Strategy
Our investment philosophy comes from the world of Private Equity. It is based on simple rules: prudence, common sense, discipline and curiosity, while knowing how to stay within its circle of competence
Strict investment criteria
- Target companies: Focus on the MidCap segment (capitalization > €10m and < €3bn)
- Sectors of activity: Any sector, with a coherent sector diversification approach
- Main geographies: Focus on France with the possibility of investing throughout Europe
- Unit investments: 1%-10% of net assets (UCITS rule of 5/10/40)
- Investment horizon: Medium to long-term approach, decorrelated from market ups and downs, but remaining attentive to windows of opportunity
- Strict investment discipline: no companies in loss, particular attention paid to the level of indebtedness, tropism for stocks with strong cash flow generation and ideally a good level of dividend, vigilance on valuations
- Particular interest for companies with family capital
A different view of listed investment
- A team coming from the world of mid sized companies and Private Equity and not from the financial markets
- A pragmatic vision attached solely to the company and its positioning in its economic environment, independent of developments in the financial markets
- A long-term approach, decorrelated from market surges, but remaining attentive to windows of opportunity
- A fully in-house analysis of investment opportunities, as in a Private Equity operation. The opinion of the team is never based on ratings from external brokers
Transparency and alignment of interests at the heart of our DNA
- Strong involvement of the team's wealth, a significant portion of which is invested in funds advised or managed by Cambium, a guarantee of perfect alignment of interests with subscribers
- Fixed portion of fees reduced to a strict minimum and management fees based largely on performance
- No hidden fees
SWORD: A perfect illustration of our investment approach
Sword is a global leader in technological and digital transformation
Its founder and director, Jacques Mottard, has a long experience and a real talent in managing the main levers of his business and has surrounded himself with a solid management team to support him. This high-quality manager also knows how to demonstrate a rare pragmatism, not hesitating to sell certain branches of his company to develop others and has thus made his group evolve several times, each time demonstrating a capacity quite incredible to sell and buy well, to the great satisfaction of the group's shareholders.
Despite its quality, the company has long been too expensive to meet our investment criteria in terms of valuation. One of our specialties is to identify market anomalies to invest in quality companies, while preserving margin of safety on valuation, which the small / midcap segment regularly offers us, provided we are patient and attentive.
Sword announced in February 2022 the sale of its "GRC" risk management software division, which would enable it to receive an amount in excess of €100 million (out of a market capitalization of €376 million), significantly reducing the level of valuation of the post-dividend company and thus providing us with the margin of safety necessary to consider an investment. Our analysis of the company and our conviction had already been made upstream. We were thus able to take advantage of this market anomaly to invest in this great company, while respecting our level of requirements in terms of valuation and margin of safety.