ABOUT US
IBV Capital is an investment manager dedicated to delivering attractive long-term rates of return through our value-oriented approach. We invest across developed markets globally in high-quality businesses that are undervalued because they are misunderstood, overlooked, or temporarily affected by a market event. We approach each investment as an owner-operator of the business and conduct comprehensive bottom-up analysis to intimately understand the select few high-conviction investments in our portfolio.
FAMILY OFFICE FOUNDATION
Since 2005, IBV Capital’s founder, Talbot Babineau has been practicing our disciplined value-oriented approach to investing. This was an important consideration when Talbot met two of Canada’s most successful families. The families had sold a division of the business they owned together and wanted to invest the proceeds. Talbot shared their views on business, risk, and investing, so in 2010 the families engaged Talbot to form and manage their family office. The family office enjoyed considerable success under Talbot’s management and, in 2014, IBV Capital was founded to provide other individuals and institutions with an opportunity to invest alongside Talbot and the families.
Our beginnings as a family office provide us with a unique perspective that has fundamentally shaped us as investors and as a firm. The world’s most successful family offices are flexible and patient in their investment approach. We have adopted these strengths. Our flexibility enables us to be opportunistic buyers and our patience allows us to think like business owners.
Above all, we have a deep appreciation for the tremendous effort it takes to generate wealth and the importance of preserving it. That’s why we prioritize protecting against our definition of risk – the probability of a permanent loss in capital – and focus on long-term value creation.
INVESTMENT PROCESS
We look across developed markets globally for high-quality businesses that are undervalued because they are misunderstood, overlooked, or temporarily affected by a market event. We are attracted to these businesses because they exhibit a combination of the following characteristics:
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Durable business models with long operating histories
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Management teams that are aligned with shareholders
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Identifiable catalysts for unlocking value
Once we’ve identified a business that exhibits these qualities, we conduct comprehensive bottom-up research to the same extent as though we’re going to acquire the entire company. Having an intimate understanding of the business allows us to establish its intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is what we determine to be the true worth of a business and is core to our investment approach. As a rule, we only invest in a business when its market value is significantly below its intrinsic value.
Due to the nature of the businesses we invest in, the state of operations at the time we discover them, and the owner-operator lens through which we evaluate them, our investments are often attractive turnaround or acquisition targets.
Historically, we’ve gravitated towards small and mid-cap businesses because they are more likely to be inefficiently priced and, in select situations, we can act as our own catalyst by collaborating with management teams to extract value.
Optimizing the portfolio is the final and ongoing step in our process. Our portfolio will only consist of our highest conviction investments. Using a proprietary portfolio weighting model, we continuously monitor our investments to ensure appropriate position sizes, balancing the risk dynamics and return potential of each investment to optimize the portfolio.