is, but that's kind of how we really kind of delve into it.

28:16So it's more work than just screening for higher-reacombs. Piggybacking on this question, and you kind of answered it already, but so a business like IBM, I looked at, and if you look, like you said, at the textbook definition of ROE, it was high, like 27 % for a decade, but pretty recently. But it had a massive debt load. So the ROE looks super attractive, but when you looked at returns on invested capital and added debt back in, it was bad, mid-single digits. And then when you look at the share price, they basically were destroying shareholder value during this time. Do you guys, when you're doing the ROE, do you guys take into account, you must take into account debt.

28:55So how do you guys compare the ROE versus ROIC numbers? Do you use them interchangeably or how do you guys look at them? I mean, first of all, we don't want to own a company that if you take their annual cash flows that they couldn't pay it all back in four years. So they've got to be four years or less, right? Well, that's the upper limit for us. Typically, we want to own companies that are at two times or less, because that means that they've got the capacity to do big acquisition, right? But let's say we own a company that's got two years of debt, and then they do a big acquisition, the stock pops, but now it's got four years of debt.

29:28We're likely to, that would be a stock we might take some profits in or something like that, because they're not likely to acquire anything for a while. So if they're a grow-to acquisition company, they're just going to spend the next two or three years paying down that debt before they can really take anything on. Or they're going to do a dilute of financing or something like that, right? So we look at that balance sheet level all the time. As well, when we look at a company that has a high ROE, but maybe it's not reflected in certain other metrics, one of the first things we'll say is, oh, the only reason their ROE is high is they're leveraged up the wazoo, but they're not actually running a great business.

29:59So we're adjusting for that. But let's say a company just sort of comes to my attention that I've never looked at before. One of the first things that I'll look at is pull up the 10-year share price chart. This business, as it appears to me right now, it should be reflected in a chart that is showing the company performing over time. And if that company has been going sideways or whatever, then the first question I have to ask myself is, did it suddenly get changed? Is there somebody improving it? Like, is there something new going on here? Or what explains why, if these numbers are putting up numbers like this, what explains why this stock hasn't gone anywhere?

30:28And sometimes it's a phenomenon like good year, bad year, good year, bad year, good year, bad year phenomena. enough. Sometimes it's a change. We've seen some pretty interesting turnarounds in companies where they change management or they reposition themselves. Sometimes in the SaaS area, it's a company converting over from the old system of purchasing software to subscription models. And they often will have an 18-month period where their numbers will kind of make it look like they're not doing too well. And in fact, it's just the trick, the conversion. And often, if you can get in late in that conversion, you can actually do really, really well.

30:56I'm interested in knowing how you use ROE just with upcoming businesses that aren't aren't yet optimized for profitability. So are you using an adjusted number? I guess you mentioned using EBITDA. And how's this adjusted number been a good measure for you guys for future value creation? I think so for a company that's kind of just coming like looks, but we think it's going to be a higher ROI company, but it's not quite there. We're looking at the trend, right? We're looking at the direction it's moving. So I'll give you an example, a company called Docebo, right? Which a software company, you know, it's kind of headquartered in Canada, but does a lot of their operations in Italy.

31:30this company was unprofitable and now it's trying to move towards breakeven, but it's still on a pretty high multiple. It's probably on 40 or 50 times, right? So this is one that I'm watching where it's like, okay, at some point, this I think is going to become a fairly interesting company. The question is today or is it 12 months or now, but the trend line, they've gone from being quite significant losses to above breakeven now. So that trend line is exactly where you want to go. And if you can catch a company that's going through that re-rating, they can often be real rocket ships. Yeah. I think Jason has said that since kind of the first day I started working here is it goes, what's the only thing better than a higher RE business is a company becoming a higher RE business.

32:06Because then with that, you get the multiple expansion and the new eyeballs and all that along the way, right? Like you're saying, there's margins and there's growth and there's ways to project out what it could be over time. So that's kind of what we're doing. So since you guys like to invest in businesses with such a high RE, this usually means that from a business standpoint, the best use of earnings is to pump it back into the business at the high rates of return. So a business that you guys own, such as Hammond Power Supply, pays a small dividend, whereas a business like Decisive Dividend pays a pretty big dividend.

32:44How do you guys analyze businesses with high ROE but are also distributing profits back to shareholders as dividends? Just from a mathematical standpoint, we have something that's called a sustainable growth rate. You take that ROE, say it's 20%, and we'll use decisive dividend as an example, but they aim to have their payout ratio at like 60%, but I think it's like 42 % right now. Anyways, 20 % ROE, they pay out 42%. So that's a sustainable growth rate of roughly 12%. So that's how we kind of start to do apples to apples. Then you're like, okay, as a shareholder, then you obviously get the yield as well, which is around 6%.

33:23So you're roughly 18 % as a return, which you can compare to an 18 % ROE or an 18 % yield with no growth. It's a way to compare apples to apples. So we have something that internally we call the sustainable growth rate and that's kind of how we calculate it. So then we can compare that growth rate to its earnings and we'll say, well, how much growth are we getting per unit of value? Anyway, so that's kind of like the technical way we do it. Jason, you kind of have an idea? Yeah. Essentially what Jesse's saying is we can convert a dividend paying stock, convert its ROE. There's a formula, and we didn't invent the formula.

34:04I get sure it's in the textbooks. So you can say, okay, this 20 % ROE company, given its dividend is actually a 17 % ROE company. We're typically trying to find 20 % ROE companies, but we'll take something a little bit lower than that if we like the valuation and all that kind of thing. Can you guys talk a little bit about Hammond Power Supply? I'd love to know what is it about that business that you guys like so much? Yeah. So it's a new name. It's not a massive name for us and we'll get to what they do. But what I'll start with is we don't invest in like a theme necessarily, right? The investment was found in the true margins and growth and valuation.

34:43that's where we always start is with the numbers the numbers led us to this company net margins have doubled over the past couple of years and continue to grow and growth has accelerated so you look at a company like jason said we'll pull up the stock price chart why has it been doing well recently and not in the past like well because margins are doubling and growth is accelerating right okay well what's that play there so ham and power is the leading manufacturer of transformers and why. And okay, that's great for infrastructure. But the idea that almost every single city in the entire world needs to upgrade its infrastructure if they want to hit their EV or heating goals, because if we hit the goals now with the way the infrastructure is, the grid can't handle it.

35:31I have a couple, I'm just pulling up my email of a couple of studies, but there was a study in Palo Alto, that more than 95 % of residential transformers will be overloaded if the city hits at 20, 30 electrical targets. So pretty much all of the grids will get overloaded if they hit the targets that they're trying to push for. And then there's another one where most electrical grids, the clusters themselves are designed to be cooled at night because that's when electrical demand is less. But if we hit our EV targets, that's when everyone's charging their EVs. the idea that a level two charger used to be used to last 30 to 40 years because it kind of went through that cycle but they're predicting that it'll last three years if it if it has to hit this kind of like 100 like always on always working type of model right so that's the reason so when jason was mentioning before of like well what's changed that's one of their fastest growing segments is on like kind of like the ev renewable side but then it's just the grid in general right It's air conditioning.

36:34It's these buildings. It's growth in population. It's the need for these transformers where you can stand back and you go, okay, it makes sense that growth is accelerating and margins are improving and the stock still looks extremely cheap for its size. So that's kind of the Hammond Power investment in kind of a nutshell. They are expanding capacity at two sites. So when you ask about growth, you have to be able to make these transformers at scale. And with their expansion that's undergoing, they should be able to grow revenue over 50 % with those two expansions. So we think it's a good growth, good margin, good return, and still looks fairly cheap to us.

37:10Excellent. And what about, can you give me your nutshell for decisive dividend as well? Sure. Jason, do you want to take that one? I mean, it's a pretty straightforward manufacturing company. The people that run it have a good background, both in acquiring companies and also in running companies. And really, it is an arbitrage, I guess, between the fact that you can buy small industrial companies that manufacture things like heating supply stuff or fireplaces or whatever, bundle those companies together, pay out a dividend, and the market will pay you a good rate. Shotcut has been great. I'm not suggesting in any way this is a constellation of software, but as they acquire more businesses, their dependency on any single business diminishes over time.

37:49So it becomes more of a diversified basket of manufacturing companies that have good cash flows and it creates a lot of value. The payout ratio is reasonable right now. So even if there's a little bit of a whoops, they should be able to kind of get through from a dividend payout point of view. We like it. We met with management twice in the last three or four months. It's early days still, but the stock's performing quite well. And like I said, very, very, very attractive dividend. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message.

38:20If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows. We Study Billionaires is our flagship podcast, and we've made a name for ourselves over the years by interviewing the best investors in the world, including Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, and many, many more. My colleagues, Stig Brodersen, Clay Fink, Kyle Grieve, Preston Pysh, and William Green each hosts their own We Study Billionaires episodes and bring their own unique perspectives.

38:57A whole new world of insights awaits you. Just go ahead and type in We Study Billionaires into your podcast app and see what you've been missing out on. Seriously, go ahead. I promise you'll like what you find. Bonus points if you show your support for our work by clicking follow. If something piques your interest, just start listening. No hard feelings. I'll be waiting for you back here. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on.

39:27But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors, and now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you, or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with. With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more.

40:06To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code STOCKS15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. Not to be cliche, but building a market-beating portfolio really doesn't have to be a mystery, at least with the right tools. If you've listened to our podcast for a while, then you know we spend a lot of time learning from savvy investors. So why not use the same tools we do? With TIP Finance, you can. Screening for great companies, calculating intrinsic value, keeping up with legendary investors' portfolios, and more are all not just possible, but easy to do.

40:53TIP Finance was created by investors for investors. It's quite literally the tools we wanted to use ourselves when researching investments in a simple to use interface. You can get started by creating an account for free. Who knows, maybe TIP Finance will help you find your next 100 to 1 investment. Between the screener and Legend Investment Portfolios to reference, I've gotten a ton of ideas from TIP Finance. What are you waiting for? Take the next step in your investment journey today with the right tools at your fingertips. Grab your device and type into your browser, theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance to get started.

41:31That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. So you've mentioned in a previous interview a couple of years ago that you shifted your strategy from looking mostly at profitable businesses to more tech type businesses that are maybe sacrificing a little bit of profitability now to improve relationships with potential customers. Just wondering what brought this strategy change on? I think we're still fairly focused on profitability. It's more like what Jesse talked about before, which is the ROE is on its way to where we want it to go. So let's say I'm using a Dogebo as an example of something we're looking at right now.

42:09But you're getting all these really interesting tech companies like Magnet Forensics, for example, that came out and now it's disappeared because it went private. But you're getting all these interesting tech companies and we had to be just a little bit more flexible because a lot of them were in really, really fast growing places where they were focused on market share and things like that more than they were focused on the bottom line profitability. So we just wanted to give ourselves a bit more of that flexibility. But I still think if you go through the portfolio, we don't own very many stocks that are not profitable.

42:38They just may not quite have the ROE today that we think they're going to have in a year or two. I don't think I would call it a change in strategy because it's still pairing growth profitability valuation. But I think what happened was with SaaS specifically, it's one of the best business models that there ever has been, right? In the sense of how you can scale and how profitable you can be. And then what Jason was getting to is like, literally, there was probably 10 tech names you could count in Canada for years. Blackberry, Constellation, CGI, OpenTest. And then there has been like kind of an explosion of new up and coming, like Jason mentioned, Magnet Forensics, where really interesting new tech names came to the market.

43:22So I was starting to evaluate these new businesses that are new to the market, not new businesses that have been around. And that was kind of, well, your tech weighting's up significantly. Well, it's not necessarily us trying to invest in tech. It's us just trying to invest in the best companies we can find, which happens to be tech because you can have high growth, high margins in tech. So that's kind of been what's happened, but I wouldn't necessarily call that a change in strategy. So I've noticed over the years, your fund has also moved towards investing in business that are coming out of the IPO phase.

43:55What advantages are you seeing in Canadian businesses that are entering public markets this way? Yeah. So I think it just kind of just goes back to what we were just referencing was for years, there just wasn't anything coming to market that kind of fit what we were looking for. and now there is. Real companies, real earnings market. And we did a significant amount of work in one of our past newsletters, but people were like, well, why now? And it's because the business models work now. The cost of being in the cloud, the B and accessibility of the internet, the proliferation of the smartphone, you add all those together and guess what?

44:35You can have real business models in the cloud on phones around the world, right? Where that just wasn't the case. The cost of the cloud was too much or bandwidth wasn't enough. And you kind of got this perfect storm of infrastructure and accessibility all at the same time. So the idea that new business models could work was a real thing. Again, we're very concentrated funds, so we weren't adding a ton of these, but every one or two a year, you're taking a really good look at some new business a couple of times a year. And so just to follow up about the IPOs in Canada versus the US, I don't know how much you guys follow US markets, but it seems like in the US, a lot of these businesses are IPO-ing now way later in their growth stages.

45:17Is there something specific about Canada that is allowing these businesses to IPO earlier? Is there just more need for capital from these businesses? Or what are the differences you see in Canada versus US? The only thing that I see in Canada, because we watch, but the IPO market is like open and closed, open and closed, right? So I think we watch the US tech market fairly closely. And I think Canada and the US have some similarities. But one of the differences in Canada is companies will go public as much smaller companies, right? Like a company is happy to go public with$100 million market cap.

45:47That smaller company in the States really gets orphaned. It's questionable whether you should go publicly that small in the States. Whereas in Canada, you'll get paid attention to. So that's one of the things that I would say is different. But there are tons of like the SPACs and the pre-profitable companies in the States. They had tons of those as well. We have them in Canada, but we don't know a lot about them because we don't spend a lot of time looking at the pre-profitable ones. But we keep them in databases so every quarter that goes by, as they go from being unprofitable to profitable, we go, hey, maybe it's time to revisit company X, Y, Z kind of thing.

46:18And there's definitely a few of those in Canada, tech companies that went public two or three years ago that have been doing actually fine on a revenue business development side, but they're slowly but surely working their way to profitability. And we could come in before they're profitable if we think the trend line is fast and operate. So. I'm interested in knowing, well, out of the companies that you guys have owned during the entirety of the fund, what have you held on to the longest? Does this go to Constellation Software? What other names have you guys held for long periods of time? We've had that for a long time.

46:46Collier's would be another one we've had for a long time. We mentioned earlier, we owned MTY Food, Alimentation, Kushtar, Boyd Group, each for long periods of time. But Constellation would be the winner because we still own it. We owned it since the beginning. Jason, any other ones that come to life? In the past, we've had some that we had for a long time. Halden Labs would be one. I think we had Dollarama for a fairly long time. I think we had First Service for a long time. We still have Collier's. So yeah, those would be the major names. So let's discuss another business that your fund owns, which is Ready Shred, which most people think just does paper shredding, but it clearly do quite a lot more than that.

47:28Can you guys explain why you own this business and what you think its future prospects are like? We found the business, again, years ago, we've been investing in this for a few years, because you could see when you were looking at the income statement that it was actually a good, gross, and profitable business, but they were over-liebered. So we went to them and we said, okay, well, let's help solve your debt issue, which we did. We helped invest into that business, solve their debt issue, and then they've been off to growth phase since then. But why we really like the business is one, the unit economics of running a shredding truck are really good.

48:02So can you scale it? And then the management team in place is phenomenal. So they're on top of all their metrics. And if I were to say, well, what does a shredding company look like? And just to use kind of a number that everyone would know, but they have 30 plus percent EBIT demarc, right? For a shredding company. okay can you scale it and yes the answer is yes they've been scaling extremely well and with scale comes route optimization and the ability to kind of it's called bailing your own paper so you actually can resell for more than you could otherwise and all this kind of comes with scale right what's the market missing the stock trades extremely cheap and it's again it's grown well and it has it has a long runway still in front of it but the idea that people always push back on is paper use, right?

48:48So yes, paper use has been declining for something like 20 years at a gradual pace, right? But what has been happening is the actual amount of paper making it into shredding boxes is increased, it's growing. And what does a shredding company care about? It cares about the paper in the box, it's not necessarily paper overall, right? So it's going in because of security reasons, paper that needs to get shredded because, well, there's new regulations that say it has to, or just the way it's getting used. Or from an environmental standpoint, a lot of younger employees know that if it goes in a shredding box, it actually gets recycled.

49:22Versus, for example, in our office, if we throw it into our garbage beside our table, it doesn't get recycled. So there's that aspect to it of actual the volumes getting shredded are increasing. So the idea that it's a declining market isn't necessarily true, but everyone at first glance would assume that. You kind of go through this whole idea. It'll never trade at a premium valuation, but the idea that it's growing at 20 % to 30 % a year at really good margins and we'll be able to do so for a while and trade extremely cheap, it kind of ticks a lot of boxes, even if you're perhaps small at it.

49:55I'd like you guys to tell me a little bit more about your investment in GoEasy. It looks like a high ROE business that is guided for an ROE that's above your 20 % threshold over the next two to three years. When businesses guide for growth like this, how likely are you guys going to trust what they say? Obviously, you're probably pretty comfortable with M management, but I'm interested in knowing how you guys view this company's guidance. There's a couple of reasons why we're comforted there. We've been invested with this company for a while. So management says something, we see what they do. Do they actually live up to what they say?

50:25But also before I got into the hedge fund business, I was a financial services analyst. So I used to analyze companies like GoEasy. So I'm fairly comfortable with their model when the government recently changed the whole lending structure for like the super high interest stuff. I was very relaxed with that, but the market sold off. So I would say a combination of we have a good trust or with management combined with the fact that I know a little bit more about this industry than the average Joe. I think those two factors mean that for us, we know that GoEasy is always going to be super volatile because it becomes kind of a proxy for people's perceptions of whether the economy is strong or weak.

50:59So we live with that. And then, And if anything, if there's a sell-off, we would add to the position. But that said, we have a pretty large position in the stock. They're very comfortable with it. But a lot of companies that are like subprime lenders, lenders, that kind of stuff, like GoEasy, we say they have a lot of headline risk. There's a headline in the newspaper about something to do with the economy. The lenders all sell off kind of stuff. You just have to live with that and know that that's just part of the game. So let's move into some of the small caps and micro caps. So why are small and micro caps in Canada?

51:30so inefficiently priced. Have you guys observed this inefficiency in other geographies as well? How long has it been this way? And do you think it's likely to change in the future or is it just cycles? Yeah. So I would start with like Canada versus the US. So we started looking more closely at the US five or six years ago, and we thought the fund would have more exposure to the US, but they're just the difference in multiples. The quality is, you know, in Canada, we have extremely high quality, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest in the US names that we're finding because we can find cheaper, higher quality names here.

52:06So that goes to your question of why. And obviously, Jason, I think you've been in this industry for long enough. You have your thoughts on why Canada might be underpriced versus other countries. I don't know if it's, once again, I think a lot of companies in the States are discouraged from going public of the size that they do in Canada. So I don't think it's like their small cap market is more efficient than ours. I think that ours is actually relative to the size of the country, a lot larger. And it goes back to the whole CPC kind of way of thinking and Western Canadian entrepreneurialism and all that kind of stuff, right?

52:39But as far as why that segment, the micro caps are generally speaking, so inefficient, that's the whole story because if something goes wrong down there, you don't have a lot of liquidity, that kind of stuff. And you don't have institutional money in there pushing up valuation. So as you go from large to medium to small to micro, the valuation should come down, right? And it's a risk reward. If you're comfortable going into that area, like micro caps, we're probably more a small to mid cap fund with some micro caps. You've got to be really patient there. You have to recognize that it's kind of like a venture capital almost with a little bit of liquidity.

53:10So you really can't play these where you say, oh, well, any day, if I want to take 100 ,000 or whatever off the table, in the micro caps, you can't do that. You have to basically say four or five years from now, it's going to get taken out. It's going to move up very sporadically, it's going to always trade on very low volume. And you've got to use that inefficiency to your advantage, not be beaten up by it. And then you mentioned the cyclical nature of valuations. Again, I would reference the newsletter we've written on our website, but what we're seeing in the current small cap space is all-time lows in valuation.

53:47So what happened in the 2021 tech craze and then everything blew up and sold off? Guess what? Everything sold off indiscriminately of valuation and earnings and business outlook, maybe except the large cap names that everyone knows about. But what we've seen is, yeah, 100%, there was definitely companies that should have sold off. They were a bubble. They were overvalued. They shouldn't have been trading at 100x, whatever, multiple. But we have companies that were trading on 12 times that have now sold off to four times, like cash earnings, net cash balance sheets. And that's the market we're living in now.

54:25And we've referenced this idea of a pendulum before, but that's kind of the cyclical nature is we think we have a basket of stocks in our fund that is literally the cheapest that we could find through history. And we compare it to 08, 09 bottom. And we think the stocks now in the fund are cheaper with higher growth margins than 09. So that's kind of, it's crazy to think about because it's a different segment of the market and it's not that NASDAQ's hitting all-time highs and it's Apple and Amazon and Google Microsoft. That's just not the world we're living in. And then that's kind of where we see this opportunity is these names are just so under followed at the moment.

55:07But if you go through history, that it's a cycle and the cycle swings the other way. And so that's kind of how we're positioned is for that cycle to swing the other way. What are your catalysts going to be to narrow the price value gap for some of the heavily underpriced names in your portfolio? In your most recent newsletter, you discussed how you believe that interest rates were the prime culprit for suppressing value of many of your holdings. Are there other macro catalysts outside of declining interest rates you believe that will help re-rate some of the small cap names in your portfolio? Yeah.

55:39So I think rates are number one, right? Your discount rate you use on your valuation is exactly tied to interest rates, right? Interest rates go down, technically the value of your stock is worth less. That's what's happened with fastest increase in interest rates in history. But that being said, we think that's peaked. And then so people start to look at these small growth names. But to your point, are there other macro issues? I don't think I see any. I'll let Jason answer too. But what we've also been seeing is kind of activism and takeouts, right? So we We ourselves have been pushing some of our names to really increase the amount of buybacks they're doing because those companies will look back years from now and we'll be astonished with how accretive some of these buybacks at these levels will be from that standpoint.

56:22And we're starting to see a little bit more of takeouts, right? Where if a stock is really worth what we think it's worth, a company will come in and buy it out, right? So that's what we're starting to see. I would say that's only within the last kind of few weeks, months. I think the interest rate cycle globally is the big one, right? And I don't think interest rates are going to go much higher. The question is, are we just going to stay up here or are we going to roll over, right? Other stuff that is interesting that's out there that could be positive for small caps are the following. The war in Russia and Ukraine would be one and China figuring out its place in the world, given that everybody's deep, deep, like disinvesting in China, right?

57:00All of these things, though, speak to a phenomenon which we refer to as risk on, risk off, right? Kyle, you know that term. So we were in a massively risk off posture up until probably three or four months ago. Then the large mega cap tax started to roll, and now it's starting to trickle down. So we're not back to normal as far as sentiment and all that kind of stuff, but we've just started to turn that corner. Interest rates are going to be the big driver. I would say the war in Ukraine and then just China figuring out whether it's a growth story or not. I think those are kind of add-ons. I don't think the war in Russia is sustainable.

57:34I'm not sure what brings it to hand. Is it a coup? Does Putin get replaced? Or God knows what happens, right? But Russia's already lost the war. It's just a question of when they realize it. So in your January 2023 ROE reporter, you said that the portfolio went through some painful losses. However, the bulk of your investments were on pace to have record years in terms of fundamentals. As of right now, this quarter, are you still seeing massive improvements in the fundamentals of some of your highest concentration bets? So companies are reporting right now. So we're right in the middle of Q2 results, right?

58:08And so generally speaking, the results are coming in. What's kind of not happy is if a company comes in and they miss by one or 2%, they're often getting whacked by 20 or 30%, right? And we know that that's the way the algos are starting to trade the markets now, right? So you're getting these hyper reactions to small misses are resulting in massive movements in the stock. Now, given the nature of algos, they'll do the same in the other direction as well. So we've got to be attuned as we move forward and we tweak the portfolio that if a stock, and I'll use an example like Nuve has just been absolutely crushed and it trades on four and a half times earnings now, right?

58:42And it's growing at 17 % this year, right? So instead of growing at 20, they're now growing at 17 and that's the movement of the stock. So we've got to be able to say, hey, are we going to, once it's settled down, are we going to add to some of those positions when they've been really, really crushed, right? We added to Dye and Durham when it got down to kind of 16 or 17. So you got to let the stock kind of find its bottom and settle up and then be prepared to take some moves there. But some of these stocks, the misses are not even misses sometimes, sometimes it's a little change in their working capital and the sell-off of the stock is just, it's unbelievable.

59:12So that's part of that, the world that we live in. Yeah. So Jason's referencing a lot of the stock price moves. I'm just looking at the portfolio now. And from what we have, eight of our top 11 investments, which make up majority of the portfolio are on pace again for record revenues and record earnings this year with no kind of outlook that that'll decline going forward, right? So that's a majority of those names. And some of the other ones would be like a Collier's that slowed down because of commercial real estate, but it's still obviously making money and it's a strong business. But that's kind of what we were referencing before where just everything sold off indiscriminately.

59:48And now we're finding stocks, like Jason said, are four and a half times earnings growing at 17, 20%. That's just not sustainable in the sense of where stocks will trade. So yeah, it's painful in the short term, but as long as we're deadly focused on making sure revenue and margins and management teams continue to execute, that will reverse. That's kind of how we're positioned. Jason, Jesse, thank you so much for joining me today. Before we close out the episode, where can the audience connect with you guys and learn more about your fund? Yeah, we write a quarterly newsletter. So if you'd like to get on that list, you can email info at donvillekent.com or all that information is on our website at donvillekent.com.

1:00:31Okay, folks, that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here very soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor's Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor's Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

From the publisher

Kyle Grieve chats with Jason Donville and Jesse Gamble about their investing strategy based on finding high and sustainable ROE businesses, why small-caps are inefficiently priced, the future of Constellation Software, the importance of focusing on fundamentals over share price, and much, much more!

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
00:0 - Intro
05:26 - About their outlook for Constellation Software, a business they’ve held since it IPO’d.
25:10 - How to utilize ROE in your investment process to make high return investments.
34:48 - Why Canadian small-caps have unique advantages to the US.
52:15 - Why small-caps offer less competition from institutional investors.
52:23 - Why opportunities in small-caps are so enticing.
And much, much more!

*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members.

Paul’s Small Cap Discoveries.

What Works On Wall Street by James O'Shaughnessy.

How To Make Money In Stocks by William O'Neil.

NEW TO THE SHOW?

Check out our Millennial Investing Starter Packs.

Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.

Try Kyle’s favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance.

Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.

Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.

Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.

SPONSORS
Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors:

⁠CFI Education⁠

⁠Airbnb⁠

Connect with Kyle: Twitter | Website
Connect with Jason: LinkedIn | Website
Connect with Jesse: LinkedIn | Website
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

More from The Intrinsic Value Podcast - The Investor’s Podcast Network

All 315 episodes
MI295: From Numbers to Riches: Return On Equity’s Impact on Investments w/ Jason Donville and Jesse GambleThe Intrinsic Value Podcast - The Investor’s Podcast Network · 58 min
Listen in VO