Investment Approach

We focus on finding exceptional businesses. It is our belief that investing in great companies can produce investment results above and beyond investing in the “average” company. We follow a disciplined and rigorous approach to identify opportunities.

Philosophy

  • We seek to own a concentrated portfolio of high-quality¹ businesses that compound value over many years
  • We look for businesses that possess certain competitive advantages that allow them to earn above-average returns on their capital and generate growing, reliable cash flows
  • We aim to identify these businesses and opportunistically purchase their stock when the market misperceives intrinsic worth
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Process

  • We use a proprietary screening process to focus our time and energy on companies that have produced reliable historical results
  • Our research team extensively evaluates the durability of a competitive advantage and the long term growth opportunity, speaking with management, competitors and customers to form opinions that differ from consensus
  • If our team believes a business can sustain high returns into the future and the stock price undervalues that opportunity, we will look to purchase shares of the business
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Performance

  • Long term, we believe our investment returns should mirror the above-average returns on capital of our individual portfolio companies
  • By identifying quality, undervalued stocks, we expect our portfolios to provide competitive returns over full market cycles
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¹BFM defines High Quality companies as those that share similar attributes, including but not limited to a demonstrated history of stable and growing cash flow and high returns on invested capital; stable business models, which we believe are relatively less exposed to economic gyrations and competitive threats; companies which our research team perceives to have competitive advantages that suggest sustainable profitability well into the future; low capital intensity and conservative balance sheets; and employee compensation aligned with shareholder interests. While the securities in which BFM invests typically share some of these characteristics, these are not required for inclusion in our strategies.