Painted Ladies

Sasser Investment Philosophy

Value Investing

As disciplined value investors, we are bargain hunters to the core. We find undervalued companies when short-term problems and investor pessimism cause stocks of growing, established businesses to temporarily go out of favor. When most investors are focused on the short-term, it becomes possible to acquire stocks at prices that ignore the long-term value of the company. Over time, we believe that good companies bought at discounted prices lead to above-average returns.

Sasser Investment Management: Results You Can Count On

Our commitment to value is the foundation of all investments at Sasser Investment Management. Adding value to our clients’ investment portfolios is a passion that permeates our company’s culture and brings focus to every decision we make. Our patience, discipline, long-term outlook, and resolve in applying our value strategy amid changing circumstances have led to our continued success in an unpredictable economic climate.

Our approach differs substantially from the homogenous strategies of mass-scale advisors, brokerage houses, and mutual funds which are required to hold 50-200 positions at a time due to size and scale constraints. Over the long-term, we believe our focused approach will lead to superior returns.

Our Process

At the center of our investment process is the valuation of financial securities. Value relative to price drives virtually all investment decisions within SIM strategies.

We believe it is futile to try to predict the short-term direction of markets. Rather than guess what might happen next, we think it more prudent to own a portfolio of market-leading companies that earn high returns on capital, boast strong balance sheets, and self-fund their growth. We buy these businesses carefully, taking advantage of occasional periods when their stocks seem to be mispriced relative to their intrinsic value.

We believe a concentrated portfolio of businesses that has been intensively researched and carefully purchased will generate higher returns with less risk over time than a large diverse basket of stocks (+50) chosen with less care.

The Sasser Investment Process

Investigation and Identification

The quest for suitable investments begins with systematically surveying financial markets. Utilizing generally available resources and providers of financial information, we screen publicly traded companies and rank them according to our own valuation criteria. On a quarterly basis, we systematically review over 3500 global companies looking for those that appear to be priced at a discount to their intrinsic value. We search for companies that are trading at low multiples of traditional valuation criteria such as earnings, cash flow, sales, and book value.

Valuation & Research

Using various valuation models – dividend discount; cash flow; price-to-earnings; private market & others – we establish what we believe to be a conservative estimate of a company’s fair value. Our research leads to a price target for a company and an understanding of the circumstances that have led to the company trading at a discount to our price target. Having identified our “name brands on sale,” we select the candidates with the greatest financial strength and largest discount to value as potential candidates for the investment portfolio.

Acquisition

We acquire stock in companies when the price represents a significant discount to value. Because we are a boutique investment manager focused on a concentrated number of investments, we can be selective in what we add to portfolios and limit our investments to a handful of great ideas that present themselves at any particular time.