Premier Miton US Opportunities B

Investment Process

The managers take a bottom-up investment approach, looking for companies they believe have the best opportunities within their industry or sector. They have a mantra which late US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would admire in that they ‘know what we do know, and know what we don’t know’. In short, they believe that most investors overestimate causality, explainability & their own ability to forecast. From an investment universe of 3,000 stocks they filter out companies below $1billion market cap which leaves 1,800 companies. Having done this they ditch industries that fail to meet quality criteria, such as airlines, biotech and pure commodity plays. They then look for companies with positive revenue growth giving 1,100 potential stocks. They bring this number down to 400 stocks by first using a quantitative screen which filters those with less than 20% Cash Return On Cash Invested. Thereafter, the qualitative focus is all about the intensity of competition: threat of new entrants, power of customers, risk of substitutes and power of suppliers. They look for stocks which can deliver consistent and predictable growth in cash flow over time. Ideally, they look for companies with highly recurring revenues or frequent small purchases by customers, limited need for finances to support the growth of the business, and high barriers to entry. They believe that only a small group of all quoted companies fit such criteria. They are confident that they can model and forecast and value them better than the average company. As part of the process, they attend around 200 company meetings a year with both management and employees. Once they have identified companies they want to invest in they wait for the best opportunity to buy at a reasonable price. The fund has a concentrated, high conviction approach with between 35 and 45 holdings. The top ten holdings account for around a third of the fund with typical weightings being between 2% and 3%.