We think and act like business owners.

Investing involves more than just understanding all the details — it also requires that you uncover the insights about how a portfolio candidate’s business is run and the dynamics of their industry and use those insights to develop instincts that will enable you to identify clearly both a stock’s return potential and its level of risk.

This style of investing drives everything we do at Montrusco Bolton Investments Inc. Using a bottom-up, fundamental approach, we dig deeper and have the utmost conviction in every company we invest in. Our process is thorough and repeatable, and has been proven in every market environment. We participate in shareholder activism by maintaining an open dialog with company management teams about matters that impact their share price. And we develop multiple perspectives on valuation that allow us to gain greater insights that lead to generating attractive upside / downside capture. We invest for the long-term, which means that we know exactly where risk resides in our portfolios and how this matches our clients’ objectives.

Our investment process is driven by a four-step approach:

1. Fundamental Research
   The first question we explore when considering a company is whether it is a company that we would own. To answer this question, we conduct a thorough analysis of fundamental factors — based on an examination of financial strength, industry dynamics, competitive differentiators, track record of success, management, and business plan — in order to identify portfolio candidates.
   
   
2. Valuation Analysis
   We apply several distinct valuation metrics to gain a perspective on how the company is priced and if it meets our minimum risk adjusted return hurdle/target.
   
   
3. Risk Budgeting / Portfolio Construction
   As we construct portfolios, we subject each recommendation to intense scrutiny, based on its individual potential as well as its role in a given portfolio strategy. With each portfolio, we develop a risk budget that enables us to assess the potential return of each portfolio versus the organic risk of each position. Because of our focus on a small number of companies, we know exactly where risk resides at the firm, portfolio, and security levels. This gives us the ability to fine-tune our portfolios to ensure they deliver attractive returns on a risk-adjusted basis.
   
   
4. Monitoring / Sell Discipline
   All of our team members are responsible for active and continuous monitoring of all of the companies in our portfolio. We apply an uncompromising sell discipline if an investment thesis no longer holds, if the number of red flags is increasing, if new risk factors emerge that are not being mitigated, or if valuation is fully reflected in price.