Approach

When we started our Fund over 14 years ago, we began with a simple philosophy: buy a limited number of extremely high-quality companies with a significant margin of safety and hold them for the long term. We wanted industry leaders and essential product or service businesses that sold something that people did not simply want to buy, but had to buy. We wanted to invest in companies that enjoyed recurring revenue and high margins, generated free cash flow, required minimal capital expenditures in the normal course of business and were led by proven management teams that were shareholder value obsessed. Particularly important in today’s environment, we sought out businesses with strong balance sheets that could withstand downturns in economic activity without having to dilute their shareholders. Finally, we looked for businesses without excessive complexity, where it was possible to independently model their future earnings and free cash flow. Today, as in the past, the businesses in our portfolio meet our original criteria.

Key to our core is the concept of margin of safety. As value managers, we invest in businesses that meet our criteria only when they sell in the public markets at a significant discount to our estimate of their intrinsic value. This provides for a significant margin of safety to ensure that our portfolio will not be threatened with long-term loss of principal. 

We consider our clients our partners and invest your assets alongside ours, exhibiting the same high level of diligence and discipline in every decision we make.

Our goal is to maximize absolute returns over the long term while protecting your principal. Experience has taught us that patiently owning high-quality, undervalued assets generates good returns and significant wealth over time.

Great investments, like great companies, are built over time. At BloombergSen, we do not focus on month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter performance but take a long-term approach to investing, often with a time horizon of five to ten years. As an added benefit, the low turnover of the investments in our portfolio minimizes transaction costs and maximizes tax efficiency. 

Those who chase performance and try to time shifts in market psychology and style are only too familiar with the loss of capital that can ensue. 

At BloombergSen, we have a highly disciplined and consistent approach to everything we do. We invest only in high-quality companies that meet our investment criteria and trade at a significant discount to our estimate of their intrinsic value. We do not move in and out of our holdings unless something has changed to affect our original thesis.

Our pledge to our investors is simple: we will not waver in the application of our investment strategy.