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The Future of Private Markets with David Rubenstein & Jeff Blau | #SALTNY

The Future of Private Markets with David Rubenstein, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, The Carlyle Group. Jeff Blau, Chief Executive Officer & Partner, Related Companies.

Moderated by Matt Brown, Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman, CAIS.

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SPEAKERS

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David Rubenstein

Co-Founder & Co-Chairman

The Carlyle Group

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Jeff Blau

Chief Executive Officer & Partner

Related Companies

 

MODERATOR

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Matt Brown

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman

CAIS

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt Brown: (00:07)
David, Jeff, welcome.

David Rubenstein: (00:10)
Thank you for having us.

Jeff Blau: (00:11)
[crosstalk 00:00:11].

Matt Brown: (00:12)
My name is Matt Brown. I'm the founder and CEO of Case. I'm really honored to be with two great business leaders in the private market space. David Rubenstein, Jeff Blau. We have a somewhat limited window here, 35 minutes, but I don't think either need a big introduction, but I think we would love just to have you each to spend a second introduce yourselves and we'll dive right in.

Jeff Blau: (00:39)
So thank you for having us today. So I'm Jeff Blau, I'm the CEO of Related Companies. For those of you that don't know, we're a large real estate development company based here in New York City, right across the street. You might know the Hudson Yards that we built and own as well as Columbus Circle, which is now called Deutsche Bank Center, used to be Time Warner Center. Across the country, we develop in most of the major markets throughout the US, and then London outside. We employ about 4,000 people. Today one of the largest real estate development companies in the United States.

David Rubenstein: (01:15)
Okay. I'm David Rubenstein. I'm the co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group which is a global private equity firm operating in 35 different cities around the world. And we manage about $276 billion currently. And we are actively investing in this environment and we think it's a pretty attractive environment in many ways.

Matt Brown: (01:37)
Great, welcome. Today's panel creating value and democratizing access in a post pandemic world is our title. I think with David and Jeff, we could take this in a lot of different directions. So let's just kick off. The last decade has been just astronomical in terms of private markets growth, both on the real estate side, Jeff and David on the private equity side. Let's just talk about some of those drivers. What's going on in the environment that's propelling your areas for just such extreme growth?

David Rubenstein: (02:08)
Well, the charm and good looks of the founders of global private equity firms has probably been the principle driving factor would be my guess, but if you don't believe that, the returns have just been better than any other asset class. Private equity over the last 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years and so forth, and almost every year outperforms public equities by 300 to 500 basis points depending on the year and the [inaudible 00:02:31] and so forth. So people have consistently said, well, if I can get better rates of return, I should do that. Now I have a higher risk factor, but over the years, people have included that private equity and its various forms buyouts, venture capital, growth capital, infrastructure is not as risky as was thought to be the case 30 or 40 years ago. So if you don't have the high risk that people thought you had in these so-called alternative investments, and you're going to get a higher rate of return, people are willing to pay the higher fees involved and willing to have the longer holding period.

David Rubenstein: (03:01)
So that's basically what's driven is that the rates of return have just been more consistent and the industry is much more mature in the sense that the people in the industry are more sophisticated about avoiding bad deals and even though we're paying reasonably high prices by normal standards, the industry has so much more talent to make these companies work than it did 20 or 30 years ago. And I think people feel much more comfortable than they did 20 years ago in investing in this area.

David Rubenstein: (03:26)
20 years ago and obviously 20 years ago was a tragic occurrence right near in this site where we are today, 20 years ago, you had less than a trillion dollars invested in overall private equity, all assets [inaudible 00:03:41]. It was less than a trillion. Then you're all over private equity is probably eight to 9 trillion. So it's gone up dramatically in this 20 year period of time. And I think the rates of return have been very, very consistent and people believe they will be consistent in the future. And because interest rates have been low, it's been driving people to get out of traditional, fixed income kind of investments. And they go into things that are going to yield better than the low things you get on treasury bills or other corporate bonds.

Matt Brown: (04:07)
Jeff, what about the real estate world?

Jeff Blau: (04:08)
So I would say similar to private equity, if you think back 20, 30 years ago, real estate was never really considered an institutional asset class. And so spreads were wide and it was a lot of inefficiencies in the market over this period of time. People have institutionalized private investment in real estate assets, whether it's opportunistic investments through development acquisition, or even more recently, some of the very, very large core funds that have been created really as interest rates have come down so low, the spread that you can make owning real estate is greater than almost any other point in time.

Jeff Blau: (04:45)
And so there's been huge inflows into core ownership of real estate, providing steady recurring income, cash flow, and tax benefits to investors. And so if you look at it today, it's a much more institutionalized product and capital flows are really greater than they've ever been into the real estate sector.

Matt Brown: (05:04)
Just staying on that, we've been through a pretty dramatic 18 months. Different businesses have succeeded. Others have turned the lights off. They always do this when I start talking, by the way, I should have told you that. The COVID-

David Rubenstein: (05:21)
Actually, maybe our time is up already, I don't know.

Jeff Blau: (05:24)
Now we can see everybody.

Matt Brown: (05:26)
Anthony Scaramucci just wants to see what we're made of, I think.

David Rubenstein: (05:28)
Okay.

Matt Brown: (05:29)
See? I can see him with a little light switch. Jeff, the pandemic, the global pandemic has negatively impacted so many companies on the flip side. So many have been beneficiaries, specifically around the real estate industry and directly related. Walk us through kind of what the last 18 months have been for you, how you reposition the firm.

Jeff Blau: (05:54)
So I would say COVID has really thrown everything for a loop. It's been the wildest swings I could possibly imagine in the past 30 years in real estate. You almost saw this vacuum of people leaving cities, the core urban markets, apartment buildings emptying out, retail stores going out of business. People really even today aren't back as much in their offices.

Jeff Blau: (06:20)
And yet you look at the last 60, 90 days, you're seeing a complete reversal of that trend. So to give you some high level numbers, we own one of the largest apartment portfolios here in New York. So at its absolute peak, that portfolio went from 98% occupied to 83% occupied. In order to get people to sign leases, we were giving away three months rent. That portfolio is back to 99% occupied with no free rent. So basically we're kind of even plus 1-2% to pre COVID numbers. So that's been a remarkable swing and really, I think that's been around this timeframe, Labor Day, September, back to school, I think the Delta variant has put a little bit of a damper on return to office, but still, I think there's been a huge inflow of population back to the cities.

Jeff Blau: (07:12)
Now, condo sales have picked up again. We've had actually the last 60 days have been the most robust condo sales since 2013 here in New York. S we have seen a tremendous swing. It's been a pretty wild ride. I would say the other thing that's happened is people have further rediscovered what we would typically have called secondary cities. So our offices are in New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Boston, DC. And that's where we've been most active, but there are great cities and we've always been small investors, but now have become much larger in Austin, Charlotte, Denver, West Palm beach. These were markets that we had typically called secondary, and I think there's been a lot more interest in those cities and think they'll really become primary markets for many people.

Matt Brown: (08:03)
Same question to you. I just want to ask one more question, but Jeff, a lot of people say, when will Manhattan be back? Being here in Manhattan. And of course back is a bit in air quotes. When is Manhattan back?

Jeff Blau: (08:14)
I do think a lot of Manhattan is back. If you just walk around... First of all, you can't get a reservation, you can't go out to dinner. The restaurants are packed and the West Village is packed. The meatpacking district is crowded on a Saturday. So New York is feeling like it's coming back. I would say the only thing that is not really back here are people's return to the office. And I think that's something we can talk about, but I think that's going to change a little bit over time and that's going to be a slower return.

David Rubenstein: (08:47)
For the country as a whole, the pandemic has been a tale of two cities. If you are uneducated, you work with your hands, you can't afford childcare, you don't have broadband, this has been a terrible time for you. And you've fallen further and further behind than where you were before. If you're in the financial service world and everybody here presumably is, this has been a pretty good time. The private equity world has done more deals, exited more deals, raised more money than any other time in its history. So if you'd flown in from Mars and said, okay, a pandemic is going to strike the entire world and particularly the United States where we've lost 650,000 people, how can the private equity world do so well? Well, there's lots of reasons for it, but technology enabled us to basically raise money, invest money, and exit deals and do road shows for IPOs and things like that without having to actually physically go anywhere.

David Rubenstein: (09:41)
So it's been amazing. And the question will be going forward, will people want to physically go travel around the world to raise money? Will people want to physically go on road shows again, the way they used to on IPOs, as opposed to doing virtually? Nobody knows the answer to that for sure. I suspect it'll be some homogenized kind of view of what will happen, but the private equity world could not be honestly in better shape. The hardest things in private equity right now are if you're a first fund. People don't like to put money into a first fund, unless they meet you in person, appropriately so. There's a due diligence standard. You have to meet the person.

David Rubenstein: (10:14)
So if you're raising a first fund, it has been more challenging now in this environment. But if you're raising a third fund, a fifth fund, an eighth fund, you can get your re-ups done if you have a reasonably good track record very, very quickly. And if you're doing deals, it saves a lot of wear and tear. You don't have to travel as much. So it's been a blessing in disguise for people who are in the financial service world. For people who are not in that world, the people I referred to earlier, this has been a terrible situation, and it's not going to get any better anytime soon, because we still have less than 35% of the people are not vaccinated yet. And that isn't probably going to change anytime soon.

Matt Brown: (10:51)
David, why would this great change in behavior to our benefit, virtual communication, the change in behavior, virtual communication now is stepping in-

David Rubenstein: (10:59)
You mean going forward?

Matt Brown: (11:00)
Yeah. Going forward.

David Rubenstein: (11:02)
Well, going forward, people are used to, let's say doing Zoom meetings now, but I think there's a feeling that once you can travel, probably you should reconnect with people. There's nothing quite like a personal connection which you can get when you're having lunch or a dinner with somebody or meet them in person. I think there'll be a feeling you should go out. But I don't think people will fly around the world to get a re-up on a fund when they can do it virtually. I think you won't have people traveling quite as much for business travel. I think that's pretty obvious to all of us, but the private equity world's biggest challenge going forward is probably whether prices are going to be so unattractive because they're so high that people feel compelled to do deals because they have a lot of money.

David Rubenstein: (11:46)
And then when the inevitable interest rate rise occurs at some point, presumably after the midterm election, you then see evaluations going down, whether people will run for the exits and say, okay, the great recession is here again. And so people are getting nervous. I don't see that on a rise anytime soon. I don't think interest rates are going to be raised, certainly not before the midterm election. And I don't think we're going to see any big tapering anytime soon, but clearly if we go to a normalized interest rate situation, there'll be some correction for sure.

Matt Brown: (12:13)
Jeff, what behavior has been changed do you think by the pandemic that you see in the real estate world that most likely will not change back?

Jeff Blau: (12:22)
Well as I was mentioning, I definitely think that there's a change in the way people use their office. I think companies, certainly larger companies will continue to have pretty much just as much office space as they have today. But I think there's going to be a lot more flexibility around how it's used. And I think whether it's four days a week or three days a week, I think companies are going to have to offer as a concession amenity to attract employees that flexibility in the workplace. Yet, when I talk to the heads of some of the big tech companies that say, oh, we can go remote, they will privately acknowledge that they really can't have culture creation, productivity, and innovation at home on Zoom.

Jeff Blau: (13:06)
And so what they're really trying to do is figure out how they coordinate this flexibility in the office. So maybe a whole group has to come in all the same four days or three days so that when they are in the office, it's much more of a collaboration effort that's happening. And that may help. That may force us to redesign how spaces are built out. There might be more meeting spaces, more gathering spaces, fewer private offices, but ultimately people are going to need to get back to the office and we're seeing it now in corporations actually taking more space in anticipation of all the growth that you just talked about, even though there's going to be that flexibility in the workplace.

Jeff Blau: (13:48)
And then the other thing David touched on, I do think that there will be some permanent changes in business travel. I think leisure travel people absolutely want to get back and leisure travel business has been unprecedented over the last 90 days as people felt a little bit freer to get out of the house, but we haven't seen the same levels of business travel yet when we had 2,500 people here today. So I think that's a great test to people gathering and getting together and staying at our Equinox hotel at Hudson Yards. Thank you for those of you staying there. And so it will be back, but I think business travel will be a slower recovery than the balance.

David Rubenstein: (14:30)
Great events in history tend to take a long time to have an impact in the way people live and work. So the industrial revolution took roughly a hundred years before people really changed the way they lived and work and became more of an industrial economy, an urban economy than an agricultural economy. The things we've lived through, it took maybe 25 years for the internet to really change our lives. It took smart phones, maybe four or five years to change our lives, social media, two or three years. In basically 18 months, we have changed the way we have we're going to live and work considerably. Yes, people are going to come back to the offices, but probably not five days a week and quite the way they did before. And people aren't going to travel quite the way they did before. So we've changed the way we live and work.

David Rubenstein: (15:11)
And those people that adapted this well are going to be quite successful. Private equity people tend to adapt pretty quickly. I think real estate people probably adapted pretty quickly. People in the financial service world adapted quickly, but all of us are fortunate because we have certain skills. We have certain technologies available to us. I think for the country itself, it's going to be a bit of problem before the country can really get back to where it was before for people who are at the bottom of the social and economic strata.

Matt Brown: (15:37)
David, many investors in the audience. We hear the word bubble when we think about private equity now, real estate. Most people don't believe there is a bubble. Where do you come on the private equity bubble that everyone seems to be hinting at?

David Rubenstein: (15:55)
Sir Isaac Newton, one of the smartest men who ever lived, he invested in the South Sea Corporation and he got out before it peaked. And he was upset with himself. He said, I'm a genius, but how come I got out and stocks still going up? So he went back in and ultimately was a bubble collapse. So people have a temptation to feel that they're missing something great. And so that's why people are still investing pretty heavily. They're afraid that they're going to miss something great. And maybe they will miss something. I think people have to be cautious, but you never know you're in a bubble until it's over. And as soon as we go into the next bubble and there's a bubble in some area and I'll think all of a sudden people will come out of the woodwork with their memos saying, well, I told you this. Of course, these memos were filed away.

David Rubenstein: (16:40)
They weren't given to people at the time or they weren't made public. People always were saying they predicted a bubble. Right now, I don't think we're in a bubble. Clearly, we're not in the kind of bubble where we had the 1999, 2000 internet bubble. They were kind companies with no earnings, no revenue, virtually nothing and that they had high valuations. I don't think that's quite the case today. The valuations are a bit high in some cases for some growth companies. But I do think that they are transforming the way we live and work in ways that I think we will grow into those valuations. So I don't think we're in a bubble, I'd say Palm Beach, real estate might be in a bubble in some cases, and maybe South Hampton and East Hampton real estate might be in a bubble. But generally I wouldn't think we're in a bubble of the type we have to worry about the way I felt we had to worry about things in 1999 or 2000.

Matt Brown: (17:27)
How would Carlyle reposition right now if you actually believed you were in a bubble? What are some of the immediate at things that you would be doing?

David Rubenstein: (17:35)
Well, it's difficult to talk about that because I'm afraid I'll be misquoted in saying that we are in a bubble. I don't think we are in a bubble, but if you were in a bubble, you would obviously slow down the amount of money you're putting out and people are putting out records amounts of money. People are afraid they're going to miss the next great thing. So anybody who thinks they're in a bubble should obviously slow things down, but go back to the companies you've already invested in and see whether they have debt that can tolerate some kind of slow down in repayment. Obviously most of the buyout deals today are done with covenant light debt, so it's tougher to default than it was 20 years ago. And so I think that people are much more experienced in dealing with downsides than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

David Rubenstein: (18:19)
So I don't think we're in a bubble. There might be in certain sectors some people are too anxious to put money in some things. So some people would say cryptocurrency is a bubble. I don't subscribe to that view necessarily. I don't own any cryptocurrencies, but I know there are some people and people I've interviewed recently have said, yes, this thing is all going to zero. But of course, when am I going to go to zero? Who knows how long it's going to take. I would say cryptocurrencies clearly have a market. And I would not bet against it because I think that would be difficult, but at some point probably some of the air will come out some of the cryptocurrencies, I just don't know which ones.

Matt Brown: (18:55)
Jeff, speaking of West Palm beach and Palm beach, where I know you view that as a secondary city. I was there recently and I think I saw a property smaller than my first Manhattan apartment asking some of the neighborhood of 10 or 12 million dollars. What's going on down there? And same question to you. I know you don't believe we're in a real estate bubble right now, but tell us what's going on that space.

Jeff Blau: (19:20)
Right. Well, I think you have to separate out some of the very unusual special spots like Palm Beach, Hamptons, Aspen in terms of single family home prices that have really escalated during this period of time and then the institutional investment world in which many of us operate. So if you talk about the institutional investment world, I don't think that there's a bubble there in real estate either.

Jeff Blau: (19:45)
I think people are investing in real estate, essentially one of two ways where one is an opportunistic invest where we've been very successful over the past year investing in situations that have found themselves in trouble because of COVID. And we've been able to put out a lot of capital in that space through opportunistic investing, but really where the tremendous capital flows are now is a result of low interest rates. All right. And so you have to have a view on interest rates to determine if you think we're in a bubble or not, but people have been looking for alternatives to essentially 0% returns. And so investing in stabilized core assets and getting that spread in core real estate has been a great investment over the past several years. And I think you'll see that continue into the future. With regard to West Palm beach in particular, we have been very, very active in that market for a long time before COVID and I'll say unfortunately, maybe for New York, but it's good to be on the receiving end.

Jeff Blau: (20:53)
We've seen a lot of people move businesses, mostly smaller financial service firms, family offices, to Palm Beach. People have moved, put their kids in school down there and have taken office space and today we really control almost the entire class A office market in West Palm beach. And that has completely filled up over the last 12 months, as I said, mostly people from here. And so we are monitoring that shift back and forth. People typically aren't moving their businesses completely, but opening secondary satellite offices. And interesting in many cases also expanding here in New York at the same time. But West Palm has been, has been terrific.

Matt Brown: (21:40)
Qualified opportunity zones are somewhat the opposite of Palm Beach in many ways. That's an area of focus for related, maybe a quick brief description on the QOZ opportunity itself. And then how are you focusing on it at Related?

Jeff Blau: (21:56)
Sure. A qualified opportunity zone is an area designated by the federal government to encourage development in those areas or to encourage businesses to move to financially depressed neighborhoods by zip code. And essentially what it does is it allows you to sell an asset, whether it's a corporation, shares of a company, or a real estate asset, and reinvest that gain into something, real estate development, a new business in a qualified opportunity zone area, and you can defer the taxes on that gain until end of 2026. And then even when that tax comes due, you only owe 85% of what would have been due back then. And then the money sits invested for 10 years and all the earnings during that 10 year period is not taxed at all, has no tax on it. So it's been a great opportunity for people to move money from gains that are sold into qualified investment opportunity.

Jeff Blau: (23:02)
And we have made a business of investing in real estate assets, typically new construction development assets in qualified opportunity zones. So raising money from individuals, placing that money into qualified opportunity zone real estate developments, and then we hold and manage those assets to maturity at the end of the 10 years, at which point we'll sell those assets and return the capital on a tax deferred basis for the investors. So it's really been a great product and really has created a lot of investment in those areas throughout the country.

David Rubenstein: (23:37)
I personally invested in a large one associated with the Boston Housing Authority.

Jeff Blau: (23:41)
Should have gone into our.

David Rubenstein: (23:42)
[crosstalk 00:23:42].

Jeff Blau: (23:42)
You didn't come into our funds?

David Rubenstein: (23:44)
I didn't go into a fund, I did it directly, but-

Matt Brown: (23:47)
You can access his fund in our platform if you want.

David Rubenstein: (23:49)
But I do think that it has potential to be very attractive, but I didn't do it because it was the tax consideration because to qualify for the task consideration, sir, it's complicated. And obviously as you know, it doesn't work for everybody. On the other hand, there are some good investments in these areas, whether or not you take advantage of the tax zones or tax opportunity or not. But the lesson I wanted to talk to people about is this, very few people knew about this in the Trump tax cut. It was lobbied through by Sean Parker among others, and it was done, I would say relatively quietly, at least for the general public, when the bill was passed, people saw it was in there. You're going to see the same thing in this current tax bill.

David Rubenstein: (24:34)
We're not going to know what's in the tax bill until it passes. The tax bill probably won't pass until the last day in Congress or so. And at that point I suspect there'll be a lot of things in there. So look for lots of investment opportunities or tax advantaged investments opportunities in the new tax bill. I don't know, who's lobbying them through at the moment. I'm not, but there will be some in there because every tax bill has surprises just as this one was a surprise to many people in the investment world.

Matt Brown: (25:01)
David, speaking of the US government regulation, there's always been that delicate dance between the private equity titans and the SCC and the US government trying to regulate. What's the state of play right now? Is the government helping grow the businesses? Are they worried about oversight?

David Rubenstein: (25:21)
I think the government of the United States has a lot of challenges right now and I don't think their biggest challenge is trying to figure out how to make private equity do things that it's not otherwise doing because of market forces. So we have not been anybody's sites relatively speaking. And so there might be some changes in the tax bill that might affect private equity, but generally people in Washington are more worried about regulating cryptocurrencies or other things and not private equity in part because we haven't had a lot of things that attract attention.

David Rubenstein: (25:49)
When you have a lot of bankruptcies, that attracts attention. People lost a lot of money, that attracts attention. That hasn't happened in private equity for a very, very long time. And as a result, I think private equity is not something that the administration is focused on or Congress is focused on. There may be some modest changes, but generally I don't expect big changes coming out of Washington in the regulatory or legislative area that's going to affect adversely the private equity world.

Matt Brown: (26:13)
One area that the US government is being quite proactive in is trying to allow more and more individual investors to gain access so they're actually on the side of the individual investor.

David Rubenstein: (26:21)
This is an important point. If you are a graduate of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, any great school, and you majored in finance and you're brilliant, but you decide to go to work for Teach for America and you make a modest salary. You're not an accredited investor. If your father is really rich and you flunked out of a couple colleges, but he gave you a hundred million dollars, you're accredited investor. So you can then do whatever you want with that money. It does seem a little ass backwards that the person who needs the higher rate of return that private equity might give you can't get it because he or she is not accredited.

David Rubenstein: (26:55)
Whereas the idiot who has a lot of money, he can go do what he wants or she can do what you wants. So it does seem strange. And finally, I think Washington is raking up to this and they are going to do things that are going to make it easier to democratize private equity for people that probably can benefit from some of these higher returns that are available in this industry. And I think you'll see 401k checkoff plans and other kinds of things that people will be able to do regularly get into various private equity areas. There's some challenges, but I do think five years from now, 10 years from now, almost everybody that wants to be in some type of alternative investment can do so even if you're not wealthy.

Matt Brown: (27:30)
I think that's right. I think at least the background there is that they wanted you to have enough money that you could lose the capital and not be impacted. So they're effectively saying that these asset classes are overly risky. That narrative has completely changed. And now they're opening it up. Jeff, when you think about product development and new funds that you're launching, do you think about the wealth management community or the individual investor and fund structures and strategies that make more sense for them?

Jeff Blau: (28:01)
So this has been one of the big shifts over the last couple years into real estate, where most of our investors have been historically institutional investors. You're now seeing more and more individuals come in through aggregators and some of the big real estate private equity firms, Blackstone, Starwood have taken the lead on this. We're doing this now at Related in terms of going to start raising capital through wealth management channels for debt. And these more core type investments that we've talked about. Your firm has been very active on aggregating capital from investors, individual investors, and investing into funds that were typically only open to institutional investors. And so I do think there has been, as you said, democratization in real estate and that has attracted tremendous capital flows.

Matt Brown: (28:50)
What's driving the demand, David?

David Rubenstein: (28:52)
Well, interest rates are so low. So people don't get the kind of rate of return that they normally would want from their fixed income investments. People see other people making money and so they get jealous and they say other people money, they're not smarter than me, why can't I make money as well? And the returns have been pretty consistent and the RIA market is gigantic. I spoke this weekend on Saturday to a group in Kansas City, several thousand people in an RIA group. And it was one firm. And every time I go to make a speech in front of large audiences these days, it's generally terms of groups of large RIA groups that have aggregated are one firm. There's an enormous amount of money in the RIA world. And the RIAs are increasingly feeling that their clients are going to be well served by putting money into some private equity firms.

Matt Brown: (29:41)
Well, Carlyle has done a great job on that. And just some numbers behind that, the RA channel advises between 10 and 12 trillion dollars in assets. That's excluding of course the larger wealth management firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman, JP Morgan, just the RIA channel. Average allocation rates in the RIA space to alternatives are about 2%, so if you just project out what a 15, 20% allocation to alternative investments, whether it's real estate or private equity, we're now looking at a multi-trillion dollar jump all for the firms that want to be there.

David Rubenstein: (30:14)
Well, when private equity... It was in 1978 when the US government and, and Department of Labor said that ERISA funds could finally go into private equity or alternatives, and then Oregon and state of Washington, others went in and then they began having big allocations. And now you see typically for endowments, pension funds and so forth allocations somewhere between 15 and 20, 25%, in some cases, even 30, 35% to alternatives. The RIA channel isn't as high as that right now, people aren't putting as much in as higher percentage, but it will drift up to a higher number to reflect what I think the institutional market is recognized that the risks aren't as great as people thought, and the returns are much better than people thought.

Matt Brown: (30:54)
Jeff, there's this rise of the do it yourself investor. We're seeing it with Robinhood and Betterment and so forth. Now we're bringing serious institutional products, investment strategies into that market for the first time, which we all think is a positive. Who has responsibility for education or oversight to make sure that there's the right suitability in place? Is that now going to be put... If the SCC in Washington is loosening, that going to be pushed onto firms like you if we open up the channel for every individual to come in?

David Rubenstein: (31:30)
Well, my hope is that that people will feel they can write things in language that's understandable. Unfortunately, we now have a lot of legal documents that are very difficult for people to understand. I hope, and as we move forward, the things that educate people are going to be written in relatively simple English so that people can understand what they're really investing in, but particularly what the fees are and what the risks are. Sometimes if you read a prospectus, you really have a hard time figuring out what you're really getting into. So if the government of the United States does anything, I hope they will do a better job in educating people about the risk in simple English and the firms like ours have a responsibility to do that too. So I do hope that both sides, the firm that's doing the investing and the government will require people to really read something that's understandable before they go into some of these investments.

Jeff Blau: (32:24)
I also think it's you do have the wealth managers now in the middle of that. So there's one more group that's actually selling the product to the investors, whether it's a company like yours, or Morgan Stanley that is basically interacting between our documents and the individuals. And I think it's part of their responsibility to make sure that everything is explained properly.

Matt Brown: (32:47)
Do you think it's unusual that we can all board an airplane with an identification code that says you're a TSA, you're not a bad guy, but we still have to photocopy a picture of our driver's license to invest in a Blackstone fund and every other fund? When is innovation going to catch up here and just make this a little easier for people, because if you hope to attract the individual investor, it has to be simple and easy, understandable, but technology and speed and seamlessness has need to come into play here.

David Rubenstein: (33:18)
Well, I think that that is happening. And I think the technology world is such that now people are inventing things that'll do things like that and make it much easier so that you can invest in these kind of funds without having to fill out so many forms that you really can't understand or that take forever to get done that discourage people from doing it, but in the end, there's no such thing as a risk-free investment. Everything has some risk. I just think that people should be allowed to take a little bit more risk than maybe they're allowed to take today if they want to get higher rates of return other than what they've been doing and just putting things in treasury bills or something like that.

David Rubenstein: (33:51)
And the world's moving in that direction. And it's not just in the United States. Today, I would say roughly 60% of all private equity investments is still in the United States. So as the world moves forward and gets wealthier, you're going to see much more private equity and alternative investments in Europe and so-called emerging markets. It's going to take a while, but I do think at some point, you'll see the United States, not quite as dominant in the private equity world in the alternative world, as we currently are.

Matt Brown: (34:16)
Jeff, if you had to allocate a hundred dollars of your personal capital and limited to three buckets of investment strategy, either within the related umbrella or not within real estate, how are you waiting that right now, going for the current market and going forward?

Jeff Blau: (34:34)
I think about that all day, because that's where my money is allocated. But I would say you want to have a fair amount in opportunistic real estate assets because that's where you're going to get higher returns. But you also want to make sure that you have a bit of a nest egg and get current income and that's core. So I don't know, maybe I would probably be 60 to 70% and opportunistic in the balance [crosstalk 00:34:58]

Matt Brown: (34:58)
And what percent of an individual or an institutional portfolio should have real estate overall?

Jeff Blau: (35:04)
I think the pension funds today, you try to target between eight and 12% in real estate.

Matt Brown: (35:12)
David?

David Rubenstein: (35:12)
I would say that the greatest pleasure that you're going to get from investing is investing so you can give some of that money away. So I encourage all of you to think about your own philanthropic interests. All of us have thought recently in the last couple weeks and certainly in the last couple days about this country and some of the tragic times we've been through. And I think if people who think about what they can do to make this country better and give some of their money that they make from investing in real estate or private equity to things that I think makes the country better, I think you're going to feel much better about that.

David Rubenstein: (35:44)
And so I hope everybody here can just ask themselves, what are you doing to make the country a better place? What are you doing to give back to this country that made it possible for you to be as reasonably wealthy as you are? And I think when you find that thing and you give some money to it and give some time to it, you'll feel much better than even if you get a triple or quadruple on one of your investments.

Matt Brown: (36:03)
We're almost at time. I just want to ask you one last question each. You've both built and run great businesses. A lot of young people coming to work for you, with you, learning. If you were mentoring a young employee or an entrepreneur, what's the one piece of advice you'd give them?

David Rubenstein: (36:22)
Have intellectual curiosity, ask questions, read. You can't read too much. Learn how to write, learn how to speak, learn how to get along with people and have some humility about what you do if you accomplish something, because you'll get much further if you're humble. You'll get much further if you actually have intellectual curiosity and try to make yourself valuable to any organization you're in. Make certain that you're actually adding value. Specialize in something, know it well, and then help other people with their projects. As Ronald Reagan famously said, there's no limit to what humans can accomplish if they're willing to share the credit as well.

Matt Brown: (36:57)
Share the credit. Jeff?

Jeff Blau: (37:00)
I would say you have to pursue an area that you're passionate about. You have to enjoy what you do every day. And going back to what David said about philanthropy, a good portion of what we do all the time is focus our efforts on affordable housing development, because we think it's one of the most important things that we can do for cities and this country needs. And so being able to pursue a passion of mine, which is real estate development and being able to do that in an area where we're also doing good for society, I think that's really, that's the perfect career. And if you can position yourself that way, that's the best outcome.

Matt Brown: (37:35)
David, Jeff, thanks so much really enjoy it. Really appreciate it.

How COVID-19 Reshaped the Advice Industry | #SALTNY

How COVID-19 Reshaped the Advice Industry with David Bahnsen, Founder, Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer, The Bahnsen Group. Karen Firestone, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Aureus Asset Management. Josh Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Ritholtz Wealth Management.

Moderated by Sean Allocca, Deputy Managing Editor, InvestmentNews.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Headshot - Bahnsen, David - Cropped.jpeg

David L. Bahnsen

Founder, Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer

The Bahnsen Group

Headshot+-+Firestone,+Kari+-+Cropped.jpeg

Karen Firestone

Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Aureus Asset Management

 
Headshot - Brown, Josh - Cropped.jpeg

Josh Brown

Chief Executive Officer

Ritholtz Wealth Management

MODERATOR

Headshot - Allocca, Sean - Cropped.jpeg

Sean Allocca

Deputy Managing Editor

InvestmentNews

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

David Bahnsen: (00:07)
New York was slightly different story, we reopened last summer, but we have a smaller presence in New York. We've doubled in size out here since, but it was easier to get away with kind of what was going on in New York than it was California, particularly Newport Beach where there was much less of a hysteria about things versus LA County. But I agree with Josh completely that all the technology apparatus pre-COVID was a very natural segue into what ended up taking place. We were big Salesforce users, we're big WhatsApp users, so there was the ability to use cloud and use digital communications internally where we didn't skip a beat.

David Bahnsen: (00:48)
The difference for us is... And I think there's a huge advantage for us right now versus all the wirehouses that aren't reopened and don't appear to have any intention of reopening their branches anytime soon... the client-facing aspect of the business. We have clients in 40 something states. We always have. There's a lot of remote communications, just like what Josh was talking about, when you have a national footprint, but to the extent that we have local presence, we really want the face-to-face. And we think it was a huge advantage for us last year that we were able to get in front of prospects and clients both through the second half of last year and all of this year, and we've reaped a lot of dividends from that.

David Bahnsen: (01:31)
This is something I remember when I was in training, coming out of dotcom, I was at a firm called PaineWebber, they got bought by UBS, and the then CEO, Jo Grano was giving us a speech about why we didn't need to be afraid of the e-trades and Schwabs and all this. And he said, there will never be a time in your life ever, where the really truly high net worth are... that you're going to be dis-intermediated. There's always going to be an industry for advice. And people were worried about that at the time, what they thought was cheap trading. I think it was like 20 bucks a trade or something. I remember throughout COVID thinking the same thing, the idea that we'll get to a point where this very well-established desire from high net worth people to have communion with their advisor, to have a face-to-face communication, to have events.

David Bahnsen: (02:22)
Events are a big part of our business too, like Josh was saying. We've started out doing them again. We had 250 people at a client dinner a few months ago in California, so we're back up and running our first event here in New York, it will be in another month. Larry Kudlow is an advisor on my team and he and I are going to speak together and that'll be packed out. And so those are the things that make you feel like you're getting back to normal. But the key issue for us is the face-to-face with the client where it's possible. I do not believe that can go away, I think people desire that personal relationship.

Sean Allocca: (02:57)
And so what have been... I mean, we'll give this one to you, Kari... some of the pain points that you've seen in the last 18 months in terms of the pandemic and how we overcome them at your firm? Have you seen similar things to Josh and David, or was your experience a little different?

Karen Firestone: (03:11)
Yeah. It's interesting to refer to it as pain points because I definitely feel that on March 17th in Boston, happened to be my birthday, when they closed the city because it was St Patrick's day and they said, "Everybody now, no restaurants, no bars, go home." It was painful to suddenly realize that we weren't going to be able to see each other. My office had not been virtual in the sense that Josh's, we worked together in the financial district in Boston, and that comradery was a big element to the company. And what we felt was sort of our cohesiveness and our clients often would come in... We have clients all around the country. We have clients in other countries, but we saw them frequently and we would talk to them sometimes. But coming into the office was something that they seemed to enjoy, or going to visit them. And suddenly having none of that and people working virtually was something to adapt to. We had the technology for it. We were all ready to do it. We had been using Zoom a little bit. We began obviously to use it all the time.

Karen Firestone: (04:22)
I found that... I have two very active dogs who were scratching on my office door at home. I said it's very hard for me to work here. And I began to ride my bike into downtown Boston every day, and there was nobody on the streets. There were no cars and there were no people when I got downtown. So I was in the office, I said, I'll open the mail. I can do wires. I mean, hadn't done anything like that for years. But I was there... Everybody was at home and we just progressed and we had to learn how to connect in a different way. That I think has been hard. Some people prefer to be in an office, prefer to talk to each other face-to-face, the clients or my colleagues.

Karen Firestone: (05:05)
I don't know if there are people who really work better in a sort of close knit relationship type environment, work better when they're not in the office. Yeah, there are some people who might, but it's hard to have that type of camaraderie, spontaneous discussion about investing as much when you can't sort of grab people, "Come on over into my office or into this conference room and let's chat about an idea." So that has been a part of what we've missed and part of the pain, but we've done well. We persevered. We started to come back. July six when everyone was vaccinated, that's when everybody was welcome to come back. And there are many days that everyone is back and some of the people or partners with small children have been home more, and some clients have asked if they would be able to come into the office. I think it's more a social thing, they're not seeing anybody so we're somebody to see, which we like. We hope it's fun for them.

Karen Firestone: (06:12)
But it's been a big adjustment. We can do it virtually. I don't think it's as much fun and this will change, of course, the way in which we do business forever, I think.

Sean Allocca: (06:27)
Sure. Interesting. So I think that's a good segue into another question that David kind of pointed to as well, which is when do we bring back employees into the office? Wall Street has postponed their plans, although they're pretty adamant that they want to get butts back in seats. Some of the other firms have been a little more lax about it and have a little more ability to work from home. What are your thoughts? What are the pros and cons? Do you want to start off, David? I knew you had a interesting take.

David Bahnsen: (06:53)
Yeah. But look, I have really strong opinions on it. I wrote an article in the New York Post last summer, and I sent a letter to the CEO of 25 firms in New York. A couple of them responded to me. I feel-

Josh Brown: (07:06)
I've been meaning to. I will.

David Bahnsen: (07:06)
Yeah. Josh and I had a great interchange on it, and there was some cussing and... No, look, the fact of the matter is, I think every firm has their own problems to solve. It's a lot easier... My firm now has 35 employees. When you're talking about JP and Goldman, so forth and they have hundreds of offices, let alone tens of thousands of employees. I think JP's case, it might be a million employees. I'm kind of more old school in the way that apparently Mr. Diamond and David Solomon are about this. But to the extent there's some that feel differently. I get it. It's just, I do believe I've built the firm around a certain culture and so that brand matters. And I think Karen's alluding to some of this, the inner action in the office is important for us.

David Bahnsen: (07:53)
I've also spent a long time in my career in branches. I was a managing director of Morgan Stanley for many years, and I never talked to anyone in the branch. First of all, they were all gone by two o'clock every day, I never saw them. And I got to know the people at our Chairman's Club trips more than I got to know the people in my own office. So the branches not reopening, might be a different story in the wirehouse world, but for us, it's an important thing. So my strong opinions are specific around what I believe about my company, but then also what I believe about supporting the cities. I couldn't stand seeing Manhattan last year with the coffee shops, and the dry cleaners, the laundromats, the bars, that type of thing, what it was doing economically to the city, I thought it was awful. And I wanted to see the big employers bring people back to support the infrastructure of the city. And I hope that, that will be expedited now here, post-vaccine. That's my take on it.

David Bahnsen: (08:45)
If I keep talking, I'll say something I'll regret.

Sean Allocca: (08:50)
How about you, Josh? I mean, you guys have been across the country already, right? So you have to take on mandatorily bringing back people to office, or...

Josh Brown: (08:56)
No, we're not mandatory. We kept the office open last summer like David did, but for a different reason. I was not there, but I have many millennial employees living in Manhattan and Long Island City in Brooklyn, and they don't want to be confined to a 1200-square foot a room all day. And so we had a clean, air conditioned, 5,000 square foot space on Bryant Park. They could get in, they could get out. They could be there with three other people and just hear someone else breathing, right? Like that stuff is meaningful, I think, just to have somewhere to go. A lot of these people... It's a 100 degrees outside in Manhattan in the summer, so you can only spend so much time out the element. You need a second space that's not your house, and all the Starbucks are closed.

Josh Brown: (09:48)
So I said, let's just reopen. I'm not worried about the liability. I don't think we're going to have a super spreader event with three kids sitting at laptops. So that's why we reopened and I've kept it that way. And what I've noticed.... Every week I go in on Thursday, we do a podcast, YouTube video there, we have guests, we made it vaccine mandatory to visit the office, whether you work here or not. But every week I see more people that work for us, and I even see people that work for us in other states, visiting New York just to spend a few days at the headquarters and just see each other. So I agree with what everyone said about, there is something important culturally about getting together in person. I just think we have to be realistic, the genie's out of the bottle and nobody is thinking, "I'm going back to exactly the way things were", especially people taking the Long Island railroad like myself every day.

Josh Brown: (10:51)
So here's one of the lesson I want to say, and this-

Karen Firestone: (10:54)
No, impossible.

Josh Brown: (10:55)
Yeah. Probably not.

Josh Brown: (10:56)
... this applies to client meetings too. It's not that no one's ever going to want to be together or meet, it's just that when we do do it, it's going to be really meaningful. People are really going to appreciate it. When you go see a client, now it's not obligatory. Now it's an event let's do lunch and we'll spend the first 30 minutes, "What vaccine did you get? I got Pfizer. Oh, I got..." We'll all do that, but so what? It's going to be like a powerful moment that you actually put on pants and left the house for me.

Karen Firestone: (11:27)
[crosstalk 00:11:27].

Josh Brown: (11:27)
So I think, on the whole, it's going to be a positive thing because now we're going to appreciate each other and each other's time more than we used to when it was just taken for granted and obligatory.

Josh Brown: (11:40)
Little applause for that. What's up? I appreciate you guys.

Sean Allocca: (11:42)
I felt it. I was feeling that.

Josh Brown: (11:42)
Happy you do feel.

Sean Allocca: (11:46)
You said Long Island railroad... New Jersey transit's probably way worse, but similar situation, so.

Josh Brown: (11:50)
It all sucks. Right.

Sean Allocca: (11:52)
Yeah, in both states, subsidized.

Sean Allocca: (11:55)
How about we switch gears a little bit and talk about maybe portfolio management and see if there's any trends or things that we saw there. It's been a-

Josh Brown: (12:06)
Did anyone mention crypto with this conference yet?

David Bahnsen: (12:07)
I haven't.

Josh Brown: (12:08)
Has that come up?

Sean Allocca: (12:08)
We're trying to stay away from it.

David Bahnsen: (12:10)
They have a breakout on it tomorrow.

Josh Brown: (12:11)
Okay.

Karen Firestone: (12:12)
Yeah. But I'm wearing something, so.

Josh Brown: (12:13)
I won't spoil it then.

Sean Allocca: (12:16)
So what have we seen there? We've seen some unprecedented market conditions and certain low interest rates never seen before. Were there any different trends you saw over the 18 months? Of course, we're going to get into crypto. But before we do that, how about, Karen, do you want to start us off?

Karen Firestone: (12:34)
So if we're talking about trends, well, what we've seen the last 18 months... This isn't just the last 18 months, but because interest rates have essentially been zero, we've all had to invest in a way assumes that fixed income, or cash, or the equivalent is really only for what you need to have available if you're spending money or you need to buy a house, and its other assets are going to fill the entire pot pretty much. I mean, that's the way I look at it. You're not going to get any return, how can we charge people a fee when they're making so little money. The fee is more than what you're earning on treasuries or whatever the high quality is that you're putting them into [inaudible 00:13:27] market. So we have done more investing over the last couple of years in assets that are alternative, whether it's more venture capital...

Karen Firestone: (13:39)
We've done venture capital since 2010, that was the first investment we did in venture. And private companies, we've seen more private companies. There are more opportunities that have come to us. We've done some private equity. We've done some real estate, real estate developments that groups have shown us.

Karen Firestone: (13:59)
And we used to have... And all of us who've been in the business for a while have understood that fixed income would be a reasonable proportion of people's portfolios... Elderly people who were retired, definitely, but much less now. And as the safety portion of the portfolio, no. So now we have other assets. There's more of that... We have had to spend more time devoted to learning about that they have more people in the company who look at non-equity asset classes. And I think that will continue as a trend. I mean, that's what all this is about. But it has never been as important, I think, as it is now, for nothing more than the fact that you can't have all the money in just equities as one might, unless you really just want to say that's the only asset class that we think is going to work and that's not been the case.

Sean Allocca: (14:57)
So I guess we have to jump into it then, digital assets. We can just go in a line here and just give our opinions. Obviously advisors need to know about it, even if they don't want to touch it. What say you, David.

David Bahnsen: (15:09)
Well, let me answer the other question because I don't have anything to say on the digital asset stuff at all.

Sean Allocca: (15:16)
It's okay.

David Bahnsen: (15:18)
It's really interesting to hear Karen's answer because I agree completely. We've done a lot more with private investing, we've done a lot more with venture, but I'm not sure that any of that is related to the events in the world of the last 18 months. In our case, I think that we just have had a migration of larger and larger clients that have needed those types of asset classes more. And there is a great deal flow out there. We've done a lot of direct deals, real estate, things of that nature. But I wouldn't associate that with the COVID moment. One of the things that's difficult for us, we have a high conviction, equity investing. We're never owning more than 25 to 30 stocks, all actively managed in-house at our firm, but we're dividend growth investors and dividend growth was very out of favor last year. And there's have been periods post-crisis where it's been in favor.

David Bahnsen: (16:12)
And it doesn't matter if I think it's about coming back in favor or not. You could make a yield spread argument, some other things, but it's never going to be tactical for us. It's always going to be evergreen. So whether or not, I think it's particularly appetizing this time or another is not really the pitch I'd want to make around it. We believe in it because of the recurrence of cash flows and the higher quality underlying investments.

David Bahnsen: (16:37)
In all seriousness on digital asset side, it isn't that I have any issue with those who are very interested in it. It's that, for us, we have a heavy focus on cashflow generative investments. We manage 3.2 billion at our firm, and we have roughly 85% of those in cashflow generative investments, either on the dividend equity side, or in credit, or even in alternatives and real estate, has a heavy cashflow bias.

David Bahnsen: (17:07)
We definitely have younger clients that ask about it. We have folks ask about it. I'm well aware that there are other firms that are building an incredible niche around it, but for us, it doesn't fit into the principles we built the business around. And so it's not something that has a big focus for us, although we do own some SkyBridge and so I guess we kind of got stuck with some of it. It's fabulous.

Karen Firestone: (17:28)
Yeah. Series G.

David Bahnsen: (17:28)
Yeah. But no, I'm kidding. They obviously have a bit of exposure in there. That's our take on it. I think my colleagues up here have a different approach than I do.

Karen Firestone: (17:38)
Well, it's interesting. I did a panel for Anthony once about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and he asked me which side I wanted to take? And I said I didn't have a particularly strong point of view. Which side would you like me to take? He said, "Well, you can be against it." And I said-

Josh Brown: (17:59)
And then he pummeled you [crosstalk 00:18:00].

Karen Firestone: (18:01)
And I said, well, I'm going to have to read a lot about Bitcoin to come up with something, articulate to say. And my conclusion was that it's a risk asset. I think it's very little connected to inflation. I don't think it's particularly connected to gold. I think in terms of the safety and storage of value, I'm not sure that Jeff Bezos has decided that his money at JP Morgan, if it's there, isn't safe. I'm not sure that you need it as a [inaudible 00:18:33], but it's safe. And I understand it, it's a risk assets that people can play as they do other asset classes that have a high level of beta risk attached to them. Do we invest directly in Bitcoin? No. We have an allocation to some external managers that own Bitcoin, including SkyBridge's multi-strat fund.

Karen Firestone: (18:56)
We have a portfolio like David, 35 names. That's our sort of love and the background that we're from. I spent many years at Fidelity. I managed an equity fund. It was a growth fund. We're growth investors primarily and that's where my heart and soul is. But we, as I said, invest in a lot of places. If there's a place for digital assets cryptocurrency, I can see that for young people in particular who feel that's very important to them as long as they understand we cannot analyze it in the way we analyze any other assets. It is not a confidence of ours. It may be for other people. I don't feel that I'm particularly competent, but I can see the appeal and haven't denied including it in diversified portfolios.

Josh Brown: (19:51)
I think that when you look at the wealth management industry, the average age of a financial advisor is 59. We have a very old industry relative to almost every other industry there is other than let's say Walmart creator. There's very few industries this old. My average certified financial planner working at my farm is in their late 30s. We're also bringing in a majority of our clients from things like YouTube and social media. And so we're attracting young millionaires and young almost millionaires, and in some cases, young quinta-millionaires, deca-millionaire. Without a doubt, if your answer to these people is, there's no cashflow so I can't even have a conversation about it, you're not a candidate for their wealth, not their current wealth, definitely not their future wealth. And so it's very important, I think, for an advisor to not roll their eyes... Which I don't think anyone's doing anymore, but as recently, as two years ago when the price had plunged from 18,000 to 3,000, it was derision at advisor conferences. That part's over.

Josh Brown: (21:05)
So now the question is, our question, we call ourselves evidence-based investors. Very hard to be an evidence-based investor in a realm like this. So then the second question is, okay, if there's no evidentiary way to do this, what's the least bullshitty way to do this for clients? That's a scientific term.

Karen Firestone: (21:24)
Thank you.

Josh Brown: (21:25)
So then you're getting into questions like, well, are we really analyzing coins and tokens? Obviously, you're not doing that with a straight face. The people who created these things don't even know what they've created. So that's out. So the notion of us actively managing a portfolio of crypto is ludicrous. Right? Okay. So let's move that off the agenda. So then what's the next question? Well, do we think that people should have exposure? And the answer to that is actually more behavioral than anything else. If they feel they need to have that exposure, then the second part of that is, well, who should provide it? Should it be us, or should we tell them, go do it yourself at Coinbase?

Josh Brown: (22:07)
And there may not be a definitive right or wrong there so you might actually want to have two different approaches, give them permission to do it themselves without hanging their financial plan out to dry, right? Or, okay, we will do this in-house for you, but here are the parameters around which we'll do this, and here are the software providers we're comfortable using, and here's what we're doing on the cybersecurity side so that we don't wake up in the morning and somebody from Japan stole... You've got to go through this process and speak to the vendors. And in many cases, the vendors you encounter are in their infancy, right? You're not working with BNY Mellon, at least not yet. We'll get there.

Josh Brown: (22:47)
So there are all these considerations that have to take place as you go through this process to find the least bullshitty way to do crypto for a wealth management client. And then of course, fees, cost, trading cost, hidden costs. So you go through these iterations and then you say, well, do I want to be market cap weighted? Here's the problem with that? The back test looks fucking great, right? But you know intuitively Bitcoin's not going to go from $500 to $50,000 ever again. If it gets back to 500, you've got real problems, right? So you know the Bitcoin back test, throw it out.

Josh Brown: (23:26)
So what do you have? You don't have any cash flows. So then you say, well, there's a 100 other tokens and coins and various... So maybe I want an equal weight these things, because the next 500 to 50,000 might be among coins five through 10 by market cap. If I market cap weight, I end up with 70% Bitcoin, 25% Ethereum, and 5% all these other science projects, and maybe that's not the way to get true future upside in the asset class. So you've got to really, as a fiduciary, go through this in order, starting from how can I, with a straight face, say to clients, "Okay, I'm a certified financial planner. Now I'm ready to manage your cryptocurrency." It's very, very hard time right now for wealth managers trying to keep up with what's going on in the culture and in the markets, but also not end up making a huge mistake for the people that trust them with their assets.

Josh Brown: (24:30)
So I don't envy any CIO at any RIA in this country. And mine happens to be my partner and I always say to him, when I overhear them talking about this stuff, "Thank God, that's your problem." I'm paying the electric bill, you deal with that. So that's my take on what's going on right now, and I think it's a fascinating time and a challenging time because of those factors.

Sean Allocca: (24:56)
Interesting. Yeah. Once it matures a little more and some of the bigger custodians get more involved, we might see some more acceptance or something. But yeah, it's certainly challenging for sure. Thanks for that. I know it was painful for you to answer the crypto, David, but I appreciate it.

Sean Allocca: (25:08)
How about this one, and Josh alluded to it, digital marketing, digital prospecting, all of these things came online. And just speak to the importance of maybe social media, blogging, content creation for advisors. It's obviously hugely successful for Josh. He just mentioned a lot of his clients are coming onboard through YouTube and other social media platforms. What's your take on how can advisors really [crosstalk 00:25:34] about this?

David Bahnsen: (25:34)
Yeah. So this is I'm real passionate about, Josh is a master at this. He's been incredible, but I disagree with every everyone who tells me how well Josh has done because of the medium. I disagree. I think it's the content. The shit Josh puts out is super good. It always has been.

Josh Brown: (25:48)
Thank you so much.

David Bahnsen: (25:49)
And if he was putting it out typed on a piece of paper and mailing it to people, it would still be compelling to read.

Josh Brown: (25:54)
Thank you.

David Bahnsen: (25:55)
Those 1970s newsletters were kind of big, you may recall.

Karen Firestone: (25:58)
He doesn't recall.

David Bahnsen: (25:58)
And so it's the content. It's not the medium. Now, of course, he's kept up with the times and has found the right delivery of it. I built my practice, previously the wirehouse, now as independent RIA through content creation as well. It's different, but we have a point of view, there's things I'm passionate about, I want to speak them to the world and then I have absolutely no care in the world who likes it and who doesn't. I just let the chips fall where they may, and I'm very comfortable with that. And so, yeah, social media, YouTube television, books I've written, there's a lot of different mediums out there, but this is all pre-COVID, just like it obviously was for Josh.

Josh Brown: (26:36)
David, do you agree that this is no longer a choice? It's essential because if we position ourselves as being partly.... or the psychological component being really important to whether or not our clients can stick to the investments we recommend. If we don't start off with people who are aligned with us philosophically in some way, and you're just randomly meeting people and putting them into portfolios, it's going to be way too hard to get them through periods of time, like 2020, for example. I feel like you have that as part of your secret sauce and some of the best RIAs today, they have that baseline of people came to me because of my ideas, not because I threw a steak dinner and they want it to look the plate, like [crosstalk 00:27:26].

David Bahnsen: (27:25)
There was a point at which I realized that people were not coming to me for my good looks.

Josh Brown: (27:29)
Right.

David Bahnsen: (27:30)
And that shared alignment of values, of beliefs, of whatever it may be, it's incredibly important because we all are in a business that requires trust and the stickiness of the client is that they trust you through hard times, not through good times. The secret of the business and the great multi-trillion dollar, I think, problem out there is that a ton of clients do not move from their advisor only because the markets have mostly been good. There's a ton of vulnerability and relationships out there. The ones that aren't vulnerable, it's because there's a connection and that connection comes out of trust. For us, we build a lot of our trust out of what Josh was talking about, people believe in what we believe in. And I think that's very important.

David Bahnsen: (28:11)
There are people that maybe are... Like not everyone should go on television, not everyone's real good at doing that. Not everyone should necessarily write. But maybe someone in their firm, someone who has a passion and authenticity... I remember at Morgan Stanley when they first said we're going to allow our advisors to do social media, but you had to tweet someone else's links out. So they'd have like a David Doris who... He's a buddy of mine, writes good stuff... But you were like a mouthpiece for the firm's content or something. And I thought, okay, I don't think that's what Twitter is really all about. That didn't seem to do a lot for me. When people could start putting out their own stuff, and you can just have a point of view, you can make people upset. You can make people not like you. But you then have that chance to build that connection, that trust, I think is very important to what we do. Content as a service is not going away.

Sean Allocca: (28:59)
Awesome. Thank you for that. We have about two minutes left, so we need to do a quick lightning round, just some final thoughts. Maybe we'll start with you, Karen, what's the big takeaway for advisors moving forward?

Karen Firestone: (29:09)
Well, I'll tell you something that I think is increasingly important, which is that when people come to look for you or a firm, they, more than you think, look at who's at the firm. And I mean, I'm obviously a co-founder, I'm a woman, Co-Founder, I'm the CEO and Chairman of a company. We're five billion in assets. It matters to me, it's important to me that Aureus is a firm with a woman CEO. It also matters to some of our clients. It matters who are the people there? I know this sounds like I'm spewing ESG. That's not what I'm saying. I just think that it is now a factor, people will say, oh, it's really great that you've got a woman who's a founder. I think having a mix of ideas and people in a company is important, but I think that the clients also increasingly think it's important... Individuals, families, and institutions. So I'd keep that in mind.

Karen Firestone: (30:17)
I would also say in terms of content, because it's something we've talked. Digital, Josh is a master. David writes, I write. I've written a book. I write for Harvard Business Review, for cnbc.com. I'm on CNBC. I think all of that helps. I don't have time to do any more of that than I do now. And if I had more time, that might be more helpful. It has to be mostly performance. We have really good performance, that's what brings the clients to us.

Josh Brown: (30:45)
There goes your lightning round, by the way.

Sean Allocca: (30:45)
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:30:48].

David Bahnsen: (30:48)
A takeaway for a financial industry is advice is not going away, the need for relationships is not going away, comes from establishing competence and likability. I try to at least do one of those.

Sean Allocca: (30:59)
Awesome. Thanks.

Sean Allocca: (31:00)
Josh, we'll end with you.

Josh Brown: (31:02)
I would just like to say, it's been a pleasure of seeing David and Kari again and meeting you, Sean.

David Bahnsen: (31:08)
Five.

Karen Firestone: (31:08)
Right on.

Sean Allocca: (31:08)
[crosstalk 00:31:08].

Josh Brown: (31:08)
And thank you guys all for coming to our session. Thank you.

Karen Firestone: (31:11)
Thank you.

Sean Allocca: (31:12)
Give it up for these guys.

Sean Allocca: (31:12)
Thank you so much.

Investing to Catalyze Positive Change | #SALTNY

Investing to Catalyze Positive Change with Noel Pacarro Brown, Investing with Impact Director & Financial Advisor, Conscious Wealth Management Group at Morgan Stanley. Matt Salloway, Chief Executive Officer, GSI Ventures. Rosemary Sagar, Chief Investment Officer, Kingdon Foundation. Thomas Haug, Managing Member, Aspen Tree Advisory.

Moderated by Steven Saltzstein, Chief Executive Officer, FORCE Family Office.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Noel Pacarro Brown

Investing with Impact Director & Financial Advisor

Conscious Wealth Management Group at Morgan Stanley

Headshot - Salloway, Matt - Cropped.jpeg

Matthew Salloway

Chief Executive Officer

GSI Ventures

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Rosemary Sagar

Chief Investment Officer

Kingdon Foundation

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Thomas J.A. Haug

Managing Member

Aspen Tree Advisory

 

MODERATOR

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Steven Saltzstein

Chief Executive Officer

FORCE Family Office

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Steve Saltzstein: (00:06)
Good morning, I'm Steve Saltzstein. I'm the CEO of a FORCE Family Office. I want to thank you all for joining us today. FORCE stands for, family office research, consulting and events, and we are the largest network of investment seeking family offices in the US. Basically, what we do, is we bring families together to share intellectual capital, best practices, meet best in class service providers. But ultimately, what we do is, we bring families together in the context of co-investing and we have made so many different co-investment alliances and relationships. It's now my pleasure to welcome the rest of the panel. Noel.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (00:49)
Hi, I'm Noel Pacarro Brown. I'm with The Conscious Wealth Management Group at Morgan Stanley. We are a wealth management team that focuses on impact investing and bringing families together like Steve.

Matt Salloway: (01:03)
Hi, good morning. I'm Matt Salloway. I'm the CEO of GSI Ventures, which is a single family office for a member of the Saudi royal family. GSI stands for growth, sustainability, and integrity. I'm also the co-founder and managing partner of SIP Global Partners, which is a performance-based global VC fund investing in the 5G economy. Very nice to be here.

Rosemary Sagar: (01:28)
Hi, I'm Rosemary Sagar and I manage the charitable assets for Mark Kingdon at Kingdon Capital. Kingdon Capital is one of the oldest hedge funds in New York, it was set up in '83 and the charitable foundation was set up in the late '90s. And I've been there almost 17 years now and have more of an institutional background. I ran the international investment division at US Trust and international equities at GE Investments, which was managing the pension fund.

Thomas Haug: (02:08)
Good morning. I'm Thomas Haug. Is my mic on?

Rosemary Sagar: (02:11)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Haug: (02:11)
I'm Thomas Haug, managing member of Aspen Tree Advisory. Aspen Tree Advisory is a multifamily office based here in New York, best city in the world. We have a consulting and advisory practice primarily for family offices. And for a number of years, I have served on Steven Saltzstein's board. So thank you for joining us this morning.

Steve Saltzstein: (02:32)
So Rosemary, let's start with you. Can you talk about how running a family office, you think about the dynamics of impact investing and this morning we're here to talk about creating positive change. How do you think about that in regards to your asset allocation model?

Rosemary Sagar: (02:51)
Since we have this family office perspective and the institutional perspective, I think it's a good idea to sort of think impact investing as a ... It's both art and science and the institutional perspective has been very much ... Well, moving more and more to the science end. And there's been some very good innovations the last few years on metrics, in terms of compiling data and actually measuring the impact. But for family offices, my view is, it's more at the art end of the spectrum. And it's more of the question of, "Okay, what does impact mean to the individual family office?" So speaking for us, I mean, the theme here is positive impact, but we'll take it a step further.

Rosemary Sagar: (03:43)
We want to make a difference and there's different ways of making a difference and therefore ... Matt, does something completely different from what we do, but we take the global holistic view of ... We can make donations and we can invest with impact and making a difference but ultimately we want to make the biggest difference possible, and what's the best way to get there?

Steve Saltzstein: (04:14)
So how do you decide where to put your money? How do you decide what investments to make?

Rosemary Sagar: (04:22)
Okay. I should explain that, we're just three officers of the foundation and Mark and Anla, his wife, do the donating and I do the investing and they are very passionate about a handful of causes and are very involved on the boards. So it's sort of probably, 80/20 or 90/10 or something where the balances is thinly spread, but the whole concentration is so that truly a difference can be made. And so we need high returns for that. So we will never have the luxury of sacrificing returns to make an impact on the investing side, because ultimately, that's the more direct way of making an impact through donations. So that's what I mean by looking at it holistically. We've looked at SRI and there's a lot to be said, but it hasn't suited our needs because ultimately, it would leave us with too low returns for the most part, even though there are correlation benefits.

Steve Saltzstein: (05:34)
So Tom, just following up on that question. Do you think being an impact investor you have to sacrifice returns?

Thomas Haug: (05:44)
So I don't. I think impact investing was thought of very differently years ago. And as of late, I actually think there are certain impact investments that generate equal or more significant alpha then traditionally thought.

Steve Saltzstein: (06:01)
Right.

Thomas Haug: (06:02)
And I feel like there is much more of a focus on impact today than there ever has been before.

Steve Saltzstein: (06:10)
Right, Noel.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (06:11)
I would agree with that. I mean, those institutions, these organizations that are actually channeling capital for change are not just looking at profitability at all costs. They're bringing in all the other nonfinancial data in order to really hone in an opportunity. And it's that looking so expansively that allows to mitigate risk. It also sees greater opportunities. So if anything, the folks that I work with actually believe that type of approach is going to lead to a greater outcome, both on the financial and impact side.

Steve Saltzstein: (06:47)
Matt, you have a global effort with the prince you're, running offices in Japan, where you're partnered with NTT DoCoMo in Saudi Arabia and the US. How do you think about it globally?

Matt Salloway: (07:02)
We spend a lot of time when we started the family office about five years ago. How are we going to create the right mission statement, the right values? And when we took a step back and I'll quote not to get a little cheesy, but I'll call Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, "To leave the world better than you found it, that is to have succeeded." And I think, from the family that I work with, we wanted to find a way to obviously protect our capital and grow it, but also to find a way to make an impact. And that's what we're trying to do. GSI, the values, the core values are pillars, growth, sustainability and integrity. It took a while to come up with those ideals. And they basically, embody how we look to invest, how we look to partner with folks.

Matt Salloway: (07:56)
Technology for us is an area where we believe we can make the biggest impact. We have a foundation, the family has a foundation. The foundation is focused on many important causes. I'm sure like Rosemary's family, but on the investing side, we are returns driven. And that's a fact, I mean, that's how we look at everything. When we get into technology, we started a fund about two years ago with NTT. The fund is mostly investing in North America, but being abridge into Japan, the Middle East. We believe we can have a true impact on other economies. Bridge the gap, other cultures. Improve the quality of life aligned sort of with the values in Saudi, specifically a vision 2030. Moving away from oil and, and becoming more sustainable. So the way that we approach it, I think it's unique to each family, but it's all about making a difference, but also growing our capital.

Steve Saltzstein: (08:56)
You have to mind the return, so to speak, but do you give extra weight if something is going to make a positive impact in the world?

Matt Salloway: (09:06)
We definitely do. And again, we have a broad view of impact. So we're investing in disruptive technologies. For example, we're investing in 5G, ORAN. A company called Parallel Wireless, which is bringing connectivity to rural areas around the world. If you look on their website just to give them a plug, they actually were bringing Afghanistan. They were in Nigeria, a lot of areas that don't have connectivity. So that's one area, we're also doing workplace safety technology. So making sure employees can safely do their jobs and not have injuries, which can devastate families. Again, it's about the returns, but we want to make sure that there is something positive, broadly speaking that can occur from our investments.

Steve Saltzstein: (10:03)
Are you ever concerned about maybe doing too good a job in the sense that like, for instance, when the ride sharing companies went to India, there were all these protests. The Indian taxi drivers were up in arms because it was hurting their lifestyle and they didn't want to have to go through the transition. You ever wonder that you're kind of piercing the veil, so to speak?

Matt Salloway: (10:25)
That's a great question. You can look at it from every side, it's not easy, obviously creating automation and taking away jobs. There's a lot of impact to, to families. And so you have to really take a hard line stance and say, "Is it doing more good than, than not?" And obviously, bringing technologies to new countries is a challenge and every country has its own values and needs. You're absolutely right, we have to be mindful of that. We've tried to be that way. I mean, we're working in two of the most, I'd say insular countries, Japan and Saudi Arabia, very different demographics. One is the oldest economy in Japan, Saudi is one of the youngest economies. I think 75% of the population is under the age of 40 in Saudi.

Matt Salloway: (11:20)
So we have to be mindful. There's also different values, religious values. So there's a lot that goes into what we think about, but fundamentally we want to invest in the best technology that we believe can really change the world.

Steve Saltzstein: (11:36)
Noel, can you look at impact in a non-correlated lens?

Noel Pacarro Brown: (11:42)
Before, we go there. I was hoping to address something you said, Matt, which was that you want to be effective in the places where you're investing. And I think some of the conversation around ESG is the S part, the social factor, the focus on human capital. And we hear a lot about DEI and why it's important because channeling capital to places where it's usually not there, it's the right thing to do. But it's also the smart thing to do, because if you have folks on the ground who understand these issues in these cultures, in these regions, that's a better investment. You're getting more data. And it's not data that we see on the balance sheet. And it's not even data that we can see in the UN Sustainability Development Goals, but it's having actual connectivity and people that understand how to make the investment most effective and lift all folks together.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (12:30)
So just to play on the conversation around metrics, and maybe we go there next, I'm not sure, but there's lots of ways to look at it, but I think ultimately having people on the ground and connectivity with the communities in which you're serving is critical to this conversation.

Steve Saltzstein: (12:47)
Well, let's talk about measurement. I think we're going through a phase where there needs, and there's going to be standardization. I mean, obviously you're hearing it from the SEC, you're seeing it in Europe and there all these kind of international scales. Do you have any sense of who you think has the best model? Specifically, your high net worth individuals or family offices can think about it?

Noel Pacarro Brown: (13:12)
So for us personally, we actually work with several different asset managers who I find brilliant. Just like any other investment, you're going to find asset managers who have deep knowledge, but also expertise with people in the field. Analysts who are looking at things to find inefficiencies. That's really what we're here to do. And so, if an asset manager is doing that well and using both the financial and non-financial data in a way that's not just looking at the point of profitability over the next quarter, but generational change. Then you're going to find a really good solution. So for our team, we look at all the different asset managers, most of them think way beyond the next 10 years. And we relay that back to our clients and say, "How does this fit with the way that you're thinking about your desire to make an impact?" And then we go from there.

Steve Saltzstein: (14:03)
Tom, do you think that family offices are better suited to make impact investments because they can think in terms of generations?

Thomas Haug: (14:11)
So I think the time horizon for family office is definitely more significant and lengthier than some other investors. So when you look at the time horizon of an impact investment, number one, you're looking to make change. Number two, you're looking to take as much time as needed to effectuate that change. And number three, the return profile may be more significant, if you have the patience to wait it out. So 100%, I do think impact has become a focus for families more and more over recent years for that reason.

Steve Saltzstein: (14:48)
Rosemary, you're probably known as the smartest family office investor in New York. I think that's really true. How should folks think about the best place on the balance sheet to deploy their capital in regards to debt facilities, equity, prep, things of that nature in order to have the most positive impact?

Rosemary Sagar: (15:10)
We look at all the alternatives, basically. We have a very fundamental process. So we look for the sustainable performance and through that lens, even before impact became a thing, we would avoid any negative impact because by definition it's not sustainable. I mean, that's our main assumption, so it would be screened out. Going back probably 15 plus years. We have invested in a variety of strategies that have positive impact and actually, several of the best impact is on the lending side, on the credit side. So we're in two SBIC funds and that's helping smaller businesses that wouldn't have access to financing, otherwise. And it is highly profitable too. The best case, I mean, our Holy Grail is we want to have higher returns, while making positive impact in our investments and then have even more funds to then deploy in donations and have an another whammy on the same play so to speak.

Steve Saltzstein: (16:34)
Right.

Rosemary Sagar: (16:35)
That's the [crosstalk 00:16:35].

Steve Saltzstein: (16:35)
So the ends justifies the means, so to speak.

Rosemary Sagar: (16:38)
Yeah, but I have to say, I think that ... I hate to generalize, but it's probably in the direct investments that you have the biggest bang for the buck. So we have invested in a company that got breakthrough status for a medical device that helps in oncology surgery and basically highlights every last cancer cell during surgery and allows clean margins, reduces the need for a second surgery by more than 40% and that sort of thing. So we're expecting a very positive outcome for the exit. And in the meantime, we're basically changing the future for so many cancer patients. And ultimately, all our proceeds are going to get donated.

Steve Saltzstein: (17:36)
I think I showed you that deal.

Rosemary Sagar: (17:40)
I showed you that one.

Steve Saltzstein: (17:41)
Fair enough, fair enough. Matt, you're kind of playing both sides in the sense that you have a family office and you have a fund. So where do you think you can make the most positive change? Is it through direct investments from the family office or is it in some sort of LP structure?

Matt Salloway: (17:59)
Well, I take a very holistic approach. I don't think that there's an answer that one is better than the other. I think in unity, we're able to do a lot more. And we started this fund because we had such a strong family office infrastructure. We were investing in tech companies in the US and bringing them into the Middle East. And we were doing that also for our own returns. It wasn't just impact. The fund came about because we were doing, I think, fairly well. And we partnered with some close colleagues of ours in Japan, who were doing the same thing, bringing technology to Japan. And we felt, if we combine this ecosystem, it would be probably one of the most unique. I mean, being able to bring tech companies into Japan and Saudi. Japan being the third largest economy, Saudi being one of the largest economies in the Gulf. We felt like that would really have a positive impact, not only on our portfolio, but also on the world, the way that we're trying to bring together. I think it's a combination of both, is the answer. If that makes sense.

Thomas Haug: (19:06)
And Steve, if I could just make a quick comment. Most of the people that are here that know the trail of how Aspen Tree has evolved. I was very good at selecting managers and selecting professionals that knew how to run investment portfolios. And I think there very much is a place for that. And just because you're hearing more and more today about family office, co-investments and collaboration. Especially, in and surrounding the impact space, I think there very much is a place for managed portfolios and at certain points, it's a good thing to leave it up to the professionals.

Steve Saltzstein: (19:50)
Tom, let me ask a follow-up question, which is, today, now more than ever, there are a myriad of different financial structures and sectors within the sector that you can take advantage of. I mean, you can get involved in impact through EV, through water generation, through diversity and inclusion, but you can also do it through a SPAC, through bonds, whatever it might be. How should a family office think about kind of that giant spectrum of opportunities?

Thomas Haug: (20:20)
So I think it really comes up to their investment thesis and what their overall portfolio construction looks like outside of the impact space. If a family has a lot of exposure to a certain sector, but they are still looking to make a philanthropic portion of their portfolio. I think it's important to just make sure that there's not too much overlap when you say, maybe exercising SPAC opportunities, which we've heard tons about, or doing some sort of more public offering. When you think of impact investing recently, I think we think about private investments. We think of private companies, we think of funds, but there are plenty of public vehicles that you can make an impact and exercise investments through.

Steve Saltzstein: (21:15)
How do you guys ... And just open it up to all of you. How do you guys think about the concept of opting out versus opting in? And what I mean by opting in is, if you look at Engine No. 1, which is this small hedge fund that recently got three board seats on Exxon's board and they did that all under the auspices of hoping to change their policy on climate change. It couldn't be more activists versus folks who just basically say like, "All right, I'm going to completely stay out of investing in oil and gas because it's increasing greenhouse gases."

Thomas Haug: (21:46)
Steve, I'm going to make one comment and then turn it over to the panel. So in that scenario, if you look at that, they took one fifth of the company's board seats. And I think there is going to be a very positive change surrounding that. That's big, I mean, three board seats out of what, 15.

Steve Saltzstein: (22:08)
Yeah.

Thomas Haug: (22:09)
Yeah.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (22:10)
I see this as an opportunity for influence and ultimately, usually that's the investment, but now you can have additional influence. And so for us, it's been a way to help even the younger investors. The next generation get really engaged because oftentimes, they don't know what it is to feel power and influence quite yet. But in this conversation around, and we talk to them about the group, As You Sow and proxy voting and shareholder engagements for the public side, it starts to come alive. And so it to me, is the somewhat democratization of the capital markets, because every investor, not just those with the most capital can feel that their vote counts and it's going to be doing something.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (22:53)
So we love that conversation, but we would never impose it. I do have clients who live in the rainforest in Hawaii and say, "I'm a passive person have discreet. I don't want my name on anything." But have the asset managers vote and do my proxy voting.

Matt Salloway: (23:11)
I'm sorry, I would add one other thing. And I think, the question gets to the point of how impact has really become mainstream in some ways. I mean, we participated in 2015 in an impact investment conference at Harvard University, they do a great job. I'll give them a plug, James Gifford and Falco, who I think are two of the leaders in impact. We brought together some of the leading families, we talked about, how next generation families can get more involved in impact. And it was so much more limited. Now, every bank has an impact officer. There's a lot more of these funds, there's these metrics. Obviously, you have to make sure, if there are people in the audience that are looking to get into impact, you have to make sure that there's real teeth to the screening and what people are saying. But I think, at the end of the day, it's amazing how far we've come and how much there's been a push for the entire industry.

Rosemary Sagar: (24:17)
I might add also, I think back to your question. I think activism is a very essential ingredient for having impact, but I think the main difference probably between the opting in, opting out, is the timescale of change because being activists is hopefully going to accelerate the pace of change dramatically versus opting out and withholding capital and funding from undesirable behavior. So that's how I view it.

Steve Saltzstein: (24:49)
Are family offices and ultra high net worths, are they looking at climate change as a risk factor when they're considering making allocations out of the portfolio?

Noel Pacarro Brown: (24:59)
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, at least for our investors, for an asset manager that doesn't even consider it. They say, "How do you risk manage?" It's just very obvious. Of course, I'm from Hawaii. So we live on an island and I do work on the West Coast, so we're seeing it real time. It's our lived experience. And so to not consider that, when you're managing capital seems like, what world are you in? So no, it's not just risk, it's opportunity. So it's one thing to be a responsible corporation. It's another to actually create solutions. And so I think when it comes to family offices that are leading the charge, like some of the folks here, they get to be slightly more innovative and be the tip of the spear, which then creates opportunities that are scalable for the rest of everyone else to participate in.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (25:47)
But those innovative solutions start with that private investment, oftentimes not all have access to. So we're really leaning on the folks who can, to make those investments, so that we can follow suit and bring more capital to the opportunity.

Steve Saltzstein: (26:03)
Well, do you think, because your business is Hawaii, Oregon, and California.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (26:10)
Yeah, mostly.

Steve Saltzstein: (26:11)
Do you feel that there's kind of an East Coast, West Coast thing, when it comes to the recognition and real application of impact investing?

Noel Pacarro Brown: (26:19)
Yes and no. I mean, we find kindred spirits here in the city and they've been amazing. This is going to be a little bit of a fan girl moment, but when I heard Justin Rockefeller speak, it was like, "Oh, yes. Absolutely." He gets it. He's got friends who get it and he's not from the West Coast. So no, I think that absolutely in Silicon Valley, there's a focus on innovation. There's a focus on what's going to be happening 10, 20 years from now. And so that type of thinking and creativity is just a beautiful environment to be having these types of conversations around impact solutions. Not to mention, I think people are a little more connected. I don't want to generalize, but most part, connected to nature and the effects of climate. And also, there is more focus on social justice in these hubs like San Francisco, LA, Seattle.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (27:07)
So I think the conversation is, it's not like learning a foreign language. It's definitely, everyone's speaking in this way. And so I'm excited to be able to have our business there and serve the families, we do.

Steve Saltzstein: (27:22)
Tom, I'd venture to say, no one in this room knows more family offices than you do. Do you hear from them, or do they reflect thinking about impact investing differently based on where they're living in the country?

Thomas Haug: (27:42)
You gave me a very tough question, if you think of California emissions and you think of lowering greenhouse gases and environmental, obviously you think of California. You think of the West Coast, I think that has changed. If you think of, Shane who we had here yesterday, he's dedicated his life and invested a lot of money into the EV space to lower greenhouse gas emissions. There are other companies that are New York-based that-

Steve Saltzstein: (28:18)
By the way, just to be clear, that's Shane McMahon from the McMahon family in Connecticut that founded WWE and WWF.

Thomas Haug: (28:28)
Yeah, if you look at some other companies that I work with, their mission is to lower greenhouse gas emissions. They are based in New York and Colorado. I do think, across the country, people have realized that lowering emissions and raising standards is very important, when you think about the current administration's mission to plug leaking wellheads and focus on alternative fuel sources and everything else. I think that's something that spans across the country at this point. And then when you look at technological advancement that drives most of the impact today, New York is a hub, Seattle is a hub, California's a hub. The Southeast is becoming a hub. So think it is pretty broad, in my opinion.

Steve Saltzstein: (29:29)
Matt, you really put your money where your mouth is, and not only with GSI, but you also are a film producer and the common theme in your films is social justice, diversity and inclusion. I'd be surprised, if anybody else in this room has really done more for their mission then you have. Can you just talk about, what you're doing with, with producing? You're a polymath, by the way. He's an attorney, he runs this great family office. He's got a fund, I don't know, just got engaged and he's an executive producer or producer on all these films. Can you just talk about that.

Matt Salloway: (30:13)
Thank you. I think for that, I'm going to have to put you in the next film.

Steve Saltzstein: (30:15)
Exactly.

Matt Salloway: (30:19)
Just to combine worlds, the first female Saudi director made a ... I think she spoke a few years ago and she said, "Art can really take hold of you. It can open your mind." I've always had a passion for art and film as a vehicle to change the way we think, to educate, to inspire. And again, we try to make commercial films. It's not just about making a film solely for the message. It's a combination similar to what we do with the family office and the fund, but I've been fortunate to be part of over 10 films. Our most recent film is called, Worth. It's the story of Ken Feinberg, who was the 911 special master. He was really tasked with the role of determining the value of human life. And obviously, it was a transformation as he went from kind of very matter of fact, trying to figure out a formula to really understanding and becoming so much more empathic and going through a transformation to understand what the families were going through and to understand what our worth is in humanity, regardless of what we do and how much we make. We're all in a sense the same.

Matt Salloway: (31:49)
And so we were fortunate, that came out ... That's on Netflix. If everyone wants to check out Michael Keaton plays, Ken and Stanley Tucci plays the other lead. We were fortunate to be part of the Butler, which was a civil rights film. And for me, that was a passion. My mother was very involved with civil rights. So a lot of these movies I think can make a real difference in the way we think about the world and that's the way we also approach our investments in technology, in the family office. How can we, as I said, at the very beginning, leave the world better than when we found it.

Thomas Haug: (32:24)
And Matt, I would like to personally thank you for the last film you produced, as a 911 rescue and recovery worker coming up on 20 years this year. It's heavy in a lot of our hearts and you released that film at the right time and I really appreciate it to keep the memories alive.

Matt Salloway: (32:43)
Absolutely. Thank you for your service.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (32:46)
I guess I would offer that those same stories are embedded in the families that we serve. So a lot of them created wealth that may have had implications that they didn't expect, whether they created greater inequality, or they actually created some part in the climate crisis. So what I see, is this great opportunity to bring family back together, to go back to the source of the wealth, understanding what was done and say, "Okay, and now what can we do with it?" And so it becomes this point of healing often and also inspiration for the next generation, because so many times when we see with families that have created enormous amounts of wealth, the children become kind of the shadow of that established wealth. And you try to find ways to engage them in order to not live a toxic type of scenario, just by pure physics of that experience.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (33:41)
And it's this conversation around impact investing, where we get them into talking about what can we do about this family legacy? Which yes, it started in this way, but now we're redefining it. And so I see this just like your work in film. I feel like this is our mini stage to help the families that we're working with.

Steve Saltzstein: (34:03)
However, sometimes impact investing can alienate people or just the concept of it. Some people use the term global warming, some people use the term climate change and certain people get very sensitive about that. And I'm just wondering, if impact investing can hurt your co-investment relationships. I mean, a lot of times, and I'm not talking about where I am on the political spectrum, but a lot of times I sit in a room and I just keep my mouth shut. I'm just curious, have you seen that at all? Because certainly look, there's a lot of red state families and blue state families. Do you see, or at any times feel alienated by whatever the agenda of the family office is?

Matt Salloway: (34:58)
I don't know if this addresses your question, but we look at a lot of investments as a family office and we consider ourselves impact investors. Do we lead with that when ... Probably not, but we're returns driven investors. If someone shares a fund with us, that is an impact investment, are we skeptical? Is there a question whether that will still have a returns priority? I think five years ago, there might've been more of that stigma. I think it's changed. I think the way that we look at impact and the way that families are approaching it and especially with technology, I mean the Yale endowment is now putting over 20% of their portfolio into venture. Whether you agree or don't agree, there's so much capital going in, but that's the gold standard of portfolio allocation. They're putting 20%.

Matt Salloway: (35:59)
So there's a lot more opportunities to do impact investments, maybe not your traditional, just a clean energy or all these metrics. But I think because of the amount of sort of technology opportunities and the way the market is, there's more and more opportunities there to become active.

Steve Saltzstein: (36:20)
Rosemary, can you talk a little bit about co-investment relationships, as a family office, how do you develop them? Who do you trust, et cetera?

Rosemary Sagar: (36:31)
Well, we've been doing it long enough that we have a good network between Mark and myself. We have tended to go for the situations, where we have a personal relationship from the past or whatever, and we have a high comfort level. That's what it boils down to. We like direct investing, but we don't do a lot of it because we're a very lean team and you really have to be on top of those investments. You have to have a champion. So co-investing has been the better way to proceed because then you're making sure that there is good brains purely focused on that investment and nothing else. So that's been our preferred route. And at the same time also, I mean, we're a 100% invested in alternatives, which by definition are very liquid. And when you get into PE structured investments and venture and whatever. Yeah, we just don't do 10 year horizons. We don't have the patience for that because we have to produce donations all the time.

Rosemary Sagar: (37:45)
So doing co-investments has also been a way for us to shorten that time period and shorten the duration of the investment, because that way by the time we co-invest in a particular investment generally, at a later series, we're closer to exit and much better transparency, so the risk goes down. Typically, it'll be lower multiple at that stage, but it'll be a higher IRR.

Steve Saltzstein: (38:12)
Right.

Rosemary Sagar: (38:15)
That's kind of our sweet spot. So we've done that different ways. A recent investment of ours was actually in a co-investment fund of a venture capital fund of funds firm on the West Coast. I mean, there's a particular angle to it because they're mainly ... A lot of the GP and a lot of the LPs are athletes that actually are become preferred LPs in individual investments because they test out the products in consumer and wellness and so on and therefore, their preferred. And we were able to get into the final round before the close of this co-investment fund, where about 40% was already invested and with some exits imminent. So we managed to shorten that timeframe. We're already getting distributions, returns impact because of the underlying investments and a shorter duration.

Steve Saltzstein: (39:25)
Does anyone on the panel look at carbon credits? Because there are a number of technologies out there that have no real fundamental business model, other than carbon credits. For instance, I don't know if you saw last week in the Journal, there was an article about, I'll call it an unfactory, in Iceland that was pulling carbon out of the air. The only way that they're going to have a sustainable business model is carbon credits. So I'm just curious if, folks are looking at that.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (39:54)
I belong to a big firm on purpose, because I would rather have those analysts that are focused on that, give me the report to know, and I think it's still young and it's still an exciting opportunity that we want a little more research on before we allocate any funds. Yeah.

Thomas Haug: (40:14)
I'll just add, we've heard a lot in recent days about carbon credits, but there has been very little guidance. I do think there will be families that will take advantage of carbon credits because it works for them. But I think a lot of family foundations and families will also look for a returns based approach. They'll proceed with a philanthropic endeavor, if there's zero return or zero alpha being generated, you have to have a need for those carbon credits.

Steve Saltzstein: (40:54)
Right. I think we have time for a couple of questions from the audience, if anyone would like to ask one.

Speaker 6: (41:12)
What are you're ... Oh, okay. What are your thoughts also, on these kind of absurd cash yields that some of these crypto corporations have been promising that are collateralized, actually over collateralized in crypto assets like Bitcoin?

Noel Pacarro Brown: (41:27)
So you're speaking to the ESG impact investing panel.

Speaker 6: (41:30)
Right.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (41:30)
And so I don't think any one of us is a crypto expert. However, on our team, we did hire a partner who came from the digital currency world because we do see it as something we want to be knowledgeable about and we want to have network and some real expertise. So I wish I had her with me on this stage, but I would say, that the concern for us is really the climate effect and trying to mitigate and understand the actual trade-off between the use of digital currency and the impact it has on the climate.

Rosemary Sagar: (42:07)
I could add our perspective to that. Crypto has been very criticized for being environmentally unfriendly and huge consumer of energy and so on. So we have made only one investment, a recent investment in the space, and that's actually a fund that focuses on like the pickaxes and shovels in terms of the infrastructure required for cryptocurrencies. And the impact perspective is that they're making it more efficient and figuring out ways to use less energy and therefore, having an indirect impact in addition to hopefully being profitable.

Steve Saltzstein: (42:50)
Rosemary, look at El Salvador. El Salvador recently adopted crypto as their national currency or one of their national currencies. I don't know, is it possible that crypto perhaps can lift some of these developing nations, giving them kind of an alternative to either the dollar or whatever?

Rosemary Sagar: (43:12)
Yeah. Again, this comes to the elastic concept of impact because yes, it could uplift the masses, if it gets inflation under control and money supply and so on and therefore, helps to preserve the value of the currency. Yes. Again, it's sort of how far do you go on the definition of impact?

Steve Saltzstein: (43:39)
Right.

Thomas Haug: (43:39)
And there's a reason there has been so much focus on crypto during this conference and backstage I was talking to John and Jerry and I would encourage you to grab John's ear for a few minutes. In the case of El Salvador, I definitely think there is a net benefit and I think there will be a net benefit globally, but how do you frame that into impact? I guess that's ... We're a little confused.

Rosemary Sagar: (44:07)
I think there's a great argument to be made for impact in terms of the use of blockchain to protect farmers, to protect ... That sort of thing, prevent theft and increased security. All of that.

Speaker 7: (44:22)
Hi. I have a question. It's a little bit off topic, but we're sort of in a heightened regulatory environment, family offices, as an investment unit. Are there any risks to regulation? I don't know, if there are any lawyers on the panel.

Steve Saltzstein: (44:49)
I'll take that. I'm talking on a panel in a couple of weeks with Jeffries and Senator Corker and just about that, the new proposed regulation of family offices. Look, the number of family offices has skyrocketed and frankly, the investment power of family offices has multiplied tenfold over just the last five years. You never want to regulate things generally, but there also is a discussion to be had about, how much power they're wielding and do things just at least need to be looked at? I don't think that, that's absurd at all. I think we have time for one last question.

Speaker 8: (45:41)
Sorry.

Speaker 9: (45:47)
... quantitative metrics to get an idea, to measure the impact, if you could.

Noel Pacarro Brown: (45:55)
Right. I mean, we could be here all day. Thank you for that question. That's the beauty of the nonfinancial data. So Europe has its own measure, there's the UN Sustainability Development Goals. There's Sustainalytics, there's MSCI with buckets of analysts and they all have their own ratings. What we've done is basically triangulated data between three of our favorite data providers. And this is me, as in Morgan Stanley, we've had teams of people looking at what's the best to own. And so only through triangulating a database that's really focused on equity. One that's focused on carbon emissions. And one that's kind of broadly looking at sustainability. Then we can get a measure of how aligned a person's portfolio is to their values. So we've actually had to use multiple databases to come at some level of a relative marker. I don't know, if anyone else has other measures.

Steve Saltzstein: (46:51)
The last thing I'll say is that, the SDG criteria is being used as a way to give favorable treatment for impact investing through charging lower bond yields to folks that are ESG focused. So I think it's interesting anyway, it seems to be kind of a burgeoning area. I think we're out of time, unfortunately, but I want to thank our panel and thank you very much for joining us. Thank you all.

Rosemary Sagar: (47:22)
Thank you.

The Evolution of Long-Term Asset Allocation | #SALTNY

The Evolution of Long-Term Asset Allocation with Al Kim, Director of Investments, Helmsley Charitable Trust. Geeta Kapadia, Associate Treasurer of Investments, Yale New Haven Health System. Angelique Sellers, Managing Director of Investments, Pennsylvania State University Office of Investment Management.

Moderated by Bill Kelly, Chief Executive Officer, CAIA Association

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Al Kim

Director of Investments

Helmsley Charitable Trust

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Geeta Kapadia

Associate Treasurer

Yale New Haven Health System

 
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Angelique Sellers

Senior Director, Portfolio Management

Penn State University

MODERATOR

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William J. Kelly

Chief Executive Officer

CAIA Association

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Bill Kelly: (00:08)
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining. This panel is going to be talking about the evolution of long term asset allocation and maybe some of the views would be a little bit less sanguine than some of the things I've heard over the last couple of days, and we're in the middle of a very bullish market. The risk on trade is alive and well, and we're going to maybe try to get the allocator view.

Bill Kelly: (00:28)
Not necessarily lost on me, it may be the folks in the audience, and I'm not sure if Nick or anybody else in [Case IQ 00:00:34] is here, but up in the Salt Stage, probably literally above us, is the evolution of the private markets investing, the GP side. So, maybe we could do a point-counterpoint or split screen on Case IQ I think would be very interesting. Or, we can maybe crash that party afterwards.

Bill Kelly: (00:49)
Perhaps I'll have my panel introduce themselves first. I think the bios are in the program, but maybe just to hit the high points, and your plan, and Al I'll start with you.

Al Kim: (01:01)
Thanks Bill. So Al Kim. I'm with the Helmsley Charitable Trust, which is a private foundation based in New York. Helmsley's mission, overall, is to help improve lives in the US and globally by supporting and funding various healthcare research initiatives. So Type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease being two of our bigger programs. On the investment side, we manage an eight-and-a-half-billion dollar endowment. We invest across asset classes, we are very opportunistic, and we implement using a concentrated approach in our manager relationships.

Bill Kelly: (01:38)
Thanks, Al. Geeta?

Geeta Kapadia: (01:40)
I'm Geeta Kapadia and I head up the investment team at Yale New Haven Health System. We are the academic medical center associated with Yale University based in New Haven, Connecticut. My team and I manage about $5.6 billion worth of investible assets covering defined benefit, defined contribution, and endowment-like assets. We manage across the spectrum, from very plain vanilla fixed income, all the way to private equity, venture capital and real estate.

Bill Kelly: (02:06)
Thanks.

Angelique Sellers: (02:07)
I'm Angelique Sellers, Managing Director of Investments at Penn State University. I don't think I need to tell you what Penn State does, but we manage a pool of assets of about 6.1 billion and, much like my fellow panelists, allocated from anything from fixed income to private equity venture, natural resources, commodities. You name it, we probably have it.

Bill Kelly: (02:33)
Thanks Angelique.

Bill Kelly: (02:34)
So since you have the mic, maybe I'll start with you and work our way around. So I saw recently Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, who by all accounts is a very sophisticated allocator sovereign wealth fund, and they just put their annual report out and for a pretty secretive organization there was a lot of public information in there. The name of the report is called Prudent Global Growth, and their 30-year return annualized is 7.2%. Probably a little bit below what many public funds are shooting for as a bogey. So I want to start the conversation by saying that being an allocator is not an easy job and this space has gotten very, very complex. The endowment model is now over 50 years old, so maybe starting with private equity, which has gotten a lot of play at this conference in the marketplace, is that an asset class, in your view, or more of a very complex industry?

Angelique Sellers: (03:28)
In our view, it is more of a complex industry and we've been very bottom up about it. We don't have any particular buckets to fill generally in our portfolio, so when we look for managers we can create a bucket rather than have a bucket and put the manager in there. And so, on the private equity side, it is a very difficult job right now, given where things stand in terms of evaluations, which has already been discussed at this conference. But we're still finding opportunities. We're looking more kind of a sector focus, a little bit more differentiation, and we're looking at smaller deal sizes, and managers kind of focused on that right now.

Bill Kelly: (04:08)
So, Geeta, may be the same theme, and I'm going to leave ADIA after this, but they describe private equity as intense and accelerating in terms of the competition. What do you think about the current vintage year and accessing, perhaps, different vintage years either through secondaries, or do you think about co-investing or direct investing? And maybe your plan is such a size that some of those are not viable.

Geeta Kapadia: (04:31)
I think there's a lot of opportunity for investors such as us, but it's often quite difficult to differentiate between true opportunity and what may be a temporary area of interest for us. So we're very fortunate in that we tend to be, similar to Alan and Angelique, we tend to be very long term investors. So when we consider opportunities in the private space, we're really able to think of them over a 10 to 20 year time frame. We've been very fortunate in that we don't really look at cyclical parts of whether or not parts of the market are attractive, or less attractive, or overvalued, or undervalued. We're really just trying to make consistent commitments over time. We may be able to participate through a co-invest or secondaries opportunity, but really similar to the way Angelique described it, we're really looking at very bottom up fundamental opportunities that seem to partner well with what we're trying to achieve over the long term. They can manifest themselves through a variety of different structures or deals.

Bill Kelly: (05:35)
And the importance on manager selection on the process?

Geeta Kapadia: (05:38)
We feel very strongly about very fundamental manager due diligence, particularly on the private side. Again, we feel like there's a lot of uncertainty and so, to be able to really understand the managers with which we're partnering, is probably the highest priority. It's been difficult during COVID, obviously more difficult than it was in the past, but in some ways it has presented us with new opportunities to meet fellow allocators, to do reference checks with other investment managers, talk to leaders in the industry and really just feel like we have even more pieces to the puzzle to be able to make a good investment decision.

Bill Kelly: (06:13)
Al, maybe just closing out, the discussion of private equity, maybe the view from Helmsley in terms of how you think about this market in terms of sector geography, the SME space versus the buyout space, how do you think about allocating to private equity?

Al Kim: (06:29)
I guess, compared to other foundations based in New York that have been around for decades, the Helmsley Trust is actually fairly new. The team really got started in 2010, upon the 2007 passing of Leona Helmsley. The Helmsley team was in a place where it essentially started the investment office from scratch. It convinced our investment committee and trustees to build out a private capital program from nothing. Ten years later, it definitely has been a journey. In the beginning we started investing in private debt strategies in order to mitigate the J-curve, and to the extent possible to not report a negative return, while at the same time trying to knock on some of the best VC managers out there to see if we can get access to their funds.

Al Kim: (07:28)
I think the last 5-10 years have shown, and have proved to our trustees and our committee, that private capital definitely has a place in Helmsley's portfolio long term. Our target when we first launched the program was 25% of Helmsley's overall portfolio. We have since increased that target to 35, and through very good appreciation we're currently sitting at 40. And so, we are very strong believers. If you look at our performance in that segment, the last five years, we've been up 25% annualized returns. That's probably more than 10% above what we've gotten from our public equity, or liquid market, segment. We invest with conviction. I think some segments within private capital, like venture, if you can't access very good managers, I don't think you should be invested at all. And for Helmsley, fortunately, some of the big VC managers have blessed us with allocations, and have let us in, and so we're leveraging those relationships that we have to continue to build out our private capital program.

Bill Kelly: (08:45)
I want to ask you a follow-up question on private debt with maybe another lead. I'm not a big Twitter guy, but when it comes to [Salt 00:08:54], you've got to get your Twitter game together. I posted something on Twitter last night that I saw, that the European hedge fund index is now yielding 2.34%, where inflation is at three. So in a real basis you don't have to be a math major to understand that that is upside down and negative. So, when you think about private debt, or maybe you could take this as a general question too Al, that if I think about the Sharpe ratio related to [alt 00:09:20], it doesn't necessarily play all the time but being compensated for a unit of risk being taken is something every investor should be thinking about. So, either generally or more specifically in the private debt market, is it hard to find opportunity at this stage of the market where rates are so low, and particularly if you can't even get up a positive real spread on high yield.

Al Kim: (09:42)
At Helmsley, how we structure our portfolio is at the highest level we have what we call "safe assets" which are investment-grade bonds and assets that we could essentially liquid within a couple of days. Then we have our return-generating segment which has three separate components. The liquid segment, the semi-liquid segment and the illiquid segment. We don't categorize those assets by asset classes, it's by liquidity because we think, as a grant making organization, having enough liquidity to fund our grants year over year is our main objective.

Al Kim: (10:18)
Within each of the categories we have different return hurdles. Now these aren't set in stone, but for anyone on our team to try to pitch something that gets into our liquid segment, it really needs to deliver at least a 15% net return and something in the 1.5-1.6x at least. Essentially, because we're fully invested in our liquid segment, those commitment dollars are competing with some of the big VC managers and those managers are returning well into the 20s if not 30s. For our liquid segment, I would say mid 15s at least. Our semi-liquid segment, which is where we include hedge funds, I would say it's really hard to convince the team to buy something within that segment that's below 10%.

Al Kim: (11:12)
It is hard to try to squeeze private debt into our portfolio. I have tried and gotten vetoed down, but with the current spreads on private debt, it's very challenging.

Bill Kelly: (11:28)
So Geeta, I was going to try to work through some verticals. I have a hedge fund question if you want to follow up on private debt you can too, but hedge funds have been, I think to some degree unfairly, become a bit of a punching bag over the last 12 years. If you look at it as an asset class, maybe deserved. If you look at it as a complex industry with many different strategies tucked inside, maybe a bit unfair. But there's an interesting debate about hedge funds. Are they diversifiers or return enhancers? Do you have a view, one way or the other, and how do hedge funds work their way into your plan?

Geeta Kapadia: (12:02)
We think of hedge funds as a little bit of both. From a diversification standpoint, there's the clear argument to be made relative to the long only side of the portfolio, and potentially if there's a fixed income allocation as well. We try and be very deliberate about our hedge fund portfolio and think about those assets, not only in their own absolute return type frame, but also in a bigger picture holistic sense as it relates to the total portfolio. We may have exposure to a number of different industries, securities, geographies, but separating the hedge funds out from the rest of the portfolio may make it look very different than the actual exposure. So we think of it definitely as a diversifier, but we also expect them to be able to add value over the long term.

Geeta Kapadia: (12:51)
Each of those names in that portfolio are very specifically selected and evaluated to be able to add a certain part, or to play a certain role I should say, within the overall total endowment.

Bill Kelly: (13:04)
At this stage of the market, tail risk hedging, does that work its way into the asset allocation mix?

Geeta Kapadia: (13:11)
We've thought a lot about it and we've met with a lot of providers in this space because we think there is a lot of potential opportunity there as it relates to payments that need to be made. As a health system, as you can imagine, over the last year and a half we've learned quite a bit about what liquidity means, and particularly to a finance leadership of the health system. It's thought of on a daily basis. Very closely we think about it. We have talked about tail risk hedging. We haven't implemented yet, but I think there are a lot of good players in that asset class that we may be talking to over the next year or so.

Bill Kelly: (13:48)
Angelique from Penn State, hedging, hedge funds?

Angelique Sellers: (13:52)
Hedge funds. We have about 11-12% in hedge strategies, but they are diversifiers for us. We established a long time ago that we're not going to do strategies that have too much beta in them. For these reasons we don't do long short equity typically, because with 60 percent, 70% net long it's something that we have never done. Collectively, they have a beta of pretty much zero to anything, but we also benchmark them to Barclay's Agg, so all they have to do is to do better than bonds. That's how we position that, is a bond substitute without the duration risk and that makes a little bit more money.

Bill Kelly: (14:34)
Al, anything from Helmsley on...?

Al Kim: (14:38)
So our semi-liquid segment that I mentioned, which includes investments that Helmsley invests in vehicles with up to two years of liquidity, where essentially we can put our money into a fund, and if we were to redeem, if we can get our money back within two years, those types of vehicles, which includes hedge funds, fall in our semi-liquid segment. The framework I talked about before, we definitely see it as a return-generating asset. If you look at the five hedge funds that we have in our current portfolio, the lowest returning one is a long short credit, a special situations fund, that since inception has done a 10% net return with a 5% volatility. The other ones are pretty much equity-based strategies, whether it's healthcare or technology, really based on some of the themes that we have and some of the sectors that our team has where we think those sectors will benefit long term. And so, the hedge funds that we have tend to be long biased, and they definitely are exposed to having draw downs.

Al Kim: (15:49)
In terms of hedging, we have had experience investing in a macro manager that has gone net short and we've ended up having a bad experience with that and we ended up terminating that manager. But, if you look at our overall asset allocation framework, we really toggle between safe assets and return-generating assets and manage that allocation. We really view that as our hedge against downturns in the market. So if you look at our asset allocation today, we're currently sitting 24% in safe assets. So the Barclays Agg and cash. While we are believers in the endowment model and in privates, the question you asked earlier, we are very different from other traditional endowments because we have such a big buffer of safe assets. We really viewed that as a hedge, and going into the pandemic we also had about 25% in safe assets. We think having that dry powder to invest and redeploy when the markets get shaky really helped us navigate the pandemic and the market downturn going into the pandemic.

Bill Kelly: (17:07)
Geeta, just to maybe complete the circuit here, maybe just real estate, infrastructure. Real estate has been topical because of the commercial real estate and return to work, whatever that might mean, around commercial office buildings. And then infrastructure, obviously we've got a big bill that is in the works of being passed. Are either one of those areas that interest your plan.

Geeta Kapadia: (17:28)
Yes, we've been investing in both of those spaces over the past two-plus years. We have looked quite a bit more closely at real estate, particularly as many of the managers that we partner with are really looking at those Class A spaces. New York City, Washington DC, all of the cities where you would expect there would be quite a bit of disruption based on COVID. We've been very fortunate in that they have held up quite well, and in some cases have actually used this opportunity to partner and become very, very hands on with the managers on site, with the tenants. And so, in that space we've been, I would say, pleasantly surprised or maybe a bit optimistic, more optimistic than we thought we'd be. We continue to make investments. We don't see the last year and a half as changing what our plan was before the pandemic. We continue to engage with those managers and those GPs, and continue to talk about new fundraising and are pleased that people are still in the market and still getting plenty of LPs on board. It's been better than we expected it would be.

Bill Kelly: (18:42)
Angelique, I want to touch on maybe cryptos. You've got a student population who is very activist, to some degree, around fossil fuels but is your plan... are you in cryptos, or any kind of NFT's, or any of these emerging platforms?

Angelique Sellers: (18:59)
We've done some research and we have ended up allocated capital to a venture firm that is dedicated crypto specialists, but they don't do coins or anything like that. They invest in- [crosstalk 00:19:14].

Bill Kelly: (19:13)
So it's like the infrastructure.

Angelique Sellers: (19:15)
...the whole infrastructure, the digital infrastructure. In terms of crypto itself, we kind of disagree internally. We have a couple of people who are pushing and saying that this is something we need to be jumping into, and some people who are saying, "No, not yet." So we continue doing research but, anecdotally, I'm part of this email group which has about 60 other institutions. I emailed out asking about who's involved in crypto. I probably got five responses. Two of them were involved, and the others said we're doing research, and the rest of the people said they're not doing anything. So I think there's a lot more talk going on on the institutional investing side. Some bigger institutions have pulled the trigger and did some things, but my peer group nobody is really doing much. More on the venture side. We have some other exposure on the venture, but not in actual... I'm not saying... I just don't know enough about it, so I'm on the side that says, "Let's just wait, hang on a minute." We haven't really pulled the trigger on the liquid side.

Bill Kelly: (20:25)
I'm going to come back to that at the end around some of these disruptive technologies. Angelique, maybe just staying with you for a moment as a university endowment. Harvard, I think it was Harvard, that is divesting from fossil fuels and it seems like there's an activist movement in this direction. I want to pivot more toward ESG. Does Penn State have a view on ESG? Or maybe more specifically, climate? I think ESG has become a very confusing set of risks, and it's hard to manage ESG. But maybe you can focus on climate and how you think about that around natural resources, moving toward renewables and investments there.

Angelique Sellers: (21:02)
In terms of endowment, we didn't have the mandate, and we still don't, so the board resolution doesn't mention anything about it. Having said that, the university itself is obviously doing all kinds of things. There's sustainability office. Generally, university overall, since it's such a big school, probably can make more impact from that perspective and you have to look at all kinds of different areas of research and things like that than the endowment itself. We haven't really had too much of a push, but we're looking at it ourselves because I don't think it's a trend you can ignore.

Angelique Sellers: (21:37)
We're also looking at how we can make money on the trend. So, instead of arguing with the student body, we actually asked a couple of students to intern during the summer and they did a lot of work in terms of sustainability, and surveyed other institutions as to what they're doing. We're trying to formulate some kind of a policy, but it just hasn't happened yet. But, we found some investments. We've made a commitment to a renewables manager on the private equity side, and also working on the public side, interestingly enough, with our oil trader who's starting a fund that's going to be focused on trading carbon allowances.

Angelique Sellers: (22:21)
Metals, because even if you have windmills, you still need to build them of something, right? And also some equities that are focused on batteries, and hydrogen and stuff like that. We're trying to do well by doing good, if you will. That's kind of where we are.

Bill Kelly: (22:41)
I think this double bottom line is still very, very difficult and I think that last point you made about the wind blows the hardest and the sun shines the brightest where people are not, and we need that midstream infrastructure if we're going to get it to the masses. I think that some of these oil and gas companies have built great midstream capabilities.

Bill Kelly: (23:00)
Maybe working our way back this way, Geeta, your views on maybe climate more specifically than ESG for the moment.

Geeta Kapadia: (23:10)
We've thought about the topic quite a bit, as you have to if you're in this space. I think, similar to Penn State, we have not come up with a formal policy yet. I think it will be driven by our team, as opposed to from the top down. I think our board is quite happy to think that we're doing what we should be doing, and to let us have at it. We expect to bring a formal recommendation to our board in the next probably six months as it relates to how we want to intentionally invest. That's the phrase I've been using within my team. There are just so many aspects to it. Climate, obviously, extremely important but you know ESG covers such a wide range of topics that in some sense it's almost overwhelming to try and think about how you would even put things down within a policy. Particularly as we're not a faith-based medical center, we are an academic in some sense, medical center and so we are working very closely with the people at the university, because they have had to confront this quite regularly due to student activity, and just trying to make sure that the types of investments we're making are aligned with the mission, and vision, and values of the organization. Which we think we're doing, but I think we could be a little bit more deliberate about it going forward.

Bill Kelly: (24:26)
Is greenwashing a big problem?

Geeta Kapadia: (24:30)
It's something we're spending time on, for sure because I think it could very easily be something that creeps up on us and we don't realize it, and then we now have to have a more formal evaluation of it to the extent that it's been part of our portfolio, or it could be part of our portfolio.

Bill Kelly: (24:49)
Al, your views? I don't know, in the endowment space it might be different. You don't have a constituency maybe pushing this as an agenda item, but what are your views at Helmsley?

Al Kim: (25:01)
Like Geeta said, Helmsley doesn't have a dedicated allocation to ESG, or to energy, or climate. Having said that, we have over the last 7-8 years, committed and invested in some fossil fuel investments and we've had very mixed results. What we found in terms of investing in energy is that you not only have to pick the right manager, but you also have to get the vintage year right because the commodity cycle is so long and it could either really hurt you or really help you. For us, we said any commitment we make in the private capital segment, it really just needs to stand on its own. If we invest in energy or ESG or anything like that, we're going to be very opportunistic. Our team has been doing a lot of work in the climate space because we think that this transition to a low carbon emission world is a theme that's going to last for decades. We've probably met with 20 or so managers in this space, but we focus more on the VC and growth equity type managers that focus on investing in the technology to solve some of these environmental and climate tech issues. So far, we haven't met anyone that's made it to the finish line, but we are doing a lot of work in that space.

Bill Kelly: (26:33)
Maybe a couple things, maybe off climate, but on the topic of ESG, transparency and the culture in relation between the GP and LP. Maybe Angelique, I'll start with you. What's the current state of play in terms of transparency around GP and LP, and you hear things about the use of credit lines to fund LP commitments that have an impact on returns. Is transparency where it needs to be, because now we're talking about democratization or less sophisticated investor accessing these GPS and we've got to be thinking about a client-first mentality? If we can't get it right in the institutional world, I fear that we're not going to get it right when we go more retail based with democratization.

Angelique Sellers: (27:15)
I feel like we have decent enough transparency without GP. This is one of the things that we require, and if we can't get the information that we need out of them, life is too short kind of a situation. That said, I mean obviously some of the venture firms are fairly sensitive to the right to know and all of that, and so we are not subject to that, but every time we talk to some venture managers we have to write them a letter and explain and how it all works, and some of them are really difficult to get in if you have that kind of situation with the right to know act.

Bill Kelly: (27:53)
Geeta, maybe a slightly a different theme. Certainly, the CAIA Association, and myself personally, have been very committed to DEI, which has been very topical and that can manifest itself in many ways. I've made a point that I will not get involved in panels that don't have some level of gender or race diversity. It doesn't very often play out this well, with the three of you, but I do want to point out that this is an important undertaking and actions matter more than words. Maybe talk about it from your vantage point, both as a woman, as a professional and what your expectations are as you hire managers and their commitment to DEI.

Geeta Kapadia: (28:34)
It's a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, and one that I spend a lot of time on just thinking about, talking about with peers. With my colleagues, with leadership and with managers. It's kind of disappointing that it's 2021 and it feels like we're still in the same space that we were when I started in the business. We recently did an evaluation from a DEI perspective of our current portfolio and it's really bad. Very, very bad, and it's very disappointing because internally I felt like I've been having this conversation. I know I've been having it, but clearly I haven't been having it in a way that it has affected any change.

Geeta Kapadia: (29:16)
We're all in very fortunate positions and obviously, Bill you as well, in that we do have a fair amount of leverage as it relates to making an impact at some of these organizations. I think we have to be very deliberate about, similar to the way you phrased it, "We're not going to do business with you if you're not addressing this issue in some way." It's not about doing the right thing. I mean, it is about doing the right thing, but it's about making money, right? It's about returns. Diversity adds to returns, so to have everyone in the same room and look the same, and speak the same, and went to the same colleges, that's not really going to add value over the long term. So, we're very committed to it. I have a lot of difficult conversations ahead of me, I can already feel that, but I think it's important. And, to your point, there's no reason to have a panel with all men anymore. There's just so many good female investment professionals, and professionals of color that it's very easy to have a diverse group of people.

Geeta Kapadia: (30:25)
You talked a little bit about Twitter. There's quite a lot of, for people who are in financial Twitter, there's a lot of chatter about it. It's very interesting, some of the people who I follow that have done some great work in this space, and they're fighting the good fight. I hope I can help in some way.

Bill Kelly: (30:44)
Maybe an observation, not an excuse. I think one of the challenges we face on many fronts is that this is a great industry. It's really not a profession. I think the law profession, the accounting profession, the medical profession has done a very good job of moving this direction. My wife graduated med school almost 35 years ago and her class was 50% women, 35 years ago. It's harder for us to get that channel going and there's a lot of great organizations, I think 100 Women in Finance is a sponsor here, we've just got to figure out better partnership there as well.

Bill Kelly: (31:19)
So we just have about eight minutes left and I want the final discussion about digital disruption because it has been a big topic at this conference. Every session I'm in somehow, someway it comes up. It may not reflect itself in an asset allocation decision by any of you, but it's certainly on the forefront around algos, or maybe hedge funds that are using algo-based decision making models. Al, maybe starting with you, how does this affect Helmsley? Are you thinking about it? Are you seeing managers that have more algo-based, data-driven investment processes?

Al Kim: (32:04)
In the hedge fund space, the hedge fund managers that we invest with are all based on just bottom up fundamental research, so not necessarily quantitative based. Having said that, in several pockets within our portfolio, whether it's some of our long only quant managers that are introducing some machine learning analytics factors into their models, or whether it's some of our VC managers building out data systems to figure out what's going on in the startup world, we are starting to see some of that technology being used across our managers, but it's not like we're necessarily committing or allocated to a fund specifically focused on that. Having said that, in terms of broader disruption, whether it's technological disruption or whether it's disruption in the healthcare space, we really try to find managers that can, especially in the VC space, identify the trends and then invest behind those trends. That's why, within our private capital portfolio, we have such a big allocation to venture and growth equity. I think that represents about 25% of our overall portfolio, so about 2/3 of our overall privates.

Bill Kelly: (33:35)
So Angelique, maybe a slightly different angle on this, and being from Boston a couple observations. One is I worked for a Trust Company, a custodian early on in my career and I always thought that was a horrible business. Less than one basis point, you need to make it up in securities lending and short-term investment funds. Brown Brothers was acquired by State Street, two local Boston operations at least headquartered there. I look at that acquisition, I say "Wow, this space has changed a lot and data is the new oil, and the amount of data that these custodian banks have, and the impact of that data, could be enormous." I don't know if you deal with your custodian or not, but are you expecting more and different things from your custodian and data from them, and analytics that help you make any kind of decisions, either around operational, alpha, or investment decisions?

Angelique Sellers: (34:27)
We do. We actually changed custodians a few years ago for that very reason, because we've had the same one for so long that we were wondering what else is out there. And so obviously technology, it was a big aspect of it in terms of reporting and everything, the custodian. I don't personally deal with custodian all that much, but I remember we were going through that process. We're kind of doing the same thing with consultants right now. Looking around. We don't have too many right now, we have one, but we want to know what's out there and obviously technology is a big part of that RFP process. I think you just have to, and the managers also, even fundamental analysts, you have to have data, you have to have technology. Computer can process things a lot faster, and I think those who don't pay attention to that stuff are going to miss out in the end.

Bill Kelly: (35:19)
I saw recently that DTCC is talking about going to T+1, and I was thinking when I started in this industry it was T+5. I just looked up, just today, to see how long it took us to get from T+3 to T+2. It took us 24 years, and to now be talking about T+1 measured in days, it's beyond silly. It should be measured in nanoseconds. It's crazy. So Geeta, from your standpoint, any disruptive technologies or opportunities around either managers or operational alpha?

Geeta Kapadia: (35:53)
Similar to Angelique, we also changed custodians a couple years ago, and are also thinking about our use of consultants. I think that that old model of the traditional field consultant is very different now, and a big part of that is due to the advances that we've been able to take advantage of in technology. There seem to be so many ways that we can use tech in our day-to-day investment process that I think we're a little behind the curve relative to other allocators in this space. There's a lot that we should be doing that we're not doing yet, so I think that the providers who can harness that, and can sell it as a real advantage relative to their competitors, are going to be the ones that are the most interesting to us.

Geeta Kapadia: (36:44)
From a manager perspective, we're very similar to Al. We're very bottom up, fundamentally focused. I get plenty of emails where I just have to say we don't really do quant. That being said, I think there are a lot of ways that fundamental managers can take the these technological advances that we've seen and enhance their process, enhance the way they do business. Whether it's trading, or whether it's analysis, whether it's [expo 00:37:10] review attribution, there's just a lot out there that are more pieces of that puzzle that we should be thinking about as we make investment decisions.

Bill Kelly: (37:22)
We're just down to a handful of minutes, so I think we're moving toward closing time. I think it's always good to put a ribbon or a capstone around this. Either a closing observation, something we missed. Al I'll maybe give you first crack.

Al Kim: (37:36)
So I guess a general comment. I think the last 5-10 years from the allocator's perspective, it's been fairly easy to generate strong returns. Essentially, if you had more risk, more higher allocations to equities, higher allocations to venture and tack, then you did really well. I think, given how quickly the markets have recovered following the pandemic, and given how extreme the valuations are today, the next several years are going to be much more difficult to generate returns on beta alone. I think for every allocator and organization, you really just have to figure out what skill sets and advantages do you have. Helmsley, as well. What advantages does Helmsley have compared to other allocating peer organizations? And really try to build and identify investments that leverage that edge, and that skill set of the team members that we have on our team. I think that's the only way we can invest with conviction with evaluations today.

Bill Kelly: (38:48)
Thanks Al. Geeta?

Geeta Kapadia: (38:50)
I would just take that idea a little bit further and say it's probably time for us to spend some good, solid block of our research and thinking about what is it we're missing? What are the gaps in our process? What are the gaps in our team? Where are skills that we're lacking. I could think off the top of my head at least three or four that, "We could really use some work," or, "We could really use some expertise in this area." I think making those hard decisions, and thinking about where's the best use of our dollar. Every dollar that we spend on the investment team is one less dollar that goes to providing health care to our community, so we need to be very thoughtful and very deliberate about how we spend our money. Some of that is probably going to be thinking through what tools are out there that we should be using.

Bill Kelly: (39:40)
Thanks Geeta. Angelique, final word?

Angelique Sellers: (39:43)
Well, one thing I'll say that's unrelated. I'm reading this book, it's called Subtract, and everything I'm hearing we always talk about adding things, and we're kind of predisposed to add things, and we're incentivized to do. Sometimes, like Al for example, they have a very concentrated portfolio and sometimes it's worth it to take a look and say well, "What can I subtract, instead of just keep adding things?" I'll wrap it up on this.

Bill Kelly: (40:08)
I think it's an excellent point. Weed the garden. Critically important. Please join me in thanking the panel.

Geeta Kapadia: (40:14)
Thank you.

Data Discovery to Data Intelligence | #SALTNY

Data Discovery to Data Intelligence with Heidi Lanford, Chief Data Officer, Fitch Group. Thomas J. Lee, Managing Partner & Head of Research, Fundstrat Global Advisors. Charles Poliacof, Chief Executive Officer, Knoema.

Moderated by Marc Lopresti, Co-Founder, BattleFin.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Headshot - Lanford, Heidi - Cropped.jpeg

Heidi Lanford

Chief Data Officer

The Fitch Group

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Thomas J. Lee

Managing Partner & Co-Founder

FundStrat

 
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Charles Poliacof

Chief Executive Officer

Knoema

MODERATOR

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Marc X. LoPresti

Co-Founder & Board Member

BattleFin

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Marc LoPresti: (00:07)
Hello, everybody. My name is Mark Lopresti. I am the co-founder of a little company called BattleFin. You may have seen our pavilion down the hall on the fourth floor. I co-founded it with Tim Harrington, sitting there in the front row, about eight years ago or so. We were really early in the alternative data space. Very proud of what we've done since we founded the company. We've developed what we believe is one of the most compelling and robust platforms for alternative data. And we're going to get into that. This panel is of course all about data, from data discovery to data intelligence.

Marc LoPresti: (00:50)
But before we get into that, I want to say a big thank you to Anthony, the entire SkyBridge production team, John, Joe, Kat, everybody that makes this possible. We have an events business at BattleFin. I know a little bit about what it takes to put a production on of this magnitude. And I think you'd all agree this was an absolutely fantastic event to attend. We've loved every minute of it. And what a way to cap off my Salt experience, but with this unbelievably distinguished panel of experts that I have here with me.

Marc LoPresti: (01:25)
To my left is Heidi Lanford, from Fitch. To her left, a face you may be familiar with if you watch CNBC, Mr. Tom Lee from Fundstrat, one of the smartest people I know. And Mr. Charles Poliacof from Knoema. I have known Charles for a very long time, even before we were in the data business. So it pays to be nice to everybody because you never know when you may bump into them again. So, why don't we start? Heidi, a little bit of your background and what you're doing in Fitch with data?

Heidi Lanford: (01:58)
Sure. Sure. So nice to see everybody here, and thanks for having me. I started off my career as a data scientist and spent most of my formidable years working as a consultant and a data scientist. And then I spent my time before joining Fitch as the chief data officer, I had spent years in the technology space.

Heidi Lanford: (02:23)
And I recently joined from Red Hat open source software company that was acquired by IBM recently. And I have been really building strong, competitive data organizations as the latter part of my career. So really excited to be here. And I'm excited to represent Fitch.

Marc LoPresti: (02:44)
Thank you. Well, we're happy to have you. Tom?

Thomas J. Lee: (02:48)
My name is Tom Lee. I'm the co-founder and Head of Research for Fundstrat Global Advisors. It's a research advisory firm. We've really got two businesses. One is providing macro research and digital asset research to institutions in 22 countries. And we have a family office, a RIA business called FSInsight, and it's largely the same focus, which is education.

Thomas J. Lee: (03:16)
I'm very interested in doing this panel because I've been doing research for almost 30 years, really the first 15 as a wireless analyst. And when I started in '93, there were only 34 million cell phone users versus six billion today. So a lot of the business and knowledge that we needed to do to make equity calls, was gathering alternative data.

Marc LoPresti: (03:38)
And you touched on something. I want to put a pin in and come back to, the digitization of the modern economy and what that means for the data space. But that's a little teaser. But before we do, Charles, wonderful to have you on stage with us. Tell us a little bit of the company that you've built in your background.

Charles Poliacof: (03:54)
Yeah. So I am Charles Poliacof, the CEO of Knoema. For starters, I just want to thank you and Tim, and of course, SkyBridge and everybody else for putting this amazing event together. It is fantastic to be back, after having spent two years or so in this two-dimensional space. It's been great to be around people in a three-dimensional form again, and seeing a lot of folks that I haven't seen in a long time, and having the opportunity to interact with prospects and clients. It's been great. So, thank you for that.

Charles Poliacof: (04:21)
So a little bit about Knoema, a little bit about my background, although I'm probably not as interesting as these two folks here. So Knoema, we're a data technology company focused on making data accessible and usable. One thing that people know that are users of data is that there's far too much time that's probably spent making data useful. So we focus on three main pillars of capability. The first is discovery.

Charles Poliacof: (04:46)
So making sure that folks have access to data that they need, or new data sources that are interesting, that could potentially impact policy decision and investment thesis, or any sort of data-driven insight. The second is just around managing data pipelines. So data is the lifeblood of digitization. So somebody needs to manage that lifeblood, manage that infrastructure, making sure that everything is arriving in the formats that they're expected in, so that folks can consume that data on the other side.

Charles Poliacof: (05:14)
And lastly is workflow integration. As we all know, anybody that is a knowledge worker, works in their tool of choice. So looking at the color of my hair, you will guess that my tool of choice is probably Excel. But there are others that use Python, R, Tableau, Power BI, their own native applications. And that's really a core of what we do, is being able to integrate in those native applications so people can use their workflow or productivity tools of choice, so they can make those insight-based decisions.

Charles Poliacof: (05:42)
My background, I spent 15 years on the buy side, and then was part of the management team over at Novus, where we built a portfolio analytics solution which was focused on measuring portfolio manager skills. We'll talk about that a little bit later on in terms of what top line alpha and bottom line alpha actually means. And then part of the management team over at Visible Alpha, when it was a very early stage company. It's now a data stalwart. So, that's my background.

Marc LoPresti: (06:07)
So almost all of us on this panel are a good combination of TradFi, I think we're calling it now. I've heard that phrase used a few times this week. And DeFi and the data revolution. It probably makes sense just for a second to contextualize what we're talking about here. And what exactly is alternative data?

Marc LoPresti: (06:29)
And at BattleFin, we think about alternative data into 42 or 43 separate categories, but it is essentially that which you cannot derive from traditional sources like your Bloomberg Terminal, although that's obviously changing now as well. Satellite imagery, geolocation, credit card, point of sale receipt, email receipt data, sentiment, and many, many others.

Marc LoPresti: (06:56)
And this data, this resource, we often talk about alternative data as a resource or as a commodity, being used in ways that five or eight years ago we, when Tim and I started the company, we never could have anticipated. So Tom, maybe to have you start us off, you've been a data junkie, a self-proclaimed data nerd, part of why I love you. Tell me how you've observed the evolution of the use of alternative data in context of Fundstrat's work.

Thomas J. Lee: (07:28)
Yes. Well, first of all, alternative data has been a tool used by the best investors for decades. Many of you guys are probably familiar with Phil Fisher, and he wrote the book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. And his original thesis was visit companies, go visit warehouses, talk to sellers and vendors. That, he was the original.

Thomas J. Lee: (07:54)
That's the original alternative data model. And he had extraordinary returns, many 100X stocks. And I think in today's investment world, stock investors, the ones who really find the big opportunities are the ones that are exploiting alternative data, especially where they find variance versus either consensus or conventional views.

Thomas J. Lee: (08:15)
And I think in the past year with COVID, it's been enormously important to use alternative data to really have informed views on macro and investment decisions. Because in the past, people might have only looked at the bond market or VIX to have an understanding what the market is saying. But I think in the past year, there's been so much uncertainty created with COVID that the alternative data was critical for people who did well.

Marc LoPresti: (08:41)
And we were talking the other day about inflation by way of example, and how looking at these various traditional metrics to try to anticipate inflationary trends. How has using alternative data help refine that and make its predictive capabilities enhanced?

Thomas J. Lee: (09:01)
Inflation is a great example of why investors need alternative data right now, because in the past, CPI and understanding what the CPI print would be, has huge ripple effects across credit sector positioning, single stocks, and even commodity prices. And in this current context, we've got supply chain glitches, we've got shortages, and we've got demand build-up, and then explosion of demand. It's been very difficult for people to know what the real trajectory of inflation has been.

Thomas J. Lee: (09:35)
So I would say right now, if people are using alternative data to be informed about the trajectory of inflation, they're going to have a huge edge because it's the difference between thinking we're in ... As you know, there's a lot of people hyperventilating about inflation. I think a lot of our clients who've been using alternative data have realized a lot of these things are transitory, and you're seeing it play out. Even Stevie Cohen yesterday mentioned it. The bond market is telling us this is probably transitory.

Marc LoPresti: (10:01)
Right great. So Heidi, maybe turning to you.

Heidi Lanford: (10:04)
Yeah.

Marc LoPresti: (10:04)
So you've got a big job on your hands, building up this whole new division. Tell us how you are viewing the integration of alternative data into Fitch.

Heidi Lanford: (10:13)
So for us, I think this is a transformational shift in how organizations start thinking about data as a strategic asset. Whereas in the past, it has maybe been something that you go to IT or your tech team, and you ask them to provide you with data or give you access to things. As we start to see this data organization being a strategic asset for the firm, that's where over the past 10 years, a relatively new role, that chief data officer has emerged, because it is that strategic asset.

Heidi Lanford: (10:51)
It's a member of the C-suite. It is helping to influence new product innovation. And with that in mind, we have to recruit people who are not just great at the technology, data warehousing, data lakes, and data mesh. We're also looking for people that think about data as a product and how we can productize that, whether it's for our internal analysts that are consuming it, or our external customers that want to buy data from us.

Heidi Lanford: (11:21)
And so the talent and the recruitment is top of mind for me, as I've been building out my organization, because thinking about strategic players, great at technology, but also have that innovation and product mindset, this is not for the faint of heart. This is about moving resources and organization. This is a little bit about data is powerful. Data gives people in some ways, control. And to see that shift in mindset, it requires grit and determination from your leadership team and your company.

Marc LoPresti: (11:54)
And there are some practical challenges associated with it, too, I would imagine. Divergent datasets, different departments across the organization in different file formats and servers, and things of that nature.

Heidi Lanford: (12:04)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Marc LoPresti: (12:06)
That's a good transition. I know I see Charles chomping at the bit. That's a good transition to you and Knoema. That's a big part of what you guys do, right?

Charles Poliacof: (12:13)
That's a huge part of what we do. It's all about empowerment. What Heidi was talking about, data productization, the types of data assets that people used to rely upon 10 years ago, 15 years ago, channel checks, speaking to management. I know in the '90s, we used to send folks to the mall and count how many people were actually walking in and out of stores.

Charles Poliacof: (12:36)
And now all of a sudden, you have data that you can get in near real-time, maybe by looking at Carvana or some of these other inputs, near real-time visibility into what's going on in used car pricing, which is of course, influencing some of the inflation numbers. The Fed actually looks at those numbers, at least according to our friends over at M Science, which is one of the data providers we work with.

Charles Poliacof: (12:56)
But when you think about the challenges that organizations are going through right now, to be data-driven, to understand what that actually means, to be able to access different data products, there's a high variability problem. So there's a lot of data that comes from a lot of disparate sources. You have a subset of aggregators that collect a certain amount of data, but then you have a long tail of data that may or may not be relevant depending on the regime that you're in.

Charles Poliacof: (13:25)
And then there is the pain that you just surfaced before, Marc, which is this idea that folks need to build these connectors to constantly have this influx of products that could continue to inform their views, and then what it means to build an organization that supports that. And is an organization saddled with legacy technology? So it limits what they can actually do.

Charles Poliacof: (13:48)
Is an organization, to Heidi's point, thinking about data as an actual product, and an asset, and as an input that influences their digitization or digital strategy as they move forward? You see this in the insurance space. You see this in retail. You see this now in policymakers. The state of Texas is making all of their data available publicly, so they can attract capital to come in.

Charles Poliacof: (14:11)
So people are viewing data as a strategic asset. They are viewing data as an internal product. And I think those that continue to think that way, McKinsey just wrote a piece recently about this, are going to have a substantially greater advantage than those that do not. And again, I'll end on this point. I think it was Stevie Cohen and Dmitry Balyasny's panel when they talked about their firms that have enormous resources, and markets are fairly efficient.

Charles Poliacof: (14:36)
So understanding how to find those differentiated datasets and being able to unify them in a way where you can contextualize those insights. So you're not just relying on one or two datasets. That's going to be a big differentiator going forward, not just in our space, but in all industries.

Heidi Lanford: (14:55)
And use them over and over again.

Charles Poliacof: (14:55)
Sorry. Go ahead.

Heidi Lanford: (14:55)
And use them over and over again.

Charles Poliacof: (14:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Heidi Lanford: (14:57)
All those great nuggets that you're talking about, or that Tom talked about, you don't want them to be one-offs. And that does require some discipline and getting into a data organization, and maybe doing some of those traditional things that we've done in terms of storing data.

Marc LoPresti: (15:13)
The challenges remaining are abundant. And that's one of the reasons why companies like Knoema and shameless plug, BattleFin are such an important part of the data industry. It's about aggregation, organization, curation, purification, and visualization.

Charles Poliacof: (15:30)
And I think one thing to think about also is I think a lot of firms, particularly in the financial services space, whether it's on the asset management side or even wealth management, there's been a very DYI mindset.

Charles Poliacof: (15:41)
And I feel like DYI should be left to like Home Depot and Lowe's. And folks really need to start thinking about what it means to leverage trusted partners. There's a lot of great new technology out there that can be leveraged to introduce ROI that didn't exist just two, three years ago.

Marc LoPresti: (16:00)
So Tom, maybe bringing it back to you, with Fundstrat's organization and structure, you really thought about it from the beginning as a data-driven organization.

Thomas J. Lee: (16:09)
That's right.

Marc LoPresti: (16:10)
Tell us a little bit about that process for you.

Thomas J. Lee: (16:14)
Well I would say Fundstrat, when we started the firm in 2014, we did come with a mindset that we wanted to do evidence-based research, and really help investors navigate markets not with opinions, but the idea of helping them understand future probabilities based on what we can observe.

Thomas J. Lee: (16:36)
And so capturing data and aggregating it, and ingesting it and cleaning it up has been really important. I think one of the challenges that we found with a lot of data is that one, there is a lot of noisy data and a lot of errors in the data. And sometimes things look like contemporaneous indicators, but they're not necessarily helpful with future.

Marc LoPresti: (17:02)
Give us an example. That's a great point. Give us an example there.

Thomas J. Lee: (17:05)
Well, some examples of things like ... Here's something interesting, because a client pointed this out to us once. So he felt that there were some things that really helped explain the PMIs on a real-time basis. And I would call that an observable relationship, but it didn't work influentially. We weren't able to then say, "Okay, well, six months from now, what are the values of these different things?"

Marc LoPresti: (17:31)
Right.

Thomas J. Lee: (17:32)
So now you need to make an inference. And if you don't know what those are, then you're just making it up. And now it's just an opinion. Yeah, so that's a challenge. And I think another thing we found was that sometimes, you can get a very complete picture from alternative data, but it only just tells you what everybody else knows.

Thomas J. Lee: (17:47)
And so it's difficult to find something that gives you an edge that's actionable. Like something, can it give you an idea of how a data point might look? Or is it going to help you understand positioning? But obviously, the goal would be something that helps you know where things are six months from now.

Marc LoPresti: (18:04)
So, what has worked? So we touched on inflation before, CPI, consumer confidence, very volatile in a COVID exit, whatever the heck that means, I'm not even sure at this point that I know. What's worked?

Marc LoPresti: (18:16)
Have you taken things like sentiment, which is one of the most popular categories on our platform, I think on yours as well, Charles? Has that helped with predictability, with actually extending the usefulness of these insights in the way that you've described?

Thomas J. Lee: (18:32)
Yeah. Marc, this is a great question, because we've found some really interesting things over the past year that are actually helpful. But then it's not clear to us if it's because of what's happened during COVID. Because in COVID, the world has become very digital. Really, last year, everybody lived a digital life.

Marc LoPresti: (18:51)
Right.

Thomas J. Lee: (18:52)
So things in a digital world are much more measurable. In fact, I think one of the most interesting conversations I had at JPMorgan was our economists had said that at the time, he said if you looked at the previous 15 years, 50% of all global GDP was pure digital. But the idea is that the next 20-year interval, it'll be 75% digital.

Marc LoPresti: (19:15)
That's an incredible statistic, right?

Thomas J. Lee: (19:17)
Yeah. And it probably goes to 95% in the following 20-year interval.

Marc LoPresti: (19:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas J. Lee: (19:22)
Which means alternative data becomes way more comprehensive than what the BEA collects, or what you can see in weekly claims. The cadence of the data is so different. So I think to us, what we think, and we brought in a new guy, Adam Gould, who's from Empirical Research, but he's going to be doing a lot of machine learning work, is that the shelf life of a lot of the products we develop might be quite short, too.

Thomas J. Lee: (19:47)
And of course, that's why we would want to use guys that you guys have on your platform, because it saves us the homework. Because now, we can just spend more time trying to curate it or understand it.

Marc LoPresti: (19:58)
Charles, so how are you positioning Knoema to help your clients address these challenges?

Charles Poliacof: (20:03)
So I do want to just address one point that Tom just made. I would say that on that last point, data tends to be a bit regime dependent. So you will see data assets become popular during a certain time period. And they ebb and flow. I would say three years ago, macro data was probably more focused for macro strategists. Now, macro data is a part of just about every strategy that's out there. So you'll see these data assets become more relevant or less relevant, depending on what regimes and themes are being surfaced.

Charles Poliacof: (20:34)
With respect to our clientele, we work with a really wide range of clients. So it's not just buy-side firms. It's buy-side firms. It's sell-side firms. It's corporations. It's wealth managers. It's government agencies. We work with data providers as well. So I would say there's two fold. I think one, for large organizations combining legacy data or first-party data assets with third-party data assets continues to be a challenge. And folks are really started figuring out how to optimize for that.

Charles Poliacof: (21:07)
You have legacy infrastructure, legacy technologies, and to some extent, some legacy thinking. So for example, in the wealth management space, I think a lot of people are starting to really try to understand what it means to have a customer 360 view. And what are those inputs that they can start to use? So, what are the primary datasets about my customer that I've already collected, that has to live inside some kind of a clean room? And then what kind of third-party data assets can I collect to have a more informed view? So investing preferences.

Charles Poliacof: (21:36)
Does my customer care about ESG, or socially important companies, or environmentally conscious companies? So if they do, I want to make sure that I start sending campaigns that are going to be interesting to them. So you have folks that are starting to build these data-driven practices. You're seeing this a lot in retail. You're seeing this a lot on the supply chain side. People really just trying to understand how they can react to supply chain disruption on the corporate side. So it goes on and on, and on, and on.

Charles Poliacof: (22:04)
With respect to the data providers side, I think data providers need to start to think what it means to offer a data product that is consumable. So, how do I create a data product? What does it mean to tickerize that product? What does it mean to start thinking about omni-channel distribution, so that my data could be consumed through various exchanges, through various portals, through various tools? You want to be a gateway and not a gate keeper. If you're a gatekeeper you're ... Sorry.

Marc LoPresti: (22:34)
No, please. No, it's really about making that process of discovery and ingestion doable, because you mentioned tickerization. We've been talking about that since the beginning of the data industry. Nobody's done it yet, right?

Charles Poliacof: (22:49)
Or even entity resolution.

Marc LoPresti: (22:50)
Right.

Charles Poliacof: (22:50)
So if I'm looking at Athleta, I want to know that that maps up to Gap. And somebody is taking the time to actually do that work. So I think on the data productization side, there's still some work to do. And that's what we found that we've been doing work to help customers. For example, on the Snowflake marketplace, we're a partner with Snowflake. And we're one of the largest contributors of public data over there.

Charles Poliacof: (23:10)
But we're also working with alternative data vendors to actually productize their data on the marketplace. So, what does it mean to actually create a data product? Great metadata tables, source data tables, all those things. It's not sexy work, but it's necessary work so that people can have access to these insights.

Marc LoPresti: (23:29)
And as we expand, as we've seen with our business at BattleFin, from when we started it to today, that evolution beyond just the hedge fund as the main consumer of alternative data, or even the financial services world, generally, as we expand out into more corporate use cases, government and NGO use cases, that prospect or that challenge of ingestion, standardization, and consumability and visualization, which we could do a panel just on that, becomes much more relevant. Heidi, challenges.

Heidi Lanford: (24:03)
Yeah.

Marc LoPresti: (24:03)
There's been a lot, and I'm going to give you a little hint on something I want you to touch on. There was huge, huge news in the data industry yesterday. There was an SEC settlement, the first time ever, ever. And I've been talking about it. For those of you that have the misfortune of listening to the regulatory and legal panels that I do for BattleFin over live or in person, or over Zoom, which are a real snooze if you can't fall asleep, this was big.

Marc LoPresti: (24:30)
We were talking about this. Is the Gensler Administration going to be the first to actually bring an enforcement action against a participant in the data industry? How do you see regulation, changing regulation as one of the challenges that you face in this massive project that you've undertaken?

Heidi Lanford: (24:46)
It definitely affects us because obviously part of our business on the rating side is highly regulated, and then part of our business on our solution side is not as regulated.

Marc LoPresti: (24:57)
Right.

Heidi Lanford: (24:57)
And I guess with everything, I think there's pros and cons to both. One of the benefits that a lot of people get from regulation if done well, is standardization and consistency.

Marc LoPresti: (25:10)
Yeah. Right.

Heidi Lanford: (25:11)
We've all read every week, an article in the paper about ESG, and how ESG scores are sometimes challenging to interpret and understand like for like, because they're done differently.

Marc LoPresti: (25:24)
There's no standardization.

Heidi Lanford: (25:25)
And I'm not suggesting that we regulate that, but Fitch just released a sustainable Fitch product actually today. And so we're all doing a lot in the ESG space, and we think we've got an innovative way to look at that. The con though, is if you over-regulate it and you've not necessarily got the right people who understand data who are making these regulations, becomes really challenging then, too.

Heidi Lanford: (25:52)
It's all about, we want to get the benefits of data. We want data to give us insights so that we can make better decisions. And if it becomes too bureaucratic in making those laws, that can hinder us. But I did want to actually touch on a topic that we've been talking about. And that's Tom talked a lot about, inference. And it's the classic causation and correlation thing.

Heidi Lanford: (26:16)
I'm not trying to steer things a different direction, but I think this really gets down to building a culture of data literacy within your organization. So again, and I don't know if data literacy has been a big topic as you've talked about in the past couple of days here, but data literacy is not creating a bunch of PhD data scientists in your organization.

Heidi Lanford: (26:41)
What it is, is educating those consumers of information so they can make the best decision possible and take action on it. That might mean offering some training and education on how to deal with missing values or data that's a little sketchy, or understanding the difference between causation and correlation and when to phone up a data scientist in your organization.

Heidi Lanford: (27:08)
And that's another part of my job, is to actually build out a data literacy program for our entire company, to get folks essentially comfortable and confident enough to work with data, and make those data-driven decisions. And it's not just a learning and development program. It is a cultural mind shift. And it's a thing now. People are relating data literacy to, it's like data as a second language. There are various dialects within data. There are levels of proficiency.

Heidi Lanford: (27:37)
There could be a fluent I dream in data versus I have conversational knowledge of data. And that's okay. But that's what this shift is about. And all these challenges we've been talking about, about integrating data and the platforms, they are going to be here for the next foreseeable future. It's just, are we going to get better at it using awesome tools like knowledge graph, and AI and ML, and RPA, and things like that?

Marc LoPresti: (28:05)
And challenging in particular, talking about the regulation or regulatory perspective, when we have an alphabet soup or dog's breakfast of regulators. Whether it's the FCC from the consumer privacy, from the SEC.

Marc LoPresti: (28:23)
It's not just one entity. We've got unfortunately, like a minute, 20 seconds on the clock. So in 30 seconds or less, starting with you, Tom, 2022, biggest thing you expect to see changes in alternative data. What's in store for us?

Thomas J. Lee: (28:41)
Wow. In 30 seconds? I'll just say, I think that the next 12 months are going to be really critical. And again, Stevie Cohen mentioned it yesterday. It's no longer going to be a macro market. This is going to be single, stock winners and losers, operating leverage, people connect with customers. This is really important to get the alternative data sources correct.

Marc LoPresti: (29:06)
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I want to thank ... I was going to do for all of you, but unfortunately I don't think we have enough time. I'm getting the nod from backstage. I want to thank all of you for joining us this afternoon and listening to this unbelievable panel. Charles, Tom, Heidi, thank you for agreeing to do this. It was absolutely my pleasure.

Marc LoPresti: (29:24)
We hope that we taught you something about alternative data and the evolution of the space. I'm sure all of my fellow panelists would be available to answer any questions that you have after the panel. And I would be remiss if I didn't invite you all. If you haven't already done so, well, hell if you have go again, come visit us at BattleFin on the fourth floor.

The Evolution of Private Market Investing | #SALTNY

The Evolution of Private Market Investing with Virginie Morgon, Chief Executive Officer, Eurazeo. Suzanne Streeter, Partner & Co-Chief Investment Officer, Partners Capital. Peter Gleysteen, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, AGL Credit Management. Thomas H. Lee, Chairman, Lee Equity Partners.

Moderated by Gerry Baker, Editor-at-Large, Wall Street Journal.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Virginie Morgon

Chief Executive Officer

Eurazeo

suzanne-streeter.jpg

Suzanne Streeter

Partner & Co-Chief Investment Officer

Partners Capital Investment Group

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Peter Gleysteen

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer

AGL Credit Management

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Thomas H. Lee

Chairman

AGL Credit Management

 

MODERATOR

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Gerard Baker

Editor-at-Large

The Wall Street Journal

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Gerry Baker: (00:00)
Good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to be here. My name's Gerry Baker. I'm the Editor-at-Large of The Wall Street Journal based here in New York. It's a great pleasure, particular pleasure to be here in person after so many events that haven't been able to be conducted like that. It's great to be here in real life, IRL as my daughters would doubtlessly put it.

Gerry Baker: (00:27)
So thank you very much indeed all for being here. Hope you've been enjoying the session so far. It's great, particularly to see you all so wonderfully ready for a very interesting discussion. You all look particularly well presented, not quite as well presented as those characters at the MET Gala last night. I hope some of you managed to see that. And I don't see anybody, unfortunately, here wearing a tax-the-rich outfit as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was. Maybe that's to be expected of a hedge fund conference.

Gerry Baker: (00:58)
But anyway, we have a great panel, a great topic. We have a very ... We have a dauntingly broad topic, private markets. But I think we have a panel who can provide some real focus and some real insights into that. And I have some questions that I hope will provoke them a little to focus the topic down.

Gerry Baker: (01:20)
Obviously, private markets have been a remarkable expansion story for such a sustained period now, as you all know. I was just looking at some numbers. The entire private capital industry, according to Morgan Stanley estimates entire private capital sector accounts for about ... is carrying about $7.4 trillion. They estimate that it will continue to grow to 25 trillion by 2025 to illustrate, again, just another illustration of the scale of the extraordinary growth of all of the private markets, but of particularly private equity over the last 18 months since the pandemic hit.

Gerry Baker: (02:02)
The market cap of the big five private equity funds I checked today was at $80 billion in March of 2020 when the pandemic got underway, and it is now $250 billion, more than threefold increase. So it gives you a sense of this sustained increase.

Gerry Baker: (02:19)
So I want to get into the reasons behind this, whether this extraordinary growth can continue, differentiate obviously between the different types of private markets too because we've got a nicely diverse panel here who can talk about the various aspects.

Gerry Baker: (02:33)
So I'll introduce them. Obviously, to my immediate left is Tom Lee who's the chairman of AGL Credit Management. Thank you very much for being here. Virginie Morgon who's the CEO of Eurazeo in Paris, from Paris. Next to her, next to Virginie is Suzanne Streeter, who's Partner and Head of Private Equity and Real Estate at Partners Capital Investment. And on the extreme left, Peter Gleysteen, who we were talking backstage tells me that he's been in the field of private credit for just about as long as anybody, probably anybody any of us knows. He's the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of AGL Credit Management. So thanks all for being here.

Gerry Baker: (03:15)
Suzanne, I'm going to start with you. I'm going to give you, I'm going to quote something to you that Kewsong Lee, the Carlisle CEO said on an analyst call over the summer when he was describing the extraordinary performance of not only his company, but of private equity, private markets in general. And he put it like this. He said, "Deals are being completed on shorter timelines. Financings are being executed more quickly. Opportunities for exits are presenting themselves sooner. Funds are being raised faster than ever before. And accelerating impact from disruptive technology and changes from the pandemic are powering an increased demand for private capital across all sectors and regions."

Gerry Baker: (03:56)
I mean, being a kind of a cynical and contrarian journalist my response to that perhaps is to say, that sounds like it's time that things change. But is this as good as it gets? Can this ... Suzanne, sorry, can this continue?

Suzanne Streeter: (04:09)
Well, thank you Gerry. It's a great question. It certainly is an amazing time for private markets. The returns have been very strong, and all the data points that you mentioned are correct. And that's what we're experiencing and seeing ourselves.

Suzanne Streeter: (04:22)
I think there's no sign that anything is imminent. There's no change in sight. They also say that limited partners, people who are looking to invest in private markets are continuing to feel underallocated and are seeking alpha through private markets. So I don't see it as being a particular asset class that's imminent for decline or any significant risks. Obviously, even in the financial crisis, there were some bumps, but the asset class performed incredibly well. So we're still pretty confident that it'll continue for some period.

Gerry Baker: (04:54)
Tom, do you see anything to worry about given this extraordinary growth? Again, is it, are we just set fair for continued growth? Obviously, there'll be differential performance, but is the market overall, are these various markets from VC to private equity to private credit, are they just set fair for continued expansion on this scale?

Thomas Lee: (05:13)
Well, people like to say that private equity is the reciprocal of really bond rates for the values. And obviously, the rate on deaths, rate on bonds, rate on loans are very, very low. So people can borrow. Also, over many years, you will find that the private markets derive from the public markets. So you can't really separate them in terms of how they go. We think we can, but we can't. So as the public markets have had a strong rebound, so have the private markets. And right now things look very, very good.

Thomas Lee: (05:53)
Obviously, we're priced to perfection. Prices are very high. Prices that we're paying are very high. You'll see in the paper that in some cases, prices have gone at north of 20 times EBITDA, earnings before tax depreciation and amortization. So that's for a fast growth company, that's for a company with something possibly transformative happening, but we are in an extraordinary time. I'd like not to call it a bubble, but we certainly have to be sure of ourselves now.

Gerry Baker: (06:28)
Virginie, from a European perspective, and again, this boom has been global. There's been tremendous activity in Europe. UK is obviously not in the EU anymore, but UK has been very much a focus of inward in private investment. From the European perspective is this, these same conditions supporting continued growth do you think?

Virginie Morgon: (06:56)
Thanks Gerry, thanks for having me. Just to echo on both Suzanne and Thomas comments, I think the industry, so Suzanne was talking from an LP and allocator standpoint. And from a GP standpoint as always, an investor, we see also that industry growing very fast in the years to come and nothing happened by chance. We've professionalized. We're bringing more value add to our clients. The public market have been pretty volatile as well. So at least with private market, you get long-term alpha performance with significant operating support from the team. So the value add I believe is what really counts in how we've developed over the last decade.

Virginie Morgon: (07:39)
And to Thomas' comment, clearly prices are to be watched these days. Assets are more expensive. But if you do bring to the table value add transformation, buildups, operating leverage, ESG, responsibility, climate change, then you can potentially work hard on compensating the high price of your assets at inception and make decent and higher return than some of the public markets for your clients.

Virginie Morgon: (08:15)
As far as Europe is concerned, I think you find in some sectors better priced opportunities. Like if you take the tech industry, clearly something is happening in Europe. As we speak, finally, Europe is awakening, venture and growth, amazing entrepreneur, very strong academic level and training. And now, newcomers, significant money being poured into growing those companies, which are still less expensive than what you have in the US. I think that could be interesting from an investor standpoint. But overall, as you know, Gerry, the world is pretty global. So what you see in the US, you probably find in Europe as well.

Gerry Baker: (09:02)
Peter, we were talking about this backstage, I think it was Suzanne who pointed it out, but even if that Morgan Stanley forecast of $25 trillion for total private capital by 2025 is correct, that's still only a fraction of the total value of public markets, frankly, in the US alone. So that does suggest perhaps, you talk particularly from your perspective in private credit, but more generally that does suggest perhaps that there's plenty of headroom.

Peter Gleysteen: (09:30)
Plenty of headroom. And it's a huge opportunity because all of that private equity will be leveraged with private credit. And private credit in terms of the private markets, investing strategies and asset classes is highly complimentary because first of all, it's a cash income product. And this environment of virtually no yield in most products in private credit is still available. And depending on the strategy and the asset class could be available in size.

Peter Gleysteen: (10:00)
And then, needless to say, but as you just inferred, private credit is at the top of the capital stack of any given company. So it's safer. So you get a combination of income and safety, of course, depending on what the portfolio's like and how diversified and how low the correlations might be to other strategies. So credit is more popular, more interesting to people than it's ever been. And it has a long way to go.

Peter Gleysteen: (10:29)
I'll just add, there were some comments that were just made with how good could it get? Well, the world's changing. COVID is changing everything at a high level and a low level. And when that's happened, historically there've been a lot of business changes, have to be social changes and maybe political changes, but there's certainly business changes, which is fueling this record level of LBOs and MNA, which of course is financed with private credit. And these are new opportunities.

Peter Gleysteen: (10:59)
I'll also comment, you mentioned that I've been around the space a long time, since the '70s actually. I've never seen credit quality of new issue as good as it is now, and also well priced, meaning priced high, not low. So it's a very good time to be investing.

Gerry Baker: (11:15)
Tom, again, this growth has been going on for a long time. And as long as I've been a financial journalist, quite a long time, I've been reading articles saying that this, as private markets grow, they will be subject to diminishing returns. I mean, one of those kind of early drivers presumably of private markets was that still, especially in an environment of such low interest rates, that the drive for yield is such that there's been tremendous search for those opportunities. At some point, and yet again, as we've just been discussing this, the demand for private assets continues to grow exponentially it seems. Is the sector kind of exempt from the law of diminishing returns? I mean, can we expect this to go on?

Thomas Lee: (12:08)
Pardon me. Let me get very specific Gerry. In terms of return expectations in PE, in private equity, we always had a power or a standard, and that's that we should be returning a thousand over the concomitant public index. In other words, large cap buyouts really relate to in effect the S&P. If the S&P is say giving 8% a year over many, many years, so that large cap return should be about 18%. And therefore it sort of has been, look at the KK or Blackstone.

Thomas Lee: (12:42)
As you are going down into more of the midcap, okay, that return expectation goes up. Why? Because the smaller to midcap company is riskier. Okay? So that you as an investor need a higher return. So that return should be geared to the Russell say, and if the Russell was at 10 or 11, so then that thousand over is giving you into the low 20s. And so that has also been concomitantly true.

Thomas Lee: (13:10)
So I'm only saying that that's what the investor requires and that's what the market demands. And obviously, I think that Henry Kravis proved early on that if you can buy a really good company that's a really big company where the risk of failure is very low, that the LP, the limited partner is going to take a somewhat lower return than if you're in the more venturesome range, okay?

Gerry Baker: (13:39)
Suzanne, again, we talked about, you talked about low interest rates. How sensitive to the interest rate environment is the success of private markets? And if we did get some fairly encouragingly mildly benign inflation numbers today, but obviously, there's concern, continuing concern about rising inflation and ultimately minimum the withdrawal of all this credit from central banks and possibly high interest rates, how do you position yourself? What do your LP say about that? What's the sense of the role for private markets in possibly a changing interest rate environment?

Suzanne Streeter: (14:21)
Well, so we look at it as a limited partner in funds for most of our portfolio. And so it's really the first vintage year invest period, and sort of the whole period of the investment which is 10 to 12 years, and most companies are probably within the five to seven year range. So that's the fund life. And so if the interest rates rise during the life of the fund, your assets might be somewhat at risk because the opportunity cost of capital has sort of been damaged. But if you're over that series, that whole period, you may have a smoothing effect as well.

Suzanne Streeter: (14:56)
So we don't take into account much rising interest rates over a five year investment period because you're buying in along the way. And so it really does behoove the manager, the investor, to be focusing on operational value add versus just the financial engineering, which is what Partners Capital is always trying to underwrite.

Gerry Baker: (15:20)
Virginie, from your perspective, from your company's perspective, I think one of the things you've been seeing is a sort of a broadening of asset classes, right? And the idea of some of the private markets, private equity, well, becoming one stop operations for VC and private equity and credit. Tell us how that's developing, and again, what opportunities there are that you see from that development?

Virginie Morgon: (15:49)
Yeah. I mean, I see these and I'm sure this is shared by the audience and by my fellow partners on the stage. I mean, the growth of our industry, I think, is at least twofold. The first one that we've discussed so far, which is private equity, like equity investment behind entrepreneur and great management team, which is enlarging and growing. But also some complete new asset classes, which are being filled in, supported by players like us. I mean, think about private debt. The commercial bank have disappeared after the great financial crisis. At least I'm talking about the European markets where we, as private equity investor, we turn to private debt players, although it's more expensive, but it's more agile. We're really hand in hand as partners. So private debt as an asset class in private equity has emerged extremely strong over the last 12, 15 years.

Virginie Morgon: (16:48)
Think of financing the future, impact funds. Who is raising money? We are. Who is investing that money? We are. I mean, there's not that many source of capital if you want to invest in technology of the future impact climate, new businesses being concerned by climate and carbon neutrality. So think of us as not only growing what has been here for decades, but also inventing complete new way of developing and deploying resources, which you can't really find anywhere else, neither in the public market, nor through that many institutional financing. So I think we're filling some gaps with value add and commitment and real engagement behind some investment themes and belief.

Gerry Baker: (17:44)
Peter, on the interest rate question, private credit, again, you're a specialist and would seem to be particularly sensitive to that. How do you see that? How do you see the credit environment in the next couple of years and how it affects your particular sector of private markets?

Peter Gleysteen: (17:59)
Well, a traditional credit investing concern with interest rates is higher rates equals a higher interest burden on borrowers. So it's always been a historical credit concern. But in many, many years now that's really diminished because interest rates are so low and even any expectation of higher rates are still such low levels that given the credit quality of borrowers, the amount of excess cash flow that they generate it's not the concern that it once was. Interest rates are still relevant though, of course. And Suzanne said it's not about market timing. It's about averaging over time. With private credit, two comments I would make, and I'll come back to interest rates.

Peter Gleysteen: (18:37)
As Virginie was just saying, private credit offers a lot of opportunities, including for new types of businesses to get financed. In the US, private credits really breaks down to two big buckets. The traditional one, bank originated, broadly syndicated bank loans, the original form of private credit. Those loans are to private almost all, but not exclusively private, mid and large cap domestic US companies. If you want to have credit exposure to them, that's the only place you can get it. And that's a big part of the US economy and arguably the most stable. And these are not multinationals. It's the heart of the US economy, mid and large cap.

Peter Gleysteen: (19:17)
The other segment, which is new of course, is direct lending, which are small cap leverage borrowers, mainly private equity sponsored small businesses. That asset class is new though, and it's a result of banks for regulatory capital reasons pulling back from lending to smaller companies. So we've yet to see how that group of borrowers will fare in a '09 type recession, as opposed to a 2020 90-day recession.

Peter Gleysteen: (19:48)
This relates back to interest rates. It's a central for any investor in private credit because they're looking for yield. Now, the good news about private credit is spreads. Spreads have remained elevated mainly for market technical reasons, even though the underlying benchmark, which is currently live or soon-to-be SOFR is practically zero. So it's an attractive investment, even though effective there is no interest rate component to the return.

Gerry Baker: (20:16)
Obviously, it's been an extraordinary unprecedented in our lifetimes 18 months of this pandemic. I want to get an assessment from each of you on what your sense is of what's changing, what has changed, obviously, what's changed over the last year and a half, but I mean, what's changed structurally as you look out at the investing opportunities and the investing climate now over the next few years.

Gerry Baker: (20:40)
We've seen obviously extraordinary growth of technology, the use of technology. We've seen a very bifurcated economic performance between companies that have done extraordinarily well, accelerated in the last year and a half, and those that haven't. We've seen kind of a continuing hollowing out of retail, traditional retail. And I wonder, just want to get your sense of what of these changes that you've seen in the last year and a half are permanent, and again, how that affects your investment strategies, the way you look at the overall economy and the opportunities. Virginie, let's start with you. What's changed in the last year and a half, permanently changed?

Virginie Morgon: (21:26)
Many things, but a lot was already there before the crisis, wasn't it? So on the negative, and it's probably beyond just our conversation, I think the world, and that's extremely worrying, has become more indebted. There's this bifurcation with the happy fuse and the many left aside, education, women, child. So that's for another panel, I guess. And on the positive, which was already there but accelerated during the crisis, it's a more digital world, and thank God, it's a more responsible world. And I think, the election that you had at the beginning of the year in the US and the US rejoining the Paris Accord, all of this is going as far as I'm concerned in the right direction.

Virginie Morgon: (22:17)
So if you were pre-COVID a digital investor, you had digital talent in your team, you were technology driven, and if you were already committed and engaged into climate and carbon neutrality at whatever time horizon, and you had expertise in your team and conviction, you certainly came out of this crisis stronger than ever, because that's what client wants, that's what entrepreneur wants, companies in which we invest. And you would be astonished by what has really changed. At least, I'm testifying for Europe, which is the market I know best.

Virginie Morgon: (23:04)
But you are being chosen today by your clients and by the companies in which you invest you if you have that in your DNA. And that's very real. I mean, we are winning deals or we are winning clients' trust and support because many, many years ago, we at Eurazeo decided that we wanted to be acting responsibly long-term and having our own impact on society and climate. And this is now happening.

Virginie Morgon: (23:37)
So it's a thrill. If you have that expertise, if you have built that knowledge and those ... I mean, because this is heavy work. I mean, this is expertise. This is operating support. This is being a real ... an operator of diversity and change and climate. These are for me the big change. If you're a tech investor, I mean, you're winning these days. How long? I don't know, because it comes back to valuation. But it's for the long-term.

Gerry Baker: (24:03)
I want to talk a little bit later on about ESG and impacts in particular.

Virginie Morgon: (24:06)
Sure.

Gerry Baker: (24:06)
Some of the concerns that maybe have been raised by, hate to use the phrase, but greenwashing or companies posing as meeting certain environmental objectives while not actually doing so. But I do want to come back to that later. But Peter to you, what are your main ... What are the main lessons? I mean, we're still drawing them, obviously. What are the main lessons you've drawn from the last year and a half?

Peter Gleysteen: (24:31)
I think at least the two big ones are just, Virginie mentioned digitization, just how effective we've all been able to work remotely, but it's meant the further disintermediation of the non-knowledge worker or of the labor worker, which is good for productivity and company profitability that's arguably not a good thing for society. And it's accelerated. Those trends have been in place for a long time, but it's accelerated them and made them clearly structural. They're clearly structural and more potent.

Peter Gleysteen: (25:07)
And relatedly, with the previous administration, there was a heightened awareness of political risk, not only in the US but everywhere. And that, despite everyone's best hopes, that's not diminished. So if anything, I think we're living in an environment where political risk, both at the national level and international level's higher, which points to more volatility, certainly at the price level.

Peter Gleysteen: (25:36)
Now as a credit investor, as a long-term manager of credit investments, volatility is actually an investment opportunity. Depends on which, and certainly you would think that would be true also with private equity because these aren't ... We're talking about private markets, not public markets. But it does mean that the environment will be trickier going forward. It certainly is our expectation.

Gerry Baker: (26:00)
Suzanne, your sense of what are the structural changes that we are going to see as a result of the extraordinary events of the last year and a half?

Suzanne Streeter: (26:09)
Sure. I think I might echo what Virginie and Peter both said around productivity. One of the observations is just that everyone's captive. Everyone's sitting at home. Everyone's available. The number of management meetings that a private equity or venture capital firm can have are five times what could have been two years ago. The pipeline of deals that they're pursuing couldn't come to life because people are sitting home and having conversations.

Suzanne Streeter: (26:39)
I also look at it from the limited partner side and perhaps even from the, just the industry overall. It has become more inclusive because even small limited partners can access the general partner to have a meeting, to perform their due diligence without expensive time traveling to meet with them on their own ground.

Suzanne Streeter: (26:59)
So I look at it as a super efficient time. I think it will probably remain in place for a good period of time until animal spirits start to kick in and you have a lot of people running on planes and everyone else starts to feel left out. But in the meantime, it's been a really productive time, and you see it just throughout the industry.

Gerry Baker: (27:24)
Tom, your observations about the last ... the pandemic and its long-term changes it [crosstalk 00:27:30]

Thomas Lee: (27:31)
Your first premise was tremendously accurate. You talked about the velocity of change. Changes are happening at a rapid rate, changes all up and down the spectrum, so that we have to be very, very careful when we invest today because things are changing rapidly. I don't know if we want to talk about it now or later, but so often we're being asked to invest on a proforma EBITDA compilation of numbers that looks out into the future and that sort of calculates what the run rate EBITDA or the run rate profitability of the company should be or might be with a few things that are just happening during the next quarter. So anyway, that's something that we must be very, very careful of.

Thomas Lee: (28:25)
In terms of our own activities in this last pandemic period, and certainly Suzanne mentioned, the velocity, again, at which we are doing business is dramatically increased. The number of incoming transactions has increased the volume of work that we have, the volume of work that we have imposed on our own staffs. And having seen the Goldman Sachs revelation of, gee, we're working our younger people a hundred hours a week, and we looked around and said, "Oh my God, that's what we're doing too," and we just can't do it like that, because of course not having to travel into the office and so on and so forth, it became easier to impose on people. So anyway.

Thomas Lee: (29:11)
Information coming from companies digitally, the lack of travel, okay, compressed the timeframe of the receipt of this information and the digestion of the information and how we work with the companies, the number of acquisition opportunities that we are seeing. And then of course, if we're buying a company, if we're looking at buying, it isn't just us in a so-called auction. It's dozens of firms, possibly scores of firms, could be a hundred. Wow. Hopefully if we're selling a company, we're going to get that kind of result also. And that happens from time to time. But the entire activity level is very, very high.

Thomas Lee: (29:57)
Your very first question of the whole meeting is, is it indeed too hot not to cool down? But that's for another question. Thank you.

Gerry Baker: (30:07)
Let's talk about the broader climate. I want to talk about some of these ESG and impact and other issues too, in a moment. But, if you like, the kind of the broader cultural or political climate that we live in. I mean, again, one of the reasons, one of you has really talked about this, but one of the reasons private markets have been so attractive for so long is obviously because they're subject to less onerous regulations. And whether you're an investor or particularly whether you're someone who's considering going public versus staying private, the regulatory environment is obviously extremely important.

Gerry Baker: (30:46)
But we live in an environment where, especially here in the United States, we have a democratic administration. We have a democratic Congress, which has signaled its determination to take, if you like, a more, should we say, aggressive approach towards some business practices.

Gerry Baker: (31:00)
And I wonder, as private markets grow at these kind of rates that we've been talking about, they're obviously not going to, by definition they're not going to be subject to the same kind of regulatory environment that public markets are. But Suzanne, maybe I could start with you. Is that something we're going to see ... Are we going to see more pressure for regulation, for scrutiny than we have right now? Or do you think that's just ... that would just kill off the opportunity represented by private investing?

Suzanne Streeter: (31:33)
Well, regulation it's always been in the wings and the private equity industry's been able to sort of navigate it pretty effectively. I think, relative to public markets however, it's still really under the radar in terms of just the market to market risk of the portfolio, which valuations is probably the one thing that would come under the scrutiny first and foremost from a regulatory perspective.

Suzanne Streeter: (32:01)
But being a public company, you think about all the costs imposed on the company to address climate, to address various diversity inclusion initiatives, all really positive, but in a private company context, you can make rapid, aggressive investment to get those things accomplished without having the risk of public market earnings being a sort of the public stock price being damaged because your earnings are coming in below expectation and the smoothing effect. So, I sort of see the private market is still a real, an opportunity to actually take a leadership role in a lot of the transformation because it can really be effective.

Gerry Baker: (32:46)
Virginie, you talked a little bit about this, and Suzanne just made this very good point, too, that to some extent the pressure is coming from a kind of almost a self-regulatory or from the investors, to some extent themselves, we've seen these in the last couple of years, whether it's BlackRock and requiring certain ESG obligations on the part of its farm, on the part of its managers, on the part of its partners, companies like Goldman requiring certain composition of boards, gender, and racial composition of boards.

Gerry Baker: (33:26)
I'm wondering, to be cynical for a moment, is this kind of window dressing? Is it public posturing? Is it public relations in order to sort of forestall broader political intervention? Or is it something that is genuine and are private investors responding to it in a positive and favorable way?

Virginie Morgon: (33:45)
I mean, if I may I'll answer from the private market standpoint, and I'll go into-

Gerry Baker: (33:50)
However you like, from whichever perspective-

Virginie Morgon: (33:52)
... BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are announcing. I believe with the size and the power of our industry, we can make, and Suzanne mentioned, significant changes, because we're still quite small, but extremely agile and extremely powerful in terms of resources.

Virginie Morgon: (34:12)
So you think of a GP, like it's a thousand people. We are 350 people in my company, but we invest in more than 500 company worldwide. We have impact on the life of thousand and thousand of employees and people and families. So we have the power because we have the resources and the talent. So if you have the conviction, and if on top of this, there's an awakening. The clients, you will be amazed, Gerry, there's no due diligence today of any of our clients which doesn't start with ESG. It's completely the other way around.

Virginie Morgon: (34:51)
Of course, you need performance, you need return, you need financial performance because that's what you're here for. But it's not enough. You need financial performance for the long-term responsibility and have some impact through the companies through which you invest. So it's not about at all greenwashing.

Virginie Morgon: (35:12)
And if anyone in the industry is just trying to play cues, you are uncovered in half an hour because you can't talk about climate neutrality if you don't have expertise because it's extremely technical. Everything is valued and measured and published, and you go from step one to step two, you need expertise, and-

Gerry Baker: (35:40)
Excuse me. But can I be a little bit cynical for a moment and at least, say, I'll play the role of the cynical journalist and say, to some extent hasn't that been easier to execute in a climate of extraordinary financial success? I mean, with this low interest rate environment, the extraordinary bull market that we've seen, which some measures been going on for 30 years. So it's kind of easier with that rising tide to meet these specific objectives, whether it be environmental, social, governmental, or diversity, equity and inclusion. But if we hit some turbulence, if we go through another 2006, 2007, or we hit God forbid another bear market of the 1970s, are people going to cling to those goals?

Virginie Morgon: (36:31)
No, because you have to have another conviction, Gerry, because it's about a better performance. You have a better financial performance if you incorporate in the way you accelerate the transformation of your company, you are getting a better financial performance by taking care of diversity. Because if you are convinced that being diverse brings better decision-making and better efficiency, then you're back to step one, you are delivering a better financial performance. Wherever you are in the cycle, you better take those diversity and climate objective into your own transformation in your company.

Virginie Morgon: (37:12)
Now you're going to pay per tons of gas, CO2, it's 60 Euro per ton. It was 10 four years ago. So this is real money. So if you're convinced that this is real money, it's not about having a great momentum of high growth that you are then spending some time and some resources on diversity and climate. This is a must. This is embedded into your objective of being, providing better returns.

Gerry Baker: (37:40)
Tom, you're-

Thomas Lee: (37:41)
Much of our money is coming from the biggest pension funds and the sovereign wealth funds in the world. Okay? As in say, CalSTRS, CalP per as many, many others. They demand it. They want it. They require it. So it's been a good kickstart for us and we have gone with it. And ESG is important to us. So I can't tell you how something good starts, but it started this way and now we're all with it.

Thomas Lee: (38:13)
But back to your initial question was whether under the Democratic administration we see more regulation than under Republican. I can't say that really. I am sure there will be some, but returns are going to be the main driver. Because we're private and because we're asking the LPs to lock up for five to 10 years and they can't just sell our fund shares in one minute on the stock exchange. That's why we must give that high rate of return. So anyway.

Gerry Baker: (38:49)
Peter, just quickly on these new horizons of ESG and impact that [crosstalk 00:38:54]

Peter Gleysteen: (38:54)
It's critically important, and the point's been made several times. Tom was just making that you would want any company that you're investing, whether you're a creditor or an equity investor to employ best practices, do what's best for the business, protect all shareholders, all stakeholders, and be better.

Peter Gleysteen: (39:13)
The controversy though is, especially with the focus on ESG, are we talking about something that can move the needle 10% or 1%? So I'd say it's right now closer to 1%. So there's more awareness of it than substantive achievement, but it's all pointing in the right direction and it's necessary. And government needs to set kind of the guard rails, but the solutions are going to come from the private sector. And we're going to invest in that.

Gerry Baker: (39:44)
We just have a few minutes left. So I'm going to just give each member of the panel, just a simple question about what expectations they have for the way in which things may change. And Suzanne, I know you've been in the way in which you, the changing practices and trends in your business, and I know you said to me beforehand that very interested in the extent to which you've been working directly with LPs, more direct involvement by them, growth and working with emerging managers. Tell us what your priorities are for the next year or two.

Suzanne Streeter: (40:21)
Sure. We're just trying to seek the highest performing opportunity set, and what we at Partners Capital experienced and I think we hope too it will persist is venture capital. Companies are staying private for longer. And so there's just much more opportunity to benefit from the growth in that market. And I think that should be sustainable for a period of time. So venture capital is one.

Suzanne Streeter: (40:51)
Second is direct investing with our partners. So this is something that's been going on for many, many years. Many LPs are really interested in co-investing with their private equity partners. It's hard to execute and we've got a team that does it. So that's an area that we're leaning into at Partners Capital.

Suzanne Streeter: (41:09)
And the third is emerging managers. This is where we see a higher startup opportunity set, people who have been in the industry for a long time, trained at great story firms that want to go out on their own and really are looking for deals that are probably below the radar, off the run, smaller, there's more inefficiency, more opportunity for value add. And so that's an area where we're spending a tremendous amount of time and that's on a global basis. And those three areas have been quite creative to our performance over the last six years.

Gerry Baker: (41:44)
Tom, I'll ask you kind of what's your eye, what bulls do you have your eye, particularly what do you have your eye on in the next couple of years, either in terms of the way you work or in terms of opportunities? Just a sense of what your priorities are.

Thomas Lee: (41:56)
Well, first of all, just on a personal basis, we are so looking forward to getting back into the office, and we are-

Gerry Baker: (42:03)
Amen. Amen.

Thomas Lee: (42:04)
Amen.

Gerry Baker: (42:05)
We're not there yet.

Thomas Lee: (42:06)
And also, I must say we look forward to being able to spend time in person with the corporate management. While that seems like a very simple answer, it's something that we haven't been able to really do.

Thomas Lee: (42:21)
Certainly, we are working with managements of the companies that we invest in, in terms of helping them grow. Okay? We happen to be a firm that doesn't try to run the companies that we invest in, but we assist. And that's in many, many areas in terms of corporate strategy, development, and in terms of deal flow. So it's as if we've been on the outside of our portfolio, looking in, and we are so anxious to get back to business though. Basically it's a very simple, yes.

Gerry Baker: (42:59)
To something like normal. Peter, just quickly your priorities.

Peter Gleysteen: (43:04)
Certainly, our principal focus looking ahead is making sure that what we can offer and what we deliver to our investors aligns directly with what they're seeking and what their needs are, specifically their goals. And we're focused on getting better at doing that. Now, we're a credit investor. So what people want in credit investing is safety, stability, and an attractive cash income stream.

Peter Gleysteen: (43:29)
Now, the good news is with private credit, all the raw materials that do that are readily available, and our job is to do the best possible job that we can delivering that, and taking it to an even better and even better level.

Gerry Baker: (43:46)
Virginie, I'm going to give you the last word. As you look forward to the next, getting back to ... Well, you're obviously traveling again, which is a good thing. More human interaction. But, as you look at the next couple of years, what are the things that you're most focused?

Suzanne Streeter: (43:59)
I vote in favor of human interaction, for sure. We've been certainly very efficient in the last 18 months, but we need interaction to be creative and innovative. I'm fed up of working alone from my office.

Suzanne Streeter: (44:14)
Listen, venture and growth, I would echo Suzanne, in Europe something big is happening. So I'm glad that we at Eurazeo but other players as well, are there to support those great stories of leadership emerging, strong businesses in growth and venture in Europe. So that's something to watch I would say in the next five to 10 years.

Suzanne Streeter: (44:42)
I would say I'm a deep believer in making bridges and connection. Politically speaking, we're going backwards. So hopefully, as a private market player, we can strengthen those bridges. And I am representing very old and strong player in Europe. We are willing to develop our own strengths in Europe, in Germany, in Italy, in the UK, but also be present in the US and also be present in China, because the more you invest in small to midsize companies, the more they need a player who has connection across the globe to help them fast track their development. And I think that's quite a special alchemy of supporting midsize companies, but at the same time, being yourself, more of a global player with a good understanding of the US and of China, if you are a European player.

Suzanne Streeter: (45:42)
And then maybe the final words will be about women. And I would like to bring more women to our industry. It's not just about women. It's about more diversity, because that's what we need in order to be better at what we do. We need to be more diverse, more gender balanced. And there's still a lot to go, still a lot to work on even since from 2021. So I make that wish.

Gerry Baker: (46:08)
Thank you. Very good note on which to end the session. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for being here, for listening. I want to ask you, if I may, to join me in thanking our terrific panel for sharing their time and their insights this afternoon. So please, thank you very much.

Suzanne Streeter: (46:25)
Thanks.

Investing in Cannabis: Analyzing the Industry’s Future | #SALTNY

Investing in Cannabis: Analyzing the Industry’s Future with Jennifer Drake, Chief Operating Officer, AYR Wellness. David Feuerstein, Co-Founder & Partner, Feuerstein Kulick. Rob Sechrist, President, Pelorus. Emily Paxhia, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Poseidon.

Moderated by Matt Karnes, Founder, GreenWave Advisors.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Jennifer Drake

Chief Operating Officer

AYR Wellness

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Emily Paxhia

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Poseidon

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David Feuerstein

Co-Founder & Partner

Feuerstein Kulick

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Rob Sechrist

President

Pelorus Equity Group

 

MODERATOR

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Matt Karnes

Founder

GreenWave Advisors

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt Karnes: (00:07)
Well, hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. These are panelists, I'm Matt Karnes, Jen Drake, David Feuerstein, Rob Sechrist, and Emily Paxhia. I thought for those of you who are not familiar with the cannabis industry, just to give you a quick backdrop, for all intent and purposes, the industry pretty much was established in 2014 when Colorado introduced its first recreational use market. Back then, that was about eight years ago, sales were about three point eight billion dollars, fast forward to today, now we have 18 rec states, adult use, and 36 medical.

Matt Karnes: (00:49)
The industry has progressed quite a bit over the past eight years. There's been ebbs and flows. Last year, 2020., We estimate the retail sales were about 19 billion, this year, 23 billion, 28 billion by 2022., And really the thing that I focus on is where we're going to be at the end, at maturity. And I think we're looking at an 80 to a $100 billion market. If you compare that to tobacco, which is 120 billion, beer, 110, spirits and wine, about 150 billion combined.

Matt Karnes: (01:25)
So there's a tremendous opportunity, but the industry remains illegal under federal law, which is a problem, and a good thing, in a way. So what I thought I'd do is kick it off to you, David, our lawyer, our expert legal person here, and why don't you walk us through where we are at a federal level, the policy changes that have been introduced?

David Feuerstein: (01:49)
Sure. Well, thanks, Matt. As I think, if I'm sitting in your seat and I put myself in your seat, the first thing I'd want to know, when investing is, whether I'm investing in something that's actually legal. As Matt referenced, cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, but for those who are following cannabis in any respects, I'm sure you're aware that Senator Schumer and Booker recently released legislation with respect to how you would federally legalize cannabis. Meaning that you would not only take it off the scheduling list, you would allow for banking, listing, you would allow for interstate commerce.

David Feuerstein: (02:29)
There's also many social reforms in that social equity, decriminalization and sort of criminal reform, so that is now on the table in Washington, DC. Many industry participants have commented on it and provided insight as to what they think about that legislation. And what I would expect, in the future, is some sort of incremental change. I think it's hard to envision a widespread federal legalization with a snap of a fingers, but I do think that within time, you'll see sort of small steps towards federally legalized industry.

Matt Karnes: (03:11)
Great. And Jen, in light of the challenges, the legal challenges, how is AYR able to establish such a compelling national brand in light of the federal illegality?

Jennifer Drake: (03:24)
Sure. Well, for people in the audience, maybe, who aren't as familiar with cannabis, AYR is a publicly traded equity. So we started our life as a SPAC, raised about a $100 million in 2017, and are now a two and a half billion dollar publicly traded company. So we give the industry viewpoint on this panel. And just a little bit by way of background. I used to be in your shoes, I think went to my first SALT in maybe 2009, in the private credit world. And it's such a compelling opportunity in cannabis that I actually, several years ago voted with my feet and moved into doing the first cannabis SPAC.

Jennifer Drake: (04:07)
But if I'm in your shoes, if I think about to back to when I was looking at an alternative investment, what's super compelling about cannabis is that it is incredibly fragmented market. And so for the few businesses, like ours, that are at the top of the food chain, in terms of multi-state operators who are able to have a footprint across many of those legal states that David mentioned. You can both have a very compelling cashflow opportunity today in your operating business, because you are vertically integrated, you grow it, you manufacture it, you produce it, you sell it at wholesale, you sell it through retail stores, which in many cases are in a limited license environment. So for instance, in Nevada, our most productive stores do $35 million per year in revenue, which is over $10,000 per square foot. So it's a really compelling industry structure, for today.

Jennifer Drake: (05:06)
And for tomorrow, as Matt mentioned, the future is branding. The future is when cannabis becomes a proper consumer product at a $100 billion plus or minus, in terms of annualized revenue, putting it up there with all of the other major consumer products, kind of in the sector. And the key to being that great consumer products company when the industry matures, is first and foremost, having a great product.

Jennifer Drake: (05:39)
And what does that mean for cannabis? Well, I think people don't realize how hard it is to grow great cannabis. And I certainly didn't know this three years ago, you certainly wouldn't want me growing your weed. What you want is incredibly experienced cultivators, who've been in the industry for a long time growing a great product. Because half of what gets sold is flower, is the flower that either goes in your pre-roll or gets ground up and goes in your joint. I never thought I would be talking about this. But half of our product is flower, and so it is all about the plant. It is all about growing a great product, and that is why, for us, the way to build a great brand is to do all the normal things a consumer product company would do, excellent customer experience, excellent approach to branding.

Jennifer Drake: (06:35)
But first and foremost, it all starts with the quality of what goes in the box. It all starts with the quality of the plant, and any operator, I'm the operator kind of on the panel today, but any operator will tell you the same thing, that is the key. And that is why for us, the key is to be the largest scale producer of high quality flower in the US.

David Feuerstein: (06:59)
One other thing, just to Jen's point, was when we started five or six years ago in the business, you used to have people say, "We had the greatest cultivator," and it's been doing it for 20 years, which sort of made you scratch your head for a minute, because 20 years ago, there was no legal industry at all. But now as you see the industry evolving, you have true horticulturists, PhDs, real scientists who are growing cannabis in real controlled environments with greatest technology. So just in our experience, just being in the space, it's completely evolved.

Matt Karnes: (07:32)
It's definitely not like growing tomatoes, that is for sure.

David Feuerstein: (07:35)
No.

Jennifer Drake: (07:36)
No.

Rob Sechrist: (07:36)
Not quite [inaudible 00:07:38].

Matt Karnes: (07:38)
So Rob, from your perspective, you run a fund, it's a REIT fund, Pelorus, from your perspective, what do you think needs to happen before federal legalization actually occurs? What is the industry missing, aside from it actually being legal?

Rob Sechrist: (07:57)
And just to give you a little color on us, we're the largest privately held, private mortgage REIT, that's lending specifically to the owners of cannabis properties, with cannabis use tenants, I should say. And we've put out nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in this sector. For us, the most consequential legislation that's has already happened in 2014, which is the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment at the time, which defunded the Department of Justice from many prosecution, but cannabis-related business. So that was the clear path for us to lend to the owners of commercial real estate and allow for cannabis use tenants.

Rob Sechrist: (08:28)
It's very important that that's there, and that's the bedrock that I think that most of the people are here. In regards to what I think needs to happen, legislatively, or where things are going to go, I am less optimistic as my peers, that legislation reform is going to de-conflict state policy from federal policy in the near term. I just don't see the progressive states, California and New York, and liberal states giving an advantage to the Republican states that are coming in late to the game to completely legalize it. And on top of that, there's a patchwork of different laws and tax structures that are already in place, so I just never see the interstate commerce clause coming into play. I could be wrong. I think the bill is too broad. I think that if they just focus on removing 280E from the IRS code, it's a simple one-shot kill.

Rob Sechrist: (09:18)
And if allow credit cards to be run on the federal system, we've killed two major issues out there with very targeted measures. But that's not how Congress works, we know many of these representative Dana Rohrabacher is our friend, and our local Congressman, and we were implementing funding him at the time. I just don't see a broad bill passing with the 60 votes that are necessary to get past the filibuster. And unless they include it in the infrastructure bill, I just think the opportunity has passed. And I think the Democrats will lose the house in this midterm.

Jennifer Drake: (09:48)
That said, I don't think you have to have federal legalization in order for the investing opportunity to be compelling. And I know Emily does a lot of investing in the space. So, I mean, why don't you talk a little bit about that?

Emily Paxhia: (10:00)
Well, I mean, hi everyone, I'm the founder of Poseidon. Poseidon has three funds dedicated to investing in the cannabis industry. We opened our first fund, right when Colorado opened our doors to their legal adult use market in January of 2014, and we've invested across the entire capital spectrum, and really in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Western Europe. So we've really explored and engaged in across the entire supply chain and have understood the levers you can pull to really drive returns in this really early emerging markets. But Jen's point is spot on, and I totally agree.

Emily Paxhia: (10:35)
For us, actually, the ability to deploy capital before federal legalization, this is the time to be putting money into this industry, because by the time the lawmakers move to get something legalized on the federal level, I think the alpha will be out of this space. And you'll just be kind of investing where it's very easily accessible. Our whole thing is to kind of exploit the delta between perceived and actual risk, when it comes to investing in this market. And the way we do that is by being boots on the ground, we spend all our time on the road in these facilities, understanding the people involved, understanding the regulations involved, because the regulations are also kind of a gas pedal and a brake pedal.

Emily Paxhia: (11:14)
So we have things where we want to change, 280E, which is our egregious federal tax code around cannabis, where you cannot write off ordinary business expenses. So you have these tremendous effective tax rates, and Jen can speak to that in her business. What we also have, in the US, is a lack of access to the capital markets. We are currently listed on the OTC. We trade in Canada, but what that does is it creates a lot of challenges around what actually happens around these public names. And for us, we've seen a couple of cycles. I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the Gartner hype cycle around tech, but we've been observing a very similar pattern in cannabis. The one big difference is that institutional capital has largely been sidestepping this industry.

Emily Paxhia: (11:59)
So it's time for smaller firms like ours to be able to get into the mix, invest along the way, and then when we see that institutional capital opening up, when we see the capital markets opening up, and people can participate at a broader base into this industry, that's when we're really going to see some serious liftoff. And you can see how that's been mirrored in Canada, where they do have a federal legal program, and they've been able to access the capital markets.

Emily Paxhia: (12:27)
An interesting conundrum is that we have tremendous operators in the United States. The fundamentals of these businesses are very strong. You can't see a consumer sector that's growing at the rate it's growing at over 30% year over year with EBITDA margins like we're seeing in cannabis, it's really unparalleled, almost. And so it's just a very exciting time to be in it. But then you see the Canadian operators who don't have those same strong fundamentals, but they have access to our NASDAQ and to our New York Stock Exchange, and so they have a totally different experience in terms of how their public companies perform.

Emily Paxhia: (13:02)
So I don't know, one of the things we said when we launched Poseidon is, we would have to get very comfortable, often being uncomfortable, and so that's been part of our whole thing. And we just lean in on our work to really understand how to engage in this sector.

Matt Karnes: (13:18)
What I think is really compelling about the story in the US is, the ability and the proven track record of many of the MSOs, the ability to generate free cashflow and cashflow from operations in light of federal prohibition, because there are added costs of prohibition. There's the 60 to 70% effective tax rate. There's a higher cost of capital. There's added compliance costs. I mean, the list goes on. And so in my view, when federal legalization occurs, or when there's any meaningful change to state law, the cashflow profile will accelerate dramatically. And that's when you'd want to be in now, I would say.

Matt Karnes: (14:00)
But, Jen, just getting back to like the capital markets like, for AYR, you guys have made a series of acquisitions. I mean, that's sort of the play now in the sector, there's a lot of acquisitions and consolidation and so forth. And AYR has done some of their transactions, cash, stock, a combination thereof, valuations have come down as we talked about. And so how do you think about deploying the capital that you have? You're also doing a share buyback.

Jennifer Drake: (14:28)
Well, one of the things that's amazing about this business is even at... we've talked a little bit about the barriers and the extra costs about running this business and the extra taxes, et cetera, but even with all of those headwinds, you're still able to have an incredibly robust margin structure, an incredibly robust cashflow generation. Which means, you have really great kind of credit metrics, and the ability to, when you deploy capital, you can do it extremely, extremely profitably. For instance, and this is going to sound crazy to the people in this room, when we engage in capital projects, which can have multiple returns, in terms of return on invested capital, we get our capital back within like 18 months. So people are always very worried, is it worthwhile putting $30 million into this cultivation facility in Massachusetts? What is going to happen with federal legalization?

Jennifer Drake: (15:23)
Well, every dollar I get after a year and a half is gravy, because I paid back my $30 million investment. There's no other industry where your return on capital is that fast. And it's because of the margin structure of this business is so robust, and because the leverage you can get from capital projects is so material. So when we invest in capital projects or an M & A, I mean, our business currently trades at about, and this sounds like a crazy number, like five, six times 2022 expected EBITDA. For a business growing a 100%, year over year, in terms of revenue, with a 30% EBITDA structure, that's crazy, but it's because of these structural hurdles to investment. And when we buy other people, we're buying at a creative EBITDA multiple, so M & A is sub six times, capital, we invest in capital projects, returns within one and a half years.

Jennifer Drake: (16:22)
It's an incredible, incredible proposition to grow your company right now, which is why we're so acquisitive and why we want to expand our business as much as possible. Exactly, as Emily said, before it's federally legal, because when it is federally legal, there will be a rush of capital in, both from the people who are on the sidelines now, whether it's the Canadian, they're called licensed producers, LPs, the Tilray and Cronos and Aurora and Canopys of the world, or even the big tobacco and alcohol companies who have been desperate to get into the cannabis business for donkey's years, but still won't do it, until there's more clarity on federal legalization. When those people come into the business cost of capital is going to go down, return on capital is going to go down, so we want to get as much as possible at these cheap levels before federal legalization

Matt Karnes: (17:23)
And David, speaking of, on the topic of M & A, one of the things that I really scratched my head on during the Trump administration was attorney general Barr. There was a lot of M & A activity going on, and the Department of Justice was conducting antitrust reviews, so to me that didn't make a lot of sense to have a federal investigation or deploy those resources into an activity that's fairly illegal. A lot of money was spent. A lot of time was spent, unfortunately for you guys were on the sidelines when they did it, and had to deal with all that.

David Feuerstein: (17:57)
A lot of delay.

Jennifer Drake: (17:57)
Oh, no deals broke, and we bought them. That's we're happy.

Matt Karnes: (17:59)
Yeah, exactly. Well, that's part of being a good operator is knowing, when to deal.

David Feuerstein: (18:03)
There's a lot of, I guess, asymmetries, so a federal government that's using federal funds to conduct investigations into antitrust issues in state run businesses doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. And major transactions were sort of kept on the sideline for many, many months waiting for the antitrust review to sort of pass by. It is sort of inexplicable, but I think that's one of the smaller inexplicably things of the past administration. So in any event, I don't disagree that federal legalization is some time off, but as I said, there's nothing in this country that I'm aware of right now that has more sort of consensus-

Jennifer Drake: (18:54)
No.

David Feuerstein: (18:55)
... than legalization of cannabis, believe it or not. I believe at the last election was over 60% of eligible voters agreed that cannabis should be legalized for adult use. I assure you that any of our politicians would fall over themselves for that kind of approval. So there are things that don't make sense and are inexplicably in our government, but certainly you would expect that given the population sentiment, there will be movement, eventually, towards federal legalism.

Matt Karnes: (19:26)
And I think there's going to be a smoother ride to the finish. I mean, there was a lot of bumps. It was like being in a bumpy, old jalopy or something, under the old administration. And now it's sort of just smooth. So we don't know when the timing is, but in the meantime, there are restrictions around access to capital, that's a challenge. And there's been a variety of different solutions to that, one of which are the REITs, which has been very important in the sector over the last few years. So Rob, can you talk about what the advantages are to the operator and sort of what the advantages are to the investor?

Rob Sechrist: (20:07)
Sure. So we're a mortgage REIT, which is different than a traditional REIT, we don't own properties. We just get the tax advantage of being a REIT, which we've passed along to our investors, which is a 20% tax savings on the ordinary income that we generate. In addition to that, the other super significant advantages is that the state tax is only paid in the state that you're domiciled. So our largest portion of our investor base is in no tax states, such as Texas and Florida and other various states like that.

Rob Sechrist: (20:36)
But in regards to the capital markets and things out there, I will share kind of off the record that the institutional investors are ready and willing, and we'll be making an announcement next week that the largest investment banks and community banks, insurance companies, pension funds are active and ready to come in. So there is a path through, we have a different structure, since we're non plant touching, as opposed to some of my peers here. So we're specifically only lend to the owners of the property and allow for cannabis use, so we have a little bit of delineation there.

Rob Sechrist: (21:05)
But in that quest for investors, since 2016, almost five and a half years, we've been dedicated to this space. We've had to go through every single approach that there is. And there was no short path, easy path. There was no broker dealer. It was myself and my team raising every single one of those dollars ourselves. We started with retail investors, and now we're finally to the institutional investors.

Matt Karnes: (21:27)
Great. So interstate commerce, we talked briefly about that. That's a very important issue now, a lot of people are talking about it. Because, for those that aren't aware, each state has to operate in a closed economy within cannabis, because it's a state by state, it's illegal federally. So the question becomes, are you able to... it's obviously a lot more efficient if you're cultivating in just one state or however many states, rather than in every single state, but the ability to cross state lines, that's weighing a lot on people's minds. What is your take on that, Jen, on how important it is in the near term or medium term as you think about investing?

Jennifer Drake: (22:10)
So I think it's one of the many uncertainties in the space is when we finally get mainstreaming, when we finally get legalization, what is that going to look like? Is it going to look like full federal legalization? You can cross state lines, and PS, if you cross state lines, you can pretty much cross international lines. So that's another thing that is a wrinkle that, even if people decide, oh, I have no problem having all the cannabis in the US grown in California and then shipped around the country, does that mean they want cannabis coming up from Mexico and from Columbia and in from Canada? That's probably not exactly what lawmakers want. So there's a lot of uncertainty around that.

Jennifer Drake: (22:56)
And that's why I think a lot of people have a view that, at least in the interim, something called the STATES Act is the most likely more mainstreaming approach to cannabis. And that basically says, federal government's going to take their hands off, like the Rohrabacher amendment, but like forever, and the states can do whatever they want. But in that environment, it is unlikely that THC will be able to cross state lines. So we'll be in the similar situation that we are today. But who knows, it's a lot of uncertainty. There is a lot of talk about, well, maybe states can make interstate, pacts, and Indiana and Ohio can make a decision to trade amongst themselves. It's a little bit of an uncharted territory, if we were to do something like that, but it is less of a kind of big bang than just to allow interstate commerce.

Rob Sechrist: (23:50)
And if I could just add to that, Cory Gardner is a friend of ours. He was a co-sponsor with Elizabeth Warren of the STATES Act. And at the time that he was a Senator, he had the 60 votes necessary to get it through, so those votes are there. Mitch McConnell wouldn't bring it to the floor. They were afraid because Elizabeth Warren was a presidential candidate that the other presidential candidates would try to move the bill a little bit farther and farther saying, "STATES Act is not enough. We need to decriminalize." The next one would say, "Well, there needs to be reparations." And so they were afraid they'd lose the vote. So what that tells us is that there are enough Republicans. I believe there are 17 had been identified that are willing to do it, but neither side is willing to get the other side the win.

Rob Sechrist: (24:29)
And the political machinations that are happening behind the scenes have nothing to do with what the laws are. And so it's just such a broken system. And unless they get it through budget reconciliation, I just don't see it happening in the very near term. And I think the political capital right now is in decriminalization, not legalization. And so that's where I think that they'll focus and that could be national.

Emily Paxhia: (24:51)
I also think that implementation of regulation changes around cannabis takes years. So even if we got federal legalization-

Rob Sechrist: (24:58)
True.

Emily Paxhia: (24:58)
... even if they were to open up interstate commerce, the implementation of a framework around that, I mean, if it takes two years for California to turn on, I mean, we're in New York, we're watching what is going on here and the timelines there, on a federal level, I can't even imagine. And just even thinking through all of the ways that this starts and stops, like if you look at after alcohol prohibition, we still have blue laws in states, we still have states that are not as open to importing from California, for example, or you have to pay a fee or a tariff to do so. So there are different challenges around this that I think we...

Emily Paxhia: (25:33)
So even if it did happen, where they said, "Yes, we have federal legalization and there can be interstate commerce." I think there are many barriers to the full implementation of that. So I think we have years until we see this laying out. I mean, even the states that are very opposed to having legal cannabis, I could see them saying you cannot pass through our state with legal cannabis to get from the West to the East Coast.

Emily Paxhia: (25:56)
And I think Jen's point, too, about once you think about the global infrastructure of what a global cannabis market looks like, then you start to see Columbia has massive cultivation going on in greenhouses down there, and by the way, with EU GMP certification. And so if you can produce cannabis in Columbia at that level, at that certification, and be importing that into Europe for a medical distribution chain, I mean, things start to get very interesting, when you think about the commoditization of the raw material, which is really a plant. That's many years away, but it's just, once you start to go down that path, you really have to go the whole way down that path.

Matt Karnes: (26:38)
One thing, some companies now are establishing an exchange, developing, or conceptually anyway, futures contracts around cannabis. But if you have a futures contract, if you trade on that in the same mechanism than any other futures, you have to be able to take delivery of the product. So with interstate commerce not being permissible, I don't know how that's going to work out, but that's another discussion. But anyway, David, what's your take on what's going on with interstate commerce?

David Feuerstein: (27:08)
Well, I mean, I think we've talked about it, but for this room, I think the takeaway should be that the opportunity exists now. Because of regulatory hurdles, because of the fragmentation, because of limitation of state's licenses, there's opportunities abound in terms of investing.

David Feuerstein: (27:28)
I think Jen touched on Massachusetts. Massachusetts is super attractive state, in particular, because there are limitations on canopy. No matter how wealthy you are, no matter how big you are, you can only grow so much cannabis in the state of Massachusetts, which means that there's an absolute supply and demand, in favor of demand right now. So prices are very high, which is why Jen's company's able to get return on her investment in 18 months.

Jennifer Drake: (27:53)
Yeah. I mean, and it's the same across, basically, everywhere east of the Mississippi, you had the same limitation on canopy, so it's New York, well, it will be New York, we know, it's New Jersey, it's Massachusetts, it's Pennsylvania, Illinois has a higher cap, but all of the Eastern US is implementing a similar license structure, where there are these caps. And that's why, when we were talking earlier about that incredibly robust margin structure, there are these regulatory limitations that allow for that robust margin structure, and keep it really, really pervasive for a long period of time.

Jennifer Drake: (28:37)
I mean, people have been asking me for over three years when Massachusetts going to be less good on a wholesale basis. I'm like a long time from now, and it's five years ahead of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So it's a persistent opportunity that's structural, and if you can get in it, it's the hardest business I've ever seen. It's an incredibly challenging business to really operate in, but if you can operate well, you have an incredible structural advantage. And I personally would like federal legalization to be as far as away as possible, because I want the biggest portfolio possible, the biggest wholesale business, the best brands, and the biggest retail footprint ahead of that.

David Feuerstein: (29:19)
And I just think one of the countervailing points that you haven't heard yet about federal legalization is that you have state constituents who are going to be super opposed to interstate commerce, save for maybe the state of California and the state of Arizona. Every state on the East Coast, every governor, every delegate, every senator is going to say, "We don't want interstate, because we have tons of tax revenue that's coming in from our state operators. We want to keep cultivation facilities and dispensaries-

Jennifer Drake: (29:50)
Jobs.

David Feuerstein: (29:51)
... and jobs and tax money coming in. What are we going to do?" The state of Colorado, it was a startling statistic about the amount of tax revenue they've generated and how that goes to schools. So imagine if all of a sudden that revenue base is taken away, because jobs are lost or tax dollars are not there anymore. So I think once they even get, sort of again, to Emily's point, once they get to the point of actually legalizing it, from a legislative point, the regulation process and enacting regulations are going to abound and it's going to be very difficult to get consensus quickly. So I think you're going to find every governor coming to Washington DC to lobby against interstate commerce.

Jennifer Drake: (30:28)
But again, good for the incumbents.

Matt Karnes: (30:30)
Yeah. Well, it's clear the smokes out of the bomb at this point, in terms of federal legalization, it's going to happen. But there are still a lot of challenges around trading and capital markets and stuff, so, Emily, your Poseidon, you have some publics in your portfolio, what are the challenges that you are faced with in terms of, if you want to exit or trade?

Emily Paxhia: (30:58)
Well, yeah, because the markets are... there's low liquidity in these names and they're very thinly traded. And so when you're affirmed, that's really kind of one of the institutions trading in it, you can definitely impact the market. And, for example, we saw, was it Credit Suisse that said, "No more trading." Yeah. And so we know there were a number of actual big funds that were in the space, they weren't big for their funds, but for the space, it was hundreds of millions of dollars. And so there was some force selling through April. And you could just see across the entire sector, what that did to the sector in terms of the volume and also just the pricing, so that was really difficult.

Emily Paxhia: (31:41)
There's also just the challenges around, where you can hold the stock, who you have as your brokerage firms that are actually working in this space, and then you have the Canadian and US piece to it. So even if you go public and you have public stock, the perception of liquidity that you're now free and you're trading is just not there. There's a lot of steps you have to take to navigate through it. And we're generally long the names that we're in. We do some shorting in our first fund, but it's very specific and very short shorting, but we're generally long the sector. We're long the names that we select for the portfolio. So we're okay with the buy and hold, and we're generally really just trying to be mindful of our entry points and timing the market right.

Emily Paxhia: (32:25)
But for us, it's not been as much about getting in and getting out. It's just continuing to build positions, especially as we've watched this market draw down, since I think it was like February 20th was when we talked ticked at the last time. But it's just not the same as being on the listed exchanges, and until we have some... From what we understand, it's not necessary to get the banking reform in place, it's just that the exchanges would like to see that before they potentially endeavor into the space for the plant touching companies.

Rob Sechrist: (32:57)
And if I could add to that, it's not just the custodian of the shares, it's the custodian of the securities we help.

Emily Paxhia: (33:03)
That's right.

Rob Sechrist: (33:04)
So we've had those challenges as well with some of the things we're working on. But something that most people don't know is that there's 684 banks that are currently listed on FinCEN's website that are actively accepting cannabis depositors, tier one banking. And so there's an enormous amount of banking already out there, state banks and credit unions. We're in an FDIC insured bank, and we're tracking all those banks and private lenders. And of those banks, there's dozens and dozens of them that are already lending direct. So it's much more robust than people realize and think. The challenges that we're talking about are challenges that are kind of ancillary challenges, but they have to be thought all the way through.

Rob Sechrist: (33:42)
And it's one of the challenges of this industry, you're like, "Okay, I've got my capital source, I've got my deal source, I've got my due diligence source," and you go to close, you realize the custody escrow company can't hold anything to do with cannabis related whatsoever, and the title company won't deal with it, and the [inaudible 00:33:58] insurance won't deal with it, and all the way down the line, the property insurance. And you've got to disclose that, you've got to get it disclosed in writing, because if you ever go to make a claim, they're going to deny that claim.

Matt Karnes: (34:09)
Sure.

Rob Sechrist: (34:09)
And so getting an insurance company, a major insurance company, or somebody to put that in writing is a major challenge. So you have to know how to work those things and have those relationships. And so even once you get past the biggest challenges that you thought were in place, these little challenges, you don't have any leverage with these third parties. And so these really become the bigger obstacles that we're all having to face here at different value points in the product space.

David Feuerstein: (34:34)
There's also-

Matt Karnes: (34:34)
So... oh, go ahead.

David Feuerstein: (34:36)
... issues from the federal illegality is, how do you secure against your debt, if you're issuing debt? And what do you do? There's no bankruptcy protection. A number of companies have once tried to file for bankruptcy, they've been kicked out of bankruptcy court. So what are you doing if you're going to lend money, how are you going to be able to seize your collateral? How are you going to be able to ensure that there's no leakage of collateral? Those are things-

Jennifer Drake: (34:57)
Yeah. I would say, though, that you're well compensated for that. I mean-

David Feuerstein: (35:01)
No, of course.

Jennifer Drake: (35:02)
... cannabis spreads are 500 basis points over similar comparable credit companies-

David Feuerstein: (35:06)
I agree. I'm just saying from a legal [crosstalk 00:35:08]-

Jennifer Drake: (35:08)
... and like billions of dollars have been raised in the cannabis credit markets. So, I mean, definitely, yes, what you're saying is true, although UCC, but I will say that people find the potential returns sufficiently attractive that billions of dollars of cannabis credit has been raised.

Emily Paxhia: (35:24)
I agree.

Matt Karnes: (35:25)
So we're almost out of time, but one thing I want to touch on, because of the name of the panel is the future of cannabis.

Jennifer Drake: (35:30)
Sorry.

Matt Karnes: (35:32)
So when I rolled up my sleeves nearly eight years ago, and I thought about the industry, I thought there were going to be three lanes. There's the rec market, there's health and wellness, and then there's pharmaceutical. And the rec market, or the rec lane is widening now, as we have more states. Well, same with the health and wellness, as we have more CBD products and so forth. I think medical will be redefined and recalibrated, as big pharma comes in and there's more research that's done. And that's a whole nother panel and discussion about true medical marijuana. But what are your each of your thoughts on how the industry is going to look in say 10 years, 10 and 15 years? I'll start with you Jen.

Jennifer Drake: (36:18)
I think that you'll find that a lot of people who use cannabis for "recreational" purposes are actually using it for wellness purposes. There's a whole plant wellness movement across the country right now, and what you'll see is as "recreational" adult use sales become legal in more states, you will see people, essentially, almost using cannabis, more like a nutraceutical. There are some people who will use it for it's... we call it the intersection of wellness and wonder, you'll see some people who are using it for its wonder properties, but a huge portion of the people who are using it, like my mom uses it for arthritis relief, because she has really bad arthritis, so she uses topicals. She has a bad back, and instead of taking opioids, she will use cannabis instead.

Jennifer Drake: (37:13)
So she substitutes it for some of the more OTC type wellness products that she would otherwise use. I think you'll see that expand materially. I think you'll see people substituting alcohol for cannabis. I talked to someone last week, we just bought a cannabis sparkling seltzer, that is basically like a LaCroix, but cannabis infused, and literally, I don't know this person from Adam, I met her for the first time over the phone. She told me she drives across the border to get our product, LEVIA, a 100 cans at a time, and then drives-

Emily Paxhia: (37:49)
Wow.

Jennifer Drake: (37:49)
... back across to New York, a 100 cans at a time. Literally, I had no idea, she was just like, "Oh yeah, great buy. I have two Levia's as a night now, instead of two glasses of wine, and my husband does too." So you'll see substitution, you'll see an expansion of OTC and nutraceutical wellness. And then I think you will see true pharmaceutical grade cannabis, like GW pharma's [dialects 00:38:18]. You'll see more and more of that come, because you'll have more research. But want [crosstalk 00:38:24]-

David Feuerstein: (38:23)
I would just add that, I think I agree with all of Jen's points, most of them, at least. I think the one point that I would add is that you're going to find that there's going to be significant research in what they call them, the minor cannabinoids. And they're going to find uses for those minor cannabinoids in all sorts of things. The human system has a cannabinoid system already long before cannabis has been talked about as a legal drug. And I think that people are going to figure out ways to treat multiple diseases and symptoms with cannabis. And so I look for the medical space to really explode in 10 or 20 years.

Rob Sechrist: (39:04)
Well, I would agree with all the things that they're saying, but from a debt perspective, we've already analyzed this space as being a $50 billion market size for the real estate sector, and only two and a half billion has been put out. So we see that the rates and the terms will be more mature and stabilized and similar to other types of debt markets out there. And we've got to work through and make sure that we are dealing with that and addressing that. But we believe that this specialty use lending market is similar to cold storage data centers and labs, and it will always help perform other types of debt/credit funds for real estate out there.

Rob Sechrist: (39:40)
So we're excited about it. We think it's here to stay in. And like you said earlier, I think 48 billion projected by 2025, so it's a massive... But that's from the consumer side, we're talking about the asset side. So we're a little bit different lane, but we have a different approach, but we're all in the same general business as well.

Matt Karnes: (39:58)
Emily final word.

Emily Paxhia: (39:59)
Yeah. I think that I'm really interested in watching how gen Z is really the first cannabis native generation, where they're entering the workforce. Their share of wallet is being dedicated to cannabis as opposed to alcohol. And there was just something released about, for the first time ever, alcohol use is down in college students, cannabis use is up. So I think where we're going next is that this is being integrated into people's lives differently. It doesn't have to be siloed or kind of off to the side. It can be a part of everyday life. And I think what is coming from that is the shifting from the form factors from just smoking it in a bowl or a bong to being able to drink it or being able to eat it, and having these other more socially acceptable and socially normalized ways of consuming cannabis.

Emily Paxhia: (40:41)
So I think that that's just really interesting, because right now, it's the Pareto principle, where the 20% of the population, they're spending 80% into our market, and it's all the flower, high potency products. But I think once we get to the outskirts of that, where we're hitting into those other form factors, and we're hitting more with women, we're hitting more with seniors, we're hitting more with the gen Z, that's really driving this, I think we're going to see a real spreading out of this market and actual depth to the growth of it. Not just from turning on new markets, but we'll see real depth in our consumer bases. So I'm really excited about where we're going next.

Matt Karnes: (41:13)
Awesome. Well, thank you everybody. There's certainly a lot to talk about in this space. We really didn't hit on every topic, but thank you all for participating here.

David Feuerstein: (41:22)
Thanks.

Titans of Data: Leveraging Alternative Data to Enhance the Investment Process | #SALTNY

Titans of Data: Leveraging Alternative Data to Enhance the Investment Process with Carrie Lazorchak, Chief Revenue Officer, Similarweb. Rodney Pedersen, Chief Revenue Officer, Visible Alpha. Matt Ober, Managing Director & Chief Data Scientist, Third Point.

Moderated by Tim Harrington, President, BattleFin.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Headshot - Lazorchak, Carrie - Cropped.jpeg

Carrie Lazorchak

Chief Revenue Officer

Similarweb

Headshot - Pedersen, Rodney - Cropped.jpeg

Rodney Pedersen

Chief Revenue Officer

Visible Alpha

 
Headshot - Ober, Matt - Cropped.jpeg

Matt Ober

Managing Director & Chief Data Scientist

Third Point

MODERATOR

Tim Harrington.png

Tim Harrington

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

BattleFin

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Tim Harrington: (00:06)
Thank you, Rachel and thank you to the SALT team. It's nice to actually be back in person and interacting with people, not having to worry about whether you're on viewed, whether you you've got pants on. So this is live we're all back in person. We have an exciting topic. It's alternative data. I'm Tim Harrington, CEO of BattleFin. Our mission has always been to help source evaluate test and find datasets for the financial and corporate community. We're really excited. SkyBridge is a new investor in BattleFin. So really excited to be working with Anthony, John, Joe, the whole team, and really excited to be sharing alternative data with the audience. So why don't we get started? We'll do a couple of quick intros, try to make it as informative as possible. So Carrie, tell us a little about yourself and SimilarWeb.

Carrie Lazorchak: (01:03)
Okay, great. First of all, I'm very excited to be here. As Tim said, it's nice to be able to interact with people again, I didn't realize how exhausting it is though, I will say, forgot about that. But just as by way of introduction, my name is Carrie Lazorchak and I'm the chief revenue officer of a company called SimilarWeb. First of all, to our clients in the audience, I want to say thank you very much for your business. And for those of you that aren't familiar with SimilarWeb, our mission is pretty simple. We want to help companies win in their market. And the way that we do that is we measure the digital world. We look at the trends across both consumer trends and business trends, across millions of digital properties globally. And we provide that insight and information back to our customers through a very easy to use platform and visualization.

Carrie Lazorchak: (01:56)
Now, Tim was very clear that the big thing people want to know is how and where and what kind of data, et cetera, which obviously some of that's the secret sauce, but I'll try to break it down into a little bit of the art and a little bit of the science. The sciences is, we have a lot of data. We're processing about 10 billion digital signals a day, about two terabytes of data daily that we analyzed. But the art of it is really in how we blend all of the data sources. And those sources are a combination of direct analytics data and anonymize traffic data, partnerships that we have in public data. And we combine that all together with machine learning and unique algorithms, and then deliver that to our clients. Like I said, through a very easy to use visualization platform. And I think that's a key thing we'll talk a little bit about today.

Carrie Lazorchak: (02:49)
There's a lot of data out there. I think the key for this audience is to really understand how to consume that data and how to use that data towards all of your objectives. So really excited to be here and look forward to being part of this panel.

Tim Harrington: (03:02)
Great. And SimilarWeb went public recently, so congratulations.

Carrie Lazorchak: (03:05)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.

Tim Harrington: (03:07)
I've been following you guys for years. I know you've had some of the best Netflix calls I've ever seen [crosstalk 00:03:1] growth. For those of you that follow Netflix, huge subscriber growth story started to fade. You guys called it then international took off, called it again. So kudos on that. Really awesome data set for you guys and the audience to check out. Rodney, tell us a little bit about Visible Alpha.

Rodney Pedersen: (03:35)
Yeah. Thank you, Tim. So Rodney Pedersen, chief revenue officer with Visible Alpha. Visible Alpha came to the market about five years ago to address a pretty significant gap that we saw being consensus estimates, or forecast data for publicly traded companies. All of you have seen this play out, if you've ever read the wall street journal. Company expectations were always made available at a high level, so sales or EPS and never at a granular level, but the investment debate and the investment thesis is always about more granular issues with companies and the sell side analysts that contributed to those revenue and earnings forecasts have always modeled companies at a greater degree of depth. It was just never information that was made available at scale.

Rodney Pedersen: (04:22)
So Visible Alpha came to the market to expose that content and bring value to that content in ways that hadn't been done before. So we source data from full working Excel models, from the sell side. We extract all of the data from those models and align it into a common structure for a publicly traded company. We to process a lot of data, I think on a trailing three month basis, we process about 90,000 models, from the south side it's about 6,000 contributing sell side analysts and ultimately give the buy-side the most comprehensive picture into the market forecasts for any key issue on a company.

Tim Harrington: (04:59)
Great. And I've read a bunch of your work. I think you had an airline piece out recently. I had no idea how many KPIs are actually in the airline industry, key performance indicators. But, if you follow the airlines, check out that report, pretty awesome. And a man who needs no introduction, but we'll let you give one ,Matt over to you.

Matt Ober: (05:20)
Thank you. I'm Matt Ober, I'm the chief data scientist at Third Point. We're about a $20 billion asset manager investing across equity, structured credit and venture investments. And our team looks to take data and technology to provide insights into the different investments we make.

Tim Harrington: (05:39)
Great. And Matt and I actually met years and years ago when he was at WorldQuant, was one of the first people to attend some of the battlefield events in Miami. So it's great to be back on stage with you after whatever, five or seven years. But let's dig right in. I think the space has seen a tremendous amount of growth, email receipt data, geolocation, satellite imagery. Rodney, from your perspective, what's been the real growth driver, what have you guys been seeing from that space?

Rodney Pedersen: (06:11)
I think it starts with a fact which is that the buy-side has to have a differentiated view to outperform and they have to do that on a sustained basis. If anybody sat in on the hedge fund comeback panel yesterday with Steve Cohen and Dmitry Balyasny, that was a key theme that came out of it. And I think that the expansion of data that's been made available in the marketplace over the last 10 years, which Visible Alpha certainly been a part of, has made it possible for the investment manager to get much more specific and much more granular and how they come up with an investment thesis, how they challenged the thesis and ultimately how they monitor that thesis in real time. And I think those that have done the best job at embracing the state of that's come to market have really put themselves in a position to use data in a way that will allow them to outperform. It's been fun to be a part of.

Tim Harrington: (07:07)
And Matt does that jive, are you guys hearing a lot of pull from analysts? Are you guys seeing that from the analyst perspective of I need more data, I need more answers or how does it play out from a buy-side perspective?

Matt Ober: (07:20)
Yeah, I think from our standpoint, all of this data just allows us to go deeper into our research on individual companies. And I think we're able to extract more insights. We have a really strong team. And I think at this point it's becoming part of the playbook that you have to take advantage of working with these great companies and figuring out how to leverage that across all the different investments we make, whether it's earlier in the private stage before they go public or further along. And I think just being able to distill insights from these large data sets is really the difficult part of the investment process. But it's where we find the true value.

Tim Harrington: (07:59)
And Carrie, we had talked a little bit about this. Do you guys feel a lot of pull for this real-time data? Especially given the COVID environment where we're coming out of, is there a really a pull from the buy-side and corporates to now, now, now?

Carrie Lazorchak: (08:14)
Yeah. I think to answer that direct question, the answer is, yes. It's definitely one of the main value propositions of our solution today and whether you want to understand right now at this moment, what are the major keywords that consumers are looking forward to understand where they're going, or you want to observe and understand what are the major purchase decisions that people are making on Amazon marketplace right now, at this minute, we definitely see that as a trend.

Carrie Lazorchak: (08:43)
I'm curious for this audience maybe by a show of hands, how many of you use alternative data today? Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. So my first, I think vis-a-vis back when we started talking about this whole panel on alternative data is, to me alternative data is a very weird name for this space, because I think as these guys just said, it's more necessity data and really what it comes down to now, it's like, how do you use that data? How do you consume all this real-time information? But definitely the acceleration of digital transformation is making the need for understanding of what's happening right now at this moment more important.

Tim Harrington: (09:24)
Yeah. And maybe to Rodney, as a recovering portfolio manager, you mentioned Steve, like I worked at SAC and I remember earning season being one of the most intense things, because you had your models, you were waiting for things to come out, you were kind of you're right or wrong in that instance. And I always thought about consensus was our bogey, so if our model is a lot higher then we'd figure out what the delta is, put a multiple on it and position size it. Trying to think about how to navigate through COVID, I can't even imagine the disparity of analysts. Like what, what did you guys see from the Visible Alpha side? You know, aggregating all of these data sets, these different estimates and where are we now?

Rodney Pedersen: (10:19)
Yeah. It's a great question. It's been really interesting to watch the data as we've gone through COVID. And with forecast data, you're respective of the issue that you're looking at. What you usually see is well ahead of the reporting period, estimates are relatively wide. And then as you approach the reporting period and companies release more information spreads narrow, and there's less uncertainty in the marketplace. But as you look across sectors 18 to 20 months into this environment, there's a lot of uncertainty that we see in forecast data. You mentioned airlines earlier. We were actually looking at airlines travel and leisure companies in the US a couple of weeks ago. And we were comparing dispersion and estimates today, versus what the dispersion estimates look like pre COVID. And today estimates are actually three and a half times wider. There's three and a half times more dispersion and estimates in September of 2021 than there was for a similar forecast horizon pre COVID. So I'm not telling anybody, probably something that you don't intuitively know, which is we're in a more uncertain world, but understanding the magnitude of that uncertainty has been an interesting.

Tim Harrington: (11:29)
And Matt, does that help your analyst, hurt your analysts? What do you guys feel when you see this dispersion of analyst estimates?

Matt Ober: (11:38)
I think volatility presents opportunity. And when there's unknowns, it allows us to have a differentiated view and having all of this information allows our team to do a deeper dive, better understand the company, the KPIs, and really understand what is it that we're seeing in real time? And I think that's become a big trend. Especially during COVID was all the digital transformation we're seeing across all companies and every sector, having information at our fingertips, understanding what's happening when we're all at home, it's beyond important.

Tim Harrington: (12:13)
And Carrie following up on that disparity opportunity. Do you guys tend to get more calls or more interest when things are all over the place, and then you can add value a lot more in those situations? Or what do you think on the disparity like this happening? Does that play well for you guys?

Carrie Lazorchak: (12:34)
I'd say the message we hear is twofold. Both from the companies and from this audience, historical data is not as relevant anymore. So a lot of times people are just studying it to the side and seeing whatever used to be the trend, just assume it's not going to be the trend and start with fresh new data. So we're seeing a lot of people come to us, come to the platform, not spend as much time on the historical data, but really trying to understand what are the more recent trends and then try quarterly those trends to how that may look in the future. So we're definitely seeing that both from companies trying to build strategies and from this audience who are really trying to track performance and understand what's happening.

Tim Harrington: (13:18)
Great. And on some of the calls prior to this, we discussed a couple names just because it's obviously a financial community here. The one that we wanted to take a look at first was Peloton, just giving, so much going on in that name. Rodney, set the stage for us, give us the view on Peloton and what's happening here.

Rodney Pedersen: (13:40)
Yeah. Well, just to the conversation earlier, I think the first question is about revenue, but it's really about much more granular issues. And so we see analysts grappling with a few different issues with Peloton. One is new unit deliveries, which is something that we track invisible office. So how many people are going to buy bikes and treadmills that didn't already purchase them. And there's actually a pretty wide dispersion of estimates for the coming quarters when you look at that. And I think this quarter will be the first quarter where we see results on the lower cost products that Peloton has put out in the marketplace. So pretty big spread in estimates there, a lot of uncertainty. And another key question that we see in the models is churn in their subscription business. So as people contemplate going back to gyms and maybe working out less at home and more at the gym, there's a decent amount of uncertainty on how much churn Peloton is going to see in the quarters to come on their subscription model.

Tim Harrington: (14:37)
And Matt, how do you guys key in on that? Is that, I don't even know if Peloton is a name that you guys look at fairly frequently, but is it also just trying to pick up trends within that space or will you dive right down into the single stock name?

Matt Ober: (14:54)
Yeah, I think for us, we think about even in the fitness industry in general. With Peloton being that first mover in the digital transformation, how are they getting their bikes? What does that supply chain look like? How does the data at the ports look? And then really, how does that look for all the gyms across the country? Not only the large chains, but some of the boutiques. So we think about that as a way to gauge how people are thinking about COVID. And it has a larger impact on just macro trends. So I think we see even individual companies as ways to look at a broader sectors that may not be specifically related, but it helps us just map out our thought process.

Tim Harrington: (15:36)
Great. And Carrie, over to you. What's the data going to tell us here?

Carrie Lazorchak: (15:41)
Well, first of all, I find this a very biased area because I'm a huge Peloton user. So I don't know about you, but when you're tracking investments for the companies you like, you want to root for them. So I'm rooting for Peloton, for sure. I think the one area of our data that's interesting right now is we can see, one of the things that they've been trying to do is really expand the market share, expand the audience of people that can have access to their services and their products. And they introduced this, buy now, pay later model, which is something that's new. It's definitely a new set of data that you have to look at because now you're not getting that immediate view of exactly the people that have purchased the equipment, but the people that are purchasing the equipment and being able to track that, I think that's going to be an interesting insight that we see, we do see positive trends around that as a new consumer opportunity in the new expansion of their market capabilities

Tim Harrington: (16:38)
Yeah. I think this is also why alternative data is so important because you're able to look at what SimilarWeb's saying, you're able to look at how maybe the brand is trending. You're able to see anything from geolocation, are people returning back to those gyms, are they doing different things? Just as we've talked about earlier, being able to combine some of these data sets and get a full picture and leverage the Visible Alpha detail is just so important going forward.

Rodney Pedersen: (17:10)
Yeah. And Tim, I think that also highlights a significant shift from where we were 10 to 15 years ago with data just in the intelligence that you can get intro period as to what's happening with the business. And I don't think that's just limited to people that are trading in the shorter term. Anybody that's looking for insight into a business, you can get a lot of really interesting signals of what's happening in real time. We actually see with our models data, 40% of all the models that we process come from the south side outside of earnings. So if you think about, we process 90,000 models on a trailing three months basis, 40% of every data point that we process is not around earnings. That's a lot of information flow that's happening in real time. Yeah.

Tim Harrington: (17:55)
And let's turn to Zoom. This is obviously one that everyone has probably lived through the past 18 months. We've seen probably one of the greatest success stories of a right time, right place type of company. Rodney was this from zero to a hundred? And set the stage for us with zoom. And then let's talk through it from a data perspective.

Rodney Pedersen: (18:21)
Yeah. The debate that we see in the models on Zoom is your classic software debate, which is what will their new client acquisition look like going forward? How many new customers can they attract that didn't already come onto the Zoom platform? The second question, which is probably more significant for the business, which is how can they expand revenue from their existing client base with some of the new products that they have coming to market? And just like I talked about with Peloton, but any key issue per subscription businesses churn. And so as people are going back to work back to the office, will companies start to pair back on their Zoom subscriptions and Zoom accounts, just like with Peloton? There's a wide dispersion of views on those topics. And actually with the customer count numbers, Zoom had a long history of beating visible office consensus for net new customer additions until last quarter, it was the first time that they had missed. So I think there's a lot of uncertainty that's been introduced there and it'd be fascinating to watch it play out.

Tim Harrington: (19:24)
Yeah. And it seems this highlights some of your data. It seems like the story is changing as well, so you've got what people think about the traditional Zoom subscription. Now they start layering on the telephone offering, which is two or three times the ARPU. So, having the ability to drill down and say, okay, year over year comps are getting tougher and tougher. And I think we talked about it and it wasn't till like...

Rodney Pedersen: (19:54)
Really difficult comps for what they achieved last year. For sure.

Tim Harrington: (19:57)
Yeah. Maybe it's not next year, even the 2023 or wherever it is. How are you going to be able to figure out what the next step is and what's working? What's not? And I can remember as an investor, you never wanted to see decelerating comps at a tech company. So that was always a warning, but now you've got this whole telephone side, high margin, probably lower customer acquisition costs. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Matt, any perspectives on Zoom?

Matt Ober: (20:29)
I think for us, Zoom is a great way to gauge the work from home and the hybrid workforce. And are we going back into the office? Rather than focus on it just as a single company itself, it really gives us a sense of what's going to happen with business travel. Are coming back into the office? are we all moving to this work from home hybrid? So is that the new standard? I think that's been one of the big things on our mind and what a lot of people are watching Zoom for outside of just how Zoom is doing on its own. And I think with these tools that we have now, whether it's Visible Alpha or SimilarWeb like, we have so many more tools at our disposal that it makes us more efficient to be able to look at that quickly and get a good sense of where we're moving.

Tim Harrington: (21:14)
Got you. And Carrie, what's the data telling us?

Carrie Lazorchak: (21:17)
Well, first I think it's a really interesting space to watch right now for two reasons. One, I think one thing that we see with alternative data of Austin, you can watch and industry and you use what you see happening in one industry to correlate to another industry. So that's one thing. Specifically as it relates to Zoom, I think it's interesting the comment you made about the phone and they've been very clear about a strategy to really go after unified communication, broaden the range for which they're providing services to companies. In some way, I think the delays and they get back to the office are going to work to their advantage. It's going to give them more time to condition what is an audience that they have a lot of attention with right now, on the opportunities to continue to use Zoom and to use some of Zoom's new offerings.

Carrie Lazorchak: (22:05)
I know they did an acquisition recently of Five9, which is interesting to watch and see what happens there. So I'd say it's a great space to watch. I think there's other correlating industries to some of the points that were made here, that you can also look at what's happening in those trends, whether it's business travel and some of those things and correlate the speed and rate at which we think people will start to come back to the office and whether that's going to have more impact presumes specifically. But right now I think they have a really good opportunity, because the more people are home and the more people get used to being at on, I think the more businesses are going to accommodate a hybrid structure going forward and that's going to work to their advantage.

Tim Harrington: (22:47)
Yeah. It's interesting. You don't really think about, you're probably not getting rid of your Zoom account. You're always going to have it. It's just a new way of life. But at the same time as with everything it's earnings expectations, are they going to continue to grow, things like that. And now I guess one of the things, we constantly get pinged from different buy-side clients on the bigger themes. So, whereas alternative data can be great very much on a company by company basis. I think it's also incredibly important right now, when you think about some of the larger investment themes, whether its inflation, Matt touched on the work from home trends, unemployment with some of the things happening there. I guess Rodney, as you look to 2022 and see across the different analysts out there, what are some of those themes that you guys are keying in on for next year?

Rodney Pedersen: (23:44)
Yeah. We actually put out a blog post a couple of weeks ago on inflation on our website. And did a little bit of what Matt was talking about, which is looking at company data as an indicator for something broader. And so we looked for companies in our data set that have significant exposure to the lumber industry, which lumber has been a key talking point in the pricing debate and then companies with exposure to use cars. So Weyerhaeuser is one of the larger lumber producers in the world. All the analysts that model that company forecast lumber prices well into the future. Analysts correctly predicted that lumber crisis would peak in Q2 and begin to taper off. But what was interesting to observe is that analysts are actually forecasting by the end of 2022 for lumber prices to remain 80% above pre pandemic levels. And it doesn't feel so transitory and those expectations may play out to be correct.

Rodney Pedersen: (24:47)
They may not play out to be correct, but as all of you work to formulate your own views on inflation, how it impacts your businesses, your investments, there's some interesting signals that you can look for in a company oriented data. Another thing that we looked at was Carvana, which is one of the larger providers or larger sellers of used cars. In the inflation readings that came out this morning, there was a slight deceleration in relation and used car prices had come down. What's interesting in those models is the consensus for used car pricing. Next quarter is 11%. But if you look under the hood, the spread is negative 2%, all the way up to 20% growth year over year on used car prices. Consensus is probably a bad descriptor for that. It's really more of a range of estimates. Into the point that we've been talking about in this panel, I think it highlights uncertainty. And to what Matt said, where there's uncertainty there's opportunity.

Tim Harrington: (25:46)
Yeah. The auto sector in general, to leverage alternative data for trading that in the last 12 to 24 months has been, looking at even the Fords that have had these huge accelerations, stocks performed really well, raised numbers. Next thing you know, you see supply chain issues, you see chip shortages, all of a sudden you're back, nine to 15 to 12. So layering on alternative data, it can be so powerful. Matt, as you looked at 2022, any blind spots? Any things that you're looking for data to help answer these different questions?

Matt Ober: (26:25)
I think it's some of the topics that were just been touching on, it's watching the supply chain, seeing how that's going to be affected around the world. I think the digital transformation we saw accelerated during COVID, I think we think that's going to continue to accelerate and looking at how do we better track that. We have a huge presence at this conference in digital assets, how is digital assets going to affect all of these different sectors, whether it's cryptocurrencies defy the metaverse. So I think for us, it's just being able to look at all these sources and think about it not only in the public markets, but also private companies as we invest earlier.

Tim Harrington: (27:00)
Is there a big disparity in terms of the data sets that you look for, or that you currently work with on the private side versus the public, or they cross over to bowls?

Matt Ober: (27:12)
I think a lot of them cross over to both. I think, SimilarWeb is a great example that they're covering all these companies as they move more and more digitally, and we're able to see them earlier and earlier. So for a company like ours, it helps our analysts know who the potential disruptors are to the public markets. So I would say it's exciting to see a lot of the data providers we've been using for many years, expand the universe that they're covering.

Tim Harrington: (27:37)
Interesting. And what stage do you guys look at, is it an early stage? Is it more series B, C, D? Where do you guys get in-

Matt Ober: (27:47)
Typically series B and further along the line.

Tim Harrington: (27:50)
Okay. And yeah, because I'd imagine the private world is so much different than the public world. Rodney, you guys, I don't think you do any private stuff, correct?

Rodney Pedersen: (27:59)
No, everything that we cover is publicly traded equities. I will say that we work with a relatively small number of private equity firms that look for insight in publicly traded equities for the impact on private markets. But yeah, we cover publicly traded equities.

Tim Harrington: (28:14)
And Carrie, it sounds like from Matt, you've covered both, then is it corporate or is it also kind of the PE and VC firms and...

Carrie Lazorchak: (28:24)
All the above. I think that one of the key reasons people come to SimilarWeb is because you can see consumer trends, you can see broad market trends, consumer behavior trends in real time and it's applicable to all segments. I think Matt said it very well, actually. Yeah.

Tim Harrington: (28:45)
And I know we're running out of time, but kind of speed round closing. We want the audience to walk away smarter, thinking alternative data as the answer. Carrie, if you wanted to have those bullet points, what would they be in the minds of the audience to walk out of here with?

Carrie Lazorchak: (29:06)
I think one of the most interesting things to consider right now is the movement of a lot of legacy brands to D to C. We see very interesting correlations of data when you look at our technographics information and the number of classic indirect companies implementing technologies like Shopify and e-commerce, B2B software, there's a huge trend towards more direct to consumer relationship. We hear it from the customers directly when we talk to them about how they're using our data, because they want to understand what's the demand and what's the trends. And we see a lot of investment there. So I think the B2B software space is a very interesting space to watch. And I think that trend to D to C is going to really create a new dynamic of, and a new area of data that people are going to need to evaluate companies.

Tim Harrington: (29:59)
And one thing, when we started BattleFin, it was very quant driven. So a lot of the quant funds were the first ones to engage cause they could understand the various data sets. And I was just like, give me everything, just throw the data at me. I don't want any insights relative to it. And then we saw an evolution where the fundamental funds and even some of the corporates were coming in and trying to understand it. And I think one thing that you guys seem to have done a good job of was, I don't know, I call it mapping it to tickers, but actually talking about things in terms of companies and public companies. When you guys did that, did you guys start to see more traction? Because it seems like it's a lot easier for us to talk about Peloton and different KPIs than it is to say, okay, here's the algo, here's the machine learning answer. From that perspective, did you guys see a jump in attention and traction once you did that?

Carrie Lazorchak: (31:07)
First of all, I think we're starting to do more of that. I think one area that you'll see from SimilarWeb and I think my solutions head is here. He'll tell you, you'll see more and more information from SimilarWeb that looks at ticker symbol, tickers themselves and aggregates the data for you. But it really depends on the audiences and what you're looking for. But yes, I think we'll do more and more of that. We have more and more demand for that. So you will see that, but obviously because we also play in the private space, there's people that are just coming to look for the trends and understand who's the next big player in any given market. And we provide insights to that as well.

Tim Harrington: (31:47)
Rodney, speed round, minute left, you got, you and Matt, bring us home.

Rodney Pedersen: (31:52)
Yeah. The first thing that I would say is a lot of people think about data and acquiring new data sets as a strategy to come up with better ideas. And that's certainly valid. I would encourage everybody to think about your data strategy also as looking for data that will challenge your views. And I think the more that you can find data that will challenge your own views, ultimately the greater conviction you can have in your ideas and a better probability of differentiating in the long run. That's one really important thing.

Rodney Pedersen: (32:24)
The second thing that I would say is, I think it's very rare that a single data set is going to give you a lot of really great answers. And ultimately where I think people like Matt have created opportunity is by connecting data sets in very meaningful ways. SimilarWeb and Visible Alpha, maybe we should, but we don't really talk. One another we don't create linkages between our data sets. So the managers that invest the time and the energy to create meaningful connections between data sets can uncover insights that others will never see. And I think that's an important part of any data strategy and encourage everybody to think about that.

Tim Harrington: (33:06)
Matt bring us home.

Matt Ober: (33:07)
I just think, in the last 10 years, if we think about where we've come with data and hedge funds, it's become a staple. It's no longer alternative like Carrie said, and working with these strong providers, these are great companies that are out there and we don't have to do everything ourselves makes our team more efficient, allows us to dive deeper into understanding companies and what data can really uncover unknowns. And I think the opportunity is only growing with all of this unique data that's out there.

Tim Harrington: (33:35)
Great. We have 50 of probably the most amazing alternative data providers down on the fourth floor doing one-on-one meetings. So if you have an investment thesis, you want to figure out inflation, you have a company, come down, join us, ask the questions. Thank you guys. Great panels. Look forward to seeing the rest of the conference.

Carrie Lazorchak: (33:54)
Yeah. Thank you.

Positioning Companies for the End Game: Spacs, Direct Listings, M&A & IPOS | #SALTNY

Positioning Companies for the End Game: Spacs, Direct Listings, M&A & IPOS with Michal Katz, Head of Investment & Corporate Banking, Americas, Mizuho Americas. Bob Diamond, Founding Partner & Chief Executive Officer, Atlas Merchant Capital. Betsy Cohen, Chairman, FinTech Masala.

Moderated by Janet Levaux, Editor-in-Chief, ThinkAdvisor.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Headshot - Katz, Michal - Cropped.jpeg

Michal Katz

Managing Director & Head of Investment and Corporate Banking

Mizuho Americas

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Bob Diamond

Founding Partner & Chief Executive Officer

Atlas Merchant Capital

 
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Betsy Cohen

Chairman

FinTech Masala

MODERATOR

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Janet LeVaux

Editor-in-Chief

ThinkAdvisor

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Janet Levaux: (00:08)
Afternoon. I hope everybody had a good lunch with Paris Hilton. While Paris Hilton was taking pictures with the paparazzi, this team you see here was talking about how many SPACs they'd been managing to get going during the pandemic. So it's a different dynamic, and it's just great to be here with this amazing panel today. We'll talk about the focus of the end game, but we'll also be talking about what is going on in raising capital. Also, at the beginning of the game, across the spectrum of the financial landscape and the panel has, of course, a lot to say, based on their experience and also what's going on in the financial markets today.

Janet Levaux: (00:53)
To my immediate left is Michal Katz, head of investment and corporate banking at Mizuho Americas. Then we have Bob Diamond, founding partner and CEO of Merchant Capital. And then, of course, Betsy Cohen, the most experienced member of our team and chair of FinTech masala with many SPACs and other achievements behind her, of course. So to begin the discussion, we'll go ahead and turn to Michal first. What's the macro situation for deal-making in your mind today in capital raising, Michal.

Michal Katz: (01:31)
Thanks, Janet. So maybe starting on the macro side of things, the economic recoveries, and very solid footing. When you take a look at the balance sheet of the consumer and corporations, incredibly healthy consumers have been delivering during the pandemic saving money. We have low delinquency rates and a low household debt service burden. Similarly, for corporations sitting on troves of cash de-levering and we have been looking at the earnings over the last couple of quarters and seeing that 70% of corporations, even north of that have beat earnings. Also, interesting to see that so many corporations now are giving guidance. Again, this demonstrating confidence and where they believe their businesses are going.

Michal Katz: (02:21)
And banks similarly are incredibly well-capitalized, and none of us can forget the fact that this economy is very much supported by fiscal stimulus. And so you take all these factors together and look at where the equity markets are today near all highs, low volatility, really bringing together a certain degree of confidence among management teams, boards, and investors, to pursue deal-making activity. And that's exactly what we've been seeing across capital markets, as well as M&A.

Janet Levaux: (02:56)
Right. Bob, how about a little bit of the macro view on what we're seeing in raising capital today?

Bob Diamond: (03:04)
So when I think about that, I start with what does the financial services space looks like today prior to 2008? And prior to the financial crisis, banks for decades were becoming more global and more universal. And I think it's a stark contrast today and it's creating huge opportunities. So I want to paint the picture a little bit, but the conclusion is that the legacy banks, the larger national banks here in the US, UK, Europe, really across the piece are much more like utilities today than they had been previously. And if you think about that, it starts with the regulatory reaction to the financial crisis. The primary reaction was buffer upon buffer of capital. So make the banks safe, ensure no more systemic risk. I think the irony is that if you look at the large national banks here in the US and in the UK, in Europe, really again, across the piece, they're actually larger than prior to the crisis, but worryingly there's more concentration of risk.

Bob Diamond: (04:20)
There's more concentration of business. So while they are safe, they're much more like utilities. And we see it, we see they regulate more like utilities, they're managed more like utilities. They recruit staff more like utilities. And most importantly, the investors treat them more like utilities in terms of the returns. And what that's meant is that there's just a phenomenal opportunity for competition that is more agile, more mobile, more reactive, and that comes from specialist firms. It can be specialist lending firms or advisory firms. It could be specialists that are national or regional competing just in one area. And I think the strongest implication has been on technology.

Bob Diamond: (05:10)
And when you add all that up to what it means, number one, prior to 2008, about 95% of the market cap of financial services was the large national banks. Today it's just under 70%. And I think we're just beginning in terms of... We've seen for a while, Apple and PayPal, and others kind of steal the march on technology around consumer payments. But it's just at the early stages with the commercial banking activities of treasury transaction services, digital currencies, Bitcoin, Stablecoin, the impact of all that has been quite dramatic. So all in all, I think it makes for a fascinating investment environment because of that change.

Janet Levaux: (05:55)
Thank you. And Betsy, could you speak a bit about what you see as the newest factors or dynamics driving change in capital raising and financial services? Be they technological or other types of disruption that you're seeing?

Betsy Cohen: (06:17)
I think that there's an opportunity and the recognition that the kind of disbursement that Bob was talking about, which is a result of a reaction to the risk is really an opportunity for the diversification of the services that we see occurring at this moment, I think it was an evolution which followed several trajectories. One was the acceptance of technology as a real thing. And secondly, the consumer and small business adoption, which was a curve that needed to be followed and increased before there could be a real marketplace. So I think that's what I would add to what Bob was saying.

Janet Levaux: (07:27)
And in terms of where we are today and what you might see as coming up next, could each of you speak a little bit to either the opportunities first or the risks that you're seeing? Betsy already outlined some of the growth opportunities there.

Betsy Cohen: (07:45)
Is there an opportunity? Yeah, there's continuing opportunity to both the one distributed platforms, both to create greater certainty around the execution of financial transactions, which themselves are dispersed and to gather, and I think one of the great trends today is the importance of the gathering of data and the figuring of that data and making it more useful and therefore more productive and more profitable.

Janet Levaux: (08:31)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And Bob, could you speak to maybe opportunities within specific areas, such as LVOs, MNAs, SPACs, anything like that, that you're seeing?

Bob Diamond: (08:42)
There are risks and opportunities. They'll start with one risk that I think is interesting, we kind of face it day to day now. We have invested in a number of smaller broker-dealers that compete with the larger and that concentration that's happening. But if I look at the retail side, four US banks now have over 50% of the deposits in the United States just way too concentrated. And we're seeing that the regulators are just so comfortable with the size and with the large banks that they allow the sponsorship in FICC and CCP. And what that means is that the larger banks are able to net down what appears in the balance sheet, while taking on 100% of the risk.

Bob Diamond: (09:30)
And it's not obvious to investors, but to me, as an investor in financial services, it really makes it tough for the challengers and the non-large banks to compete in many of the broker-dealer areas. On the other hand, I see far more opportunity than risks. So I think that's one to point out. And I think for someone who's been with non-US financial institutions of Credit Suisse and Barclays for over 20 years, it's obvious to me, but not obvious to anyone, what a huge advantage it is to be in the US where the capital markets are so deep and so rich, and the ability to execute transactions and get new businesses running and the opportunity is for technology and financial services are so different here.

Bob Diamond: (10:18)
I was in London last week. And we're looking with a group of people from the UK at the potential for SPAC markets there, they're still fussing around with whether or not they want to be in SPACs or not. Where the US has gone up and down, right? We've had problems with SPACs. It's retracing, it's doing this, it's doing that, but we're seeing innovation at work. And we're seeing a really deep capital market. You get to the UK and you see this enormous uproar at these big and bad private equity firms from the US who are taking over their grocery store that's a national jewel and my reaction and American reaction to that would be well, if you really care about that company, maybe you can stop crucifying the public market CEO for the compensation that you've got. And this is counterintuitive for a second and sorry to go on so long, but the capital markets in the US creates such opportunity for investment and for growth.

Bob Diamond: (11:13)
And every time there's a hiccup, whether it was 2008 or with SPACs now, there's a correction in recovery as opposed to a freezing of the institutions, which you typically see more in Europe than in the UK. And I think that just creates a much different environment. On the other hand, let's just look at the legacy banks and take two extreme examples of JP Morgan, a very successful US bank, and Deutsche who has struggled, with all the positives for JP Morgan versus Deutsche, JP Morgan's trading close to two times book and Deutsche is at 30% of the book. And so I am also seeing some valuation discounts that have really worked into the system over time. So that was a bit scrambled, but I think there're both risks and opportunities here, Janet.

Janet Levaux: (12:01)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Michal, would you like to weigh in?

Michal Katz: (12:04)
Yeah, I think in terms of opportunities, one of the common threads that I've seen in this conference, as well as the digital transformation that's appending, every industry and the financial sector is clearly not immune. And that's powered by blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other technology, which has over time really lowered the price of entry so to speak. I was looking the other day that the market cap of PayPal, which was very much on par with one of the largest US banks. So that really does support Bob's argument in terms of the disruption and our senior FinTech analysts that Mizuho said the other day, that he views investing in the square today to be akin to investing in JP Morgan back in 1871, just think about the magnitude of opportunity that exists through this digital transformation.

Michal Katz: (13:00)
And it's not just financial services, it's hitting every sector. Tesla is at 700 billion market cap, the next five largest auto manufacturers. Airbnb just debuted with a hundred billion market cap, I think that's larger than Hyatt Hilton and Marriott combined. And so those are some of the things that I'm watching for in terms of opportunities to participate in the disruption. In terms of the challenges, I will tell you, I am paying very close attention to what's happening in terms of regulation, as it relates to deal activity. We are definitely seeing and hearing rhetoric that federal agencies should be using their enforcement powers to protect competition against industries that have been consolidating. And as the impact is longer in M&A review periods potentially, more expensive remedies, or even transactions that get abandoned and we just saw that with a 30 billion transaction between Aon and Willis Towers Watson, which decided to walk away from because of an impasse with the DOJ and it's not the only one there have been other transactions. So I would say these are some of the challenges or say things that I'm looking for in the landscape.

Janet Levaux: (14:24)
Well, you brought up the issue of regulation. Would either any of you like to mention or describe the fallout from the situation with China and the limitations that have been imposed on Chinese firms coming public here? Is it something that we could see from other places, or is it important in terms of technology and other capital flow movement that might be of concern to you or are you expecting it? Betsy, could you weigh in on it at all? Or Bob? You know, the rule of the Chinese regulators effectively telling their firms that they can't couple up with the US.

Betsy Cohen: (15:09)
Yeah. I think we have to really separate out the depth of the capital markets from the rate of growth in the non-US markets. And I think it's very different if you take a look at Africa that Bob knows as well. There is an opportunity because this is the first generation of the adoption of smartphones and other connectivity that provides you with opportunities for growth that are potentially outsize to the depth of the capital markets within the US. So I may be looking at it in terms of a future opportunity, as opposed to the current situation. I think that there continues to be an education gap, but as adoption continues, that will in fact become potentially a less relevant issue.

Janet Levaux: (16:36)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bob, would you like to weigh in?

Bob Diamond: (16:41)
I think there are a number of situations where effective thoughtful regulation can be a real positive. And I think we've had many situations in the past, and hopefully now. I think looking at SPACs is an opportunity. I think SPACs are definitely here to stay. I think SPACs are evolving as probably they should. I think strong sponsors, we think of ourselves as a strong sponsor, and I know Betsy does as well, support strong regulation so that we don't have bad behavior. But we think the evolution includes that more and more of the market is going to support those with real sector expertise, rather than just raising money with a single name celebrity. I think it will really favor people with a platform of investment that has been in funds and other areas before not just starting from scratch.

Bob Diamond: (17:34)
And I think they're going to look at the track record, but I think there'll be fewer SPACs. I think we had a bit of a very, very healthy issuance in the first quarter of this year that will probably slow down. And I think strong platforms with strong sector equities and a good track record are going to welcome some regulation around transparency here and I think it going to be positive. I think in the digital space where I know there's a lot of controversies today and over the last few weeks about regulation and in some of the things that are happening, our interest has been in Stablecoin. We recently announced the merger of our first SPAC Concord acquisition corp with Circle and circle is Stablecoin.

Bob Diamond: (18:24)
Stablecoin means people have to believe in each USD is worth a dollar today, tomorrow, and every day. So we've announced that we're going to apply to be a regulated bank. We've changed our investments to be just cash and treasuries. And we recognize what the regulators are saying, which is if we're going to have a private-sector digital alternative. It has to be so regulated and so sound for it to be appropriate. And I think if you turn that on its head, and if there was no attention being paid by the regulators, we probably would not have effective digital currencies. And the benefit of driving costs down for a lot of our transactions is what we're looking for. So I guess what I'm saying is I think effective regulation in both of those areas would be welcomed.

Janet Levaux: (19:19)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Michal, would you like to add anything there?

Michal Katz: (19:23)
With respect to which one?

Janet Levaux: (19:24)
Either the rule of risk from regulation, or we could also turn to other risks such as high valuations and then go from there.

Michal Katz: (19:34)
Yeah, look, we talked about the geopolitical. We talked about the regulatory environment. I think valuation is an interesting one. You know, we've basically had a market that is near to old-time highs, and we have not seen a pullback in the market of 5% or so in over 300 days. And so the question is, is our valuation stretched? And I'll make a couple of observations around that. We talked earlier on about corporate earnings very much, not just meeting expectations, but being on solid footing. And if that continues to sustain itself, you're going to see the E and PE holding still. But I also think that when you look at the markets broadly, it probably merits a double-clicking across sectors because the performance has not been even across sectors. We've all seen energy being hard hit in March of last year. And that sector had recovered with recovering the price of oil.

Michal Katz: (20:41)
But when you take a look at the long-term valuation of the sector, it is still trading at a discount to that. Similarly, in consumers, we've had a run-up in discretionary, but consumer staples are not as richly valued and I can go on and on, and whether it be in healthcare were obviously been a beneficiary, if you can, during the pandemic, but we have seen a pullback in life sciences biotech, and it is trading at a discount to the healthcare index. What I would say is that when you think about long-term secular trends and we are in this multi-year digital transformation, those trends are here to stay. And the market opportunity around many sectors, as well as companies are quite significant and in many of them was the very early innings. And so you've got to think about valuations and that time horizon.

Michal Katz: (21:39)
Interestingly, our head of retail in Japan made a very astute observation when it comes to thematic investing in they said, it is time, not timing that matters. So if you think about the broader opportunity and you're willing to wait out the time, there's going to be an incredible opportunity. So yeah, we do for some sort of a correction. I'm not the first one to go on record that says that, likely so, but the question is whether we're in a solid economic environment where the corporations are doing well, what are the opportunities that we all have been talking about? I don't really see valuation to be the primary risk factor so to speak. But I will say that it does create a challenge for M&A activity, right?

Michal Katz: (22:30)
To the extent you've had a run-up in the valuation of a target, it does make the acquirer think about, first of all, the industrial logic always has to be there, but the synergies need to make sense. And then you obviously have investors who are the owners of that performer company that you need to think about. So valuation does become a factor, as you were thinking about deal-making activity.

Janet Levaux: (22:58)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Have there been any recent transactions or examples of an LBO or a SPAC that is new to the market that you could point to as either particularly interesting or something that might point to where we could see more of this?

Betsy Cohen: (23:17)
Well, I think that a SPAC is really multi-dimensional, almost like a Rubik's cube and some of the parts are not complimentary. Some of the parts are really not in conflict, but certainly the intention. And there will be new responses. If a component, for example, if pipe investors are not seeing in the market place, the opportunity to over the advantage of the optionality that investment has, I'll say traditionally over the last seven to eight years provided them the structure will have to be changed and the valuations will have to be changed in order to be responsive to that if one wants to continue to have a format in which the capital raise is in excess of the trust value. And that is in fact a healthy thing and you begin to see it in terms of structures being created, which include current return in addition to future return, such as convertibles and discounts and all the rest of it.

Betsy Cohen: (25:03)
But it's all a matter of finding the comfort zone for investment for each of the parties, whether it be the company that is taking the pathway to the public market or the additional pipe investor, they're really not at loggerheads, but they're trying to find within an area which has not been tested as long as the IPO, and which may not have the level of investor confidence yet that is present in other markets, they're testing out ways to accommodate and to return an appropriate return to the various parties in the transaction. It's a fluid, we can be saying that it's a fluid element and that there's certainly sector rotation and other elements that are generally accepted in the marketplace that come into play. But you'll see people reaching out for the solution to this conundrum.

Bob Diamond: (26:35)
To pick up. As usual, Betsy hit the nail on the head. And I think there's a bit of confusion because I can't tell you how often someone says to me the pipe market is a mess. And I was looking at it like there is so much money to be put to work for good companies at the right valuation. And one of the things I really like about our experience with SPACs is when you've identified the right company, and you have a valuation if you can't execute a pipe with large sophisticated investors who love the pipe opportunity, because they get to look at a specific opportunity where a sponsor that they trust, who's already looked at it. They can meet with management, they can make their own decision. They don't have to say yes, if the valuation's right, they can put some serious money to work at that level.

Bob Diamond: (27:25)
And I think that's a check on the valuation that's coming out, right? If you can't get a number of large sophisticated investors to join the pipe, then your valuation is not going to happen and in the factor or whatever the phrase allergy is, it won't happen. Another thing I'd say about the importance of SPACs is we recently had a transaction where there was a very large asset management processing firm that we had a large investment in our fund. We're a minority investment, but the board hired two bulge bracket firms to do an IPO. The two bulge bracket firms said, okay, we're going to start the IPO process and during that, they interviewed six SPACs to see if that would be including our own.

Bob Diamond: (28:11)
And ultimately it was an outright sale to a large private equity firm, and one of the sovereigns who was in. So you had all these opportunities and that was a tremendous price discovery. And they ended up getting a higher price than they had anticipated from the beginning. So I think, again, it comes back to my comment on the depth of the capital markets. And is there a hiccup in SPACs? Sure, there's a bit too much issuance. That doesn't mean we close it down. Let's continue to have that market evolve and be a part of this big, deep capital market in the US which is of benefit.

Janet Levaux: (28:46)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michal Katz: (28:48)
Yeah. To pick up on Bob's comments is that there's never been a more, I would say, robust time to consider capital raise, then viewing into the public markets or considering M&A but I think the question is also what is the profile of the asset? What are the strategic and financing objectives of the company and where they are in their life cycle? And so if you are a company that has this brand name recognition or where you don't need primary capital direct listing may be a great opportunity or if you're looking for a SPAC, as we just talked about. A lot of opportunities, there's a new concept of SPAC offs, where companies are baking off SPACs one against each other. And then if you are a company that actually could benefit from being part of a broader platform, utilizing the resources, the brand name, the infrastructure for sales and marketing that a larger firm can have then M&A is the right option for you.

Michal Katz: (29:51)
So I really do think that need to think about what exactly are you trying to accomplish. But your question earlier about unique transactions when we talk about the M&A market, and we're kind of approaching record M&A volumes globally, I think we are north of 3 trillion of M&A volume, which I would say on an annualized basis, maybe even looking to surpass the record that we still back in 2007, and that's not just acquisitions and ad-on and scaling up. I think an interesting aspect of M&A is actually structured M&A, and we've seen corporations looking and evaluating their portfolio, whether independently or through pressure by investors, like how many that we have in the room here, and the questioning remained what is core and what is not core? And there is participation in these structured M&A's, and I mean divestitures, spins, reverse mores, what have you, and there's participation by both corporations as well as sponsors.

Michal Katz: (31:01)
So I'll give you an example of one that we have worked on. We worked with Apollo on the acquisition of Verizon media. That's the Yahoo AOL assets that Apollo acquired for $5 billion. And what's unique about that situation is that Verizon retained a 10% stake in the company, allowing them to participate in the upside of the company through new ownership, while at the same time, focusing on 5g rollout, and reliability of voice, data, and network, which are areas they have articulated to investors that they are going to be focusing on. But then another one on the corporate side, we sold AerCap acquiring assets out of GE capital aviation services, a $30 billion transaction, where there has been pressure on GE to focus on its industrial business so to speak. And this combination enabled GE to actually retain 47% of that combined entity.

Michal Katz: (32:07)
So I find these structured M&A transactions really interesting because they certainly allow for monetization of some of the assets while at the same time, allowing corporations to then take the proceeds and apply them to investments in areas of their core business, as well as capital return strategies, whether it be dividends, debt repayment, share buybacks, et cetera.

Janet Levaux: (32:33)
So we have about two minutes left. I wondered if I could do a quick question with each of the panelists. What do you watch the most right now because it interests you? Be it a particular financing type or company bank or industry sector. Could you tell the audience what you're really watching? Betsy, let's start with you.

Betsy Cohen: (32:58)
What are we watching in terms of the development of the SPAC market? Is that what you're suggesting? I think that what we see is that the market is emerging into a much more differentiated market that not every sponsor is being equal, but that there's the ability of investors and companies to be able to distinguish among sponsors who we think really represent the investors, unlike in an IPO, in terms of the larger banks, which are trying to get a deal to the market. That the opportunity for that kind of distinguishing among the players has emerged is really one of the trends that will stick.

Janet Levaux: (34:08)
Okay. Bob, real quick.

Bob Diamond: (34:09)
So I'm going to go back to the circle. We just announced our SPAC conquered one, announced a merger with Circle and this whole space of Stablecoins, digital currency, blockchain internet. We've seen a lot of development in the retail side of technology and banking with PayPal and Stripe and so much on the consumer or retail side. On the commercial side to do a large transaction, billions and billions of dollars from the UK to the US required a middleman, required a bank or a credit card company, or someone to stand in the middle, that's two or three points. And it happens Monday to Friday, nine to five at their discretion. Now, instantaneous, any sizes secure because of blockchain and because of the digital currency addition now driving the costs close to zero. So the ability to compete with that soft underbelly of the commercial banks in treasury and transaction services gets me very, very excited.

Janet Levaux: (35:17)
Michal?

Michal Katz: (35:20)
I know that we've run out of time here. I'll say, in addition to the digital transformation, I think ESG and particularly around sustainability, there's a lot of investment going into energy transition. So that's not just in the power utilities, energy sectors, it really is across every industry, industrials, real estate, sustainable development, and what have you. So that would be the second one.

Janet Levaux: (35:45)
Right. Thank you all very much for sharing your insights and experience.

Bob Diamond: (35:49)
Thank you, Janet.

A Digital Revolution in Emerging Markets with Kevin Carter | #SALTNY

A Digital Revolution in Emerging Markets with Kevin Carter, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, EMQQ.

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SPEAKER

Headshot - Carter, Kevin T. - Cropped.jpg

Kevin Carter

Founder & Chief Investment Officer

EMQQ

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Kevin Carter: (00:07)
So thank you all for showing up to hear my talk. I'm going to do three things today. First, I'm going to tell you who I am and how I think about investing, how I got involved with China and emerging markets 15 years ago. And then I would tell you everything I think you need to know about investing in emerging markets. I will tell you how we do it and why we think it's the best way to invest in both emerging and frontier markets. And then I'll talk a little bit about China and what's been going on there.

Kevin Carter: (00:44)
I live 15 miles east of San Francisco in a town called Lafayette. I've lived there my whole life, and I've worked in the investment business in the Bay Area for 28 years. I started at a company called Robertson Stephens & Company, which some of you may remember. It was a technology focused investment bank. We used to call it the Goldman Sachs of San Francisco. We don't say that anymore because young people think that means the devil. But that's where I started.

Kevin Carter: (01:15)
And I had one interview. It lasted about 30 minutes. We talked about college basketball for most of it. And then the guy said, "You can start Monday." And I said, "Well, how can I possibly start Monday? I don't know anything about investing." And he said, "Go buy this book." And he wrote down A Random Walk Down Wall Street. And I went to the bookstore and picked up the way home. I read it and went to work Monday.

Kevin Carter: (01:40)
And many of you are probably familiar with this book. It was first written almost 50 years ago. And in the first edition, the author, Burt Malkiel suggested that somebody should make an index fund. And a couple of years later, his friend John Bogle did. And so this book and its author have long been associated with indexing and ETFs.

Kevin Carter: (02:05)
Now I however, very quickly gravitated towards Omaha. And I try to think about every investment and business decision through a Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett lens. But for the last 22 years, I've actually worked with Dr. Burton Malkiel, the author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street. So I've had one foot in the active world, one foot in the indexing world. And in 1998, I was a very young, cocky value investor. And I was shorting amazon.com, which cost me about a third of my net worth in one day. And the same day I saw a company changed its name from KTEL to ktel.com and the stock went from $1 to $30. And I said, "I've read about this. I know I've read about this."

Kevin Carter: (02:58)
And I found my copy of A Random Walk Down Wall Street. And there was a quote from Jack Dreyfus about the 1960s electronics bubble. And the quote was basically, take a company called Shoelaces Incorporated, change the name to Silicon and Electronic Furth Burners. The stock used to sell for eight times earnings, but by changing the name, it can now sell for 64 times earnings. And it was exactly what it just happened with this company, KTEL. And I said, "I have to call this guy. It's right out of his book."

Kevin Carter: (03:33)
And so I used the search engine of the day, which for me was Ink to me. And I put in Dr. Burton Malkiel, and up came a Princeton web page with his picture and his class schedule and his phone number. And I picked up the phone and I dialed it, thinking I'd get a secretary or something. And lo and behold, he answered the phone. And I said, "Geez, Dr. Malkin, I don't know you, but I read your book." And I said, "You got to see this." And he asked me to fax him a Bloomberg print out or something. And I did.

Kevin Carter: (04:04)
Anyhow, one thing led to another. And now 22 years later, we've been business partners for two decades. So I've had one foot in the active world, one foot in the indexing world.

Kevin Carter: (04:15)
One of the companies we started in 2002 and sold to Natixis at the very end of 2004 was called Active Index Advisors, which still exists as a division of Natixis. It was a pioneer in what's now called direct indexing. But right before we sold the company, Google went public. And when Google went public, they asked my partner, Burton, to give a talk to the employees about investing. I wasn't involved with that, but Burton was on the West Coast and had dinner with me the night before. And then he went down to Mountain View and talk to the Googlers before their IPO.

Kevin Carter: (04:54)
And a few months later, my phone rang and it was a guy from Google who had googled me and he said, "Hey, I heard about this active indexing you do. How do I invest?" And I said, "Well, who's your advisor?" He said, "I don't have an advisor." I said, "Well, we're available at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. And I'm happy to introduce you to an advisor at one of those places." And he said, "No, I don't want an advisor. I just want to invest directly."

Kevin Carter: (05:20)
So I drove down to Mountain View and met with this 25-year-old with a nine-figure piece of stock and ended up becoming his investment advisor and the advisor to several of the earliest engineers at Google over the coming months. But while I was going back and forth to Mountain View, Burton was going back and forth to China. And he ended up writing a white paper, making the case for China. The Google people found out about it and called me and said, "Can Burton come down to Mountain View and talk about China?" And I said, "Sure. Next time he's on the West Coast, we'll come on down."

Kevin Carter: (06:02)
So 15 years ago, this spring, I drove to Mountain View one morning with Burton. He gave a talk about investing in China, and then all these people looked at me and said, "We want to invest in China."

Kevin Carter: (06:18)
Now at that point in my life, I didn't know very much about China. I had never been to China. All I knew was what I had read in Burt's paper. But from the moment that talk ended until today, my entire life has been focused on figuring out what on earth does that even mean to invest in China, and how should you do it? So with that, let me tell you what I've learned and what you need to know.

Kevin Carter: (06:49)
First of all, when we talk about emerging markets, we're talking about the world. And in terms of GDP, market cap population, this is about 60% Asia. It's about 20% the emerging Americas. And then 20% scattered between Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa. So that's what it looks like on the map. Fundamentally, it's the world. It's 85% of the world's people. It's even more of the future as measured by young people, for which it's almost 90% of the world. So this is the world and it's even more of the future. And it's a big deal.

Kevin Carter: (07:29)
And what's happening. You can see on this slide, on the left side, they're now larger than developed markets on a GDP basis. But on the right side, you'll see the emerging market share of a number of categories, three of which have red arrows. The top red arrow is showing you again, that this is where all the people are. The bottom red arrows are showing you that in the consumption categories, retail sales and consumer spending, emerging markets are way behind. And it's the delta between those three bars and the closing of that delta, that is the story, the rise of the emerging market consumer.

Kevin Carter: (08:19)
Now, let me come back to that because that's what is EMQQ is all about, and let me tell you something that's wrong with the way people have been investing in emerging markets. There's a lot of problems with indexing, as it turns out in emerging markets. And they're pretty big. And it took me about five minutes to figure out the first problem after we got back to San Francisco that day from Mountain View.

Kevin Carter: (08:56)
So we drove back to San Francisco, went up to our office. I walked over to the portfolio managers and I said, "The Google guys want to invest in China. Give me a list of all of the companies in the FXI." That's the iShares China ETF, which was the only China ETF at the time. And I assume that's what we would use for the Google guys. And I like to look under the hood with my Omaha head and see what exactly are the companies in this ETF.

Kevin Carter: (09:29)
And so I asked for the list, and Burton pulled me aside and he said, "Look, when you get the list, you're going to see that almost all of the companies are Chinese owned banks and oil companies." And I said, "Yeah. I've heard about that. It doesn't sound great."

Kevin Carter: (09:49)
And he said, "Well, let me give you an example of how these things work. You've got a Chinese manufacturing plant with 15,000 employees. It's been losing money for a decade, and it's about to run out of money again. But it has 15,000 employees. The management of the bank goes to ... or the management of the company goes to the bank, the state owned bank and says, 'Hey, we need more money.' Now, a normal banker would say, 'No, you can't have any more money. You didn't pay us back the last money.' But the state owned bank says, 'Well, if you run out of money, then these 15,000 people are going to be out in the streets protesting.' So it makes another low."

Kevin Carter: (10:26)
I got literally nauseous inside when I thought about that, because with my simple Omaha brain earnings equals value and the growth of earnings equals the growth of value. And if the people running these companies don't care about that, why would you invest in them at all? And in the case of the China ETF, it was over 80% state owned enterprises. And the consumer piece was like 8%. And it's not as bad in the broad indexes, but it's bad. About a third of the Vanguard fund and the iShares fund, the Schwab fund and all the other funds, not all but most of them, certainly the broad emerging markets funds, they've got about a third of their assets in these state owned enterprises, which are conflicted, they're inefficient.

Kevin Carter: (11:16)
Poor corporate governance is putting it quite mildly as corruption is everywhere. And you don't have to look very far. It's in the papers almost every day. The best example is in Brazil where the state owned oil giant Petrobras was being systematically looted by the people that ran the country, including the last two presidents who both went to jail for basically stealing your money if you're using a broad emerging markets approach.

Kevin Carter: (11:47)
And the problem's even bigger, if we count two other groups of companies that have a lot of the same problems. The Chaebol in Korea and the Russian oligarchs that took over the Soviet SOEs. If we counted those two, it's 50% of the index, then those two groups have lots of problems like people going to jail, like this guy, the Chairman of Samsung, who's been in jail, in and out of jail twice in the last six or seven years, once for bribing the president of the country who went to jail as well.

Kevin Carter: (12:22)
So this is why, if you think you're going to make any money buying these broad emerging market products like Bridgewater's five of their top 25 holdings, I think you're going to be disappointed. FXI, for 10 years, when I talked about that company, that product, I called it the worst investment product in the world.

Kevin Carter: (12:48)
You got to do emerging markets 3.0. You have to evolve and get more precise. And ... Can you go back? Thank you. You've got to get more precise. So in my first eight years on the China's scene, Burton and I launched a number of China ETFs with Guggenheim that now have the Invesco brand. But when I wasn't working with Guggenheim, I spent my time in New York City and Boston with family offices and foundations and endowments. And I watched how they evolved.

Kevin Carter: (13:25)
They saw they weren't making any money. They're increasing their allocations and they get more precise. Now, if you're Yale, you can set up Hillhouse. But most people aren't Yale. And so when people would ask me, "What's the best way to invest in emerging markets," I said, "That's easy. You buy econ, the emerging market consumer ETF," which I didn't make, but I knew it existed. And if you believed McKinsey and me, then all you really want is the consumer. Econ was the product to buy. 30 largest emerging market consumer stocks.

Kevin Carter: (14:08)
Now, one day, about eight years ago, seven and a half years ago, I woke up one morning and I thought, "What on earth have I done with my life?" I was this young, cocky Charlie Munger wannabe. And somehow I get mixed up with this guy at Princeton and I'm building Chinese index funds for God's sake. And I've obviously lost my way and I need to go back to my roots. And so I set up an investment partnership.

Kevin Carter: (14:35)
Once it was organized and my own money was in it, I invested in five stocks. And then I thought, "Well, I should see if any of my friends around town want to invest in this fund." And so I scheduled some meetings and the morning of those meetings, I made some slides to show the people I was going to be meeting with. These are the five companies I own was one of the slides.

Kevin Carter: (15:00)
And when I made that slide, the first three stocks I put on it were stocks that were in the emerging market consumer ETF. Those three stocks traded in Hong Kong were Want Want which is like the Nabisco of China, branded crackers. Second and third companies, Chinese sportswear makers, Li-Ning and Peak Sports. Can think of these as the Reebok and Converse of China. So those were the first three stocks, food, clothing, traditional consumption.

Kevin Carter: (15:28)
But then I had two other stocks that were clearly part of the emerging market consumer story, but the database didn't call them consumer. The database said they were technology companies. And that's why they were not in the emerging market consumer ETF. The first one traded on the New York Stock Exchange was WUBA. This is the Craigslist of China, which has since gone private. And the fifth and final company trades on the NASDAQ. It's called MercadoLibre, MELI, which is the amazon.com and PayPal of Brazil and Mexico and every other country in Central and South America.

Kevin Carter: (16:09)
And I looked at the slide after I made it, I thought, "Hmm, these first three companies, these consumer companies are great. They're growing at 15% or 20%. I think they have moats in form of brand equity." But then I looked at the two internet companies and they were growing at 100% literally and had incredible margins. WUBA had a 94% gross margin, which is by far the highest gross margin I've ever seen. And that's where I look for moats. And while the PE multiples were higher for those two stocks, when you divided the PE by the growth rate, it was lower and quite reasonable. And I just remember thinking my two best emerging market consumer stocks are not in the emerging market consumer ETF, because they're called technology companies.

Kevin Carter: (17:07)
Printed my slides, went to my meetings, got three checks, driving home. My phone rings, and it's a friend of mine with a three-year-old daughter. And she says, "What's the best emerging markets ETF for my daughter's college fund?" I started to tell her to buy the emerging market consumer ETF, but then a light bulb appeared above my head. And I said, "Wait a minute. The best emerging markets ETF for long-term investors doesn't exist." And I went straight back to my office and started to organize EMQQ.

Kevin Carter: (17:46)
Now, at the time I could see the incredible growth rates, I could see the incredible margins, and I can see that the valuations were reasonable. But what I didn't appreciate was what was causing this incredible growth. And, excuse me, it's quite clear to me now. It's quite clear to me now. It's really a combination of three things, three big things, three mega trends happening at the same time, and they are creating what I'm pretty sure, but not positive is the fastest growing sector in the world, ever.

Kevin Carter: (18:34)
What are those three mega trends? This is the first one. We've already talked about it. Billions of people moving on up and they want stuff, more and better food, more and better clothing, appliances, vacations, cars, Harvard. That's what they want. It's a big deal. McKinsey calls it the biggest growth story in the history of capitalism as we said.

Kevin Carter: (18:59)
Now, when I got that call, I answered it on my iPhone, which was sitting on my car seat next to me. So I had a smartphone eight years ago, but I hadn't had it very long, and I could already see how it was changing my family's consumption. Back then, my family went to this store four times a week, which is easy to do. It's three miles from our house. The roads are paved. There's free parking. But all of a sudden the trips to the store started to go down. And this guy started showing up at my house once a week, and then twice a week. Now my family doesn't go to Target. And this guy, Mark, is at my house five times a week, seven times a week, all the time.

Kevin Carter: (19:47)
So if you think about how the smartphone has changed us and you map it over to the emerging market consumer, the story gets quite big. It gets quite big because I had a computer for 20 years before I got my smartphone. Most of the people in the world have never had a computer before. All of these people are getting their first ever computer. It's not on their desk and it never will be. And in most cases, it doesn't have an Apple logo. We're talking about $50, $60, $80 Android-based smartphones made in China getting better every year, getting more affordable every year, and bringing the third mega trend with it. Something we also take for granted, something I've had for 25 years called the internet.

Kevin Carter: (20:47)
I got the internet in 1995 in the Marina District of San Francisco on the telephone line. Then it went onto the cable. Now it just shows up in my pocket. Well, most of the world has never been wired before. So all of those billions of people, in addition to getting their first ever computer, they're getting their first internet access. And because they don't have a bank account and there's no TV on their wall with a thousand channels and there's no Target store, they're leapfrogging what we think of as traditional consumption. And the result is this.

Kevin Carter: (21:36)
This is showing you the revenue growth for the emerging markets internet sector, the EMQQ index. And you can see that for the last 11 years, the average annual growth rate was 37% a year. Now that's hard to do for any single business, let alone an entire sector. I'm not 100% sure of anything in the world, but I've given this presentation to hundreds of professional investor groups and I offer $100,000 reward to anybody that can show me a sector that grew for 38% a year for a decade.

Kevin Carter: (22:21)
I could be wrong. I haven't gotten any emails from the people I offered the bet to. I've asked everybody I know who's smarter and older than me if they know a sector that had revenue growth of 38% a year. And so far, my inbox is empty. So I could be wrong. But I think this is not only the fastest growing sector in the world, but the fastest growing sector in the world ever.

Kevin Carter: (22:46)
Now, what comes with that fundamental growth? Value creation. You can see on this chart in yellow gold, how the internet sector has done over the last 12 years. And bouncing along the bottom in blue, the broad indexes, the biggest value trap in the world, the MSEI, emerging market index. Look how cheap it is. Half the price of the S&P. That's what they always say when they say they're pounding the table on emerging markets and recommending you buy the broad index.

Kevin Carter: (23:25)
So what are the companies? Alibaba, not the largest anymore. Our fourth largest holding, the most popular, at least best known of the emerging market internet companies. And let me point out one more important thing. When this company came public, it revealed another problem with the indexes, something that I also learned on my very first day when I got back from Mountain View 15 years ago. So once Burton gave me his warning about SOEs, and then they gave me the list of all the companies in the China ETF, I went through every company and I got to the bottom of the list. And I said, "Where's Baidu," because Baidu was not in the China ETF.

Kevin Carter: (24:18)
So we called the iShares people and said, "Where's Baidu?" They said, "Well, we don't own Baidu." I said, "I know. I can see. It's not on the list. Why don't you own Baidu?" "We don't consider it a Chinese company." And I was like, "What do you mean?" Said, "Well, it trades the United States?" I said, "It's the Google of China, and being the Google of anything seems like a good idea. And being the Google of the biggest country in the world seems like a really good idea." They said, "Well, we don't include it because it trades the United States."

Kevin Carter: (24:49)
Now it took the Alibaba IPO for this problem to finally get fixed. It bothered me a lot. Nobody else cared, certainly not consumer reports and USA Today who actually wrote about this problem, because you couldn't get Jack Ma off of your computer screen or your TV for a month. They're telling you how big a deal this is, and it's not going to be in the Vanguard fund. It took them three years to finally add Alibaba. So the indexes are terrible. Half of these companies are still not included in the index. And the reason is because they trade here, which is a shame. And the reason they trade here is because they're getting funded by our best investors. And they're listing on our exchanges with the highest listing standards, and investors are getting penalized for this.

Kevin Carter: (25:45)
Examples. You had Yahoo put a billion dollars into Alibaba, which turned into the only thing they really had at the end and a lot of money. And in my favorite example from the last couple of years, my heroes in Omaha, bought 5% of this Brazilian FinTech company, Stone, on its IPO, the first ever investment IPO investment I believe for Berkshire. Stone's not in your iShares shares fund, not in your Vanguard fund.

Kevin Carter: (26:14)
So corporate governance is bad in emerging markets. These companies on a relative basis to things like Petrobras, you'd have to say they have exceptional corporate governance. And meanwhile, a lot of them still get left out. You'll get Petrobras, the corrupt Brazilian oil giant twice in your Vanguard fund, your iShares fund, but you won't get Stone.

Kevin Carter: (26:39)
And now let's talk about Tencent. And let me say a few things. We'll wrap up the China part of the story and get into the next frontier, which is getting quite exciting. Tencent, most of you probably know this company. It's now the biggest market cap wise, Alibaba, Tencent neck and neck for the last decade. Plus, to make it simple, we've always told people Tencent's the Facebook of China. And it's true. The WeChat platform is the social network. It's how I talk to my Chinese friends and colleagues. So that's a fair assessment. But you can't call Facebook the Tencent of anything. Because in the case of Tencent and Alibaba, there is no equivalent.

Kevin Carter: (27:18)
And the reason is because the consumption infrastructure in emerging markets is by definition underdeveloped. And when I say consumption infrastructure, I mean bank accounts with debit cards, TVs on the wall, Target stores. Because those things don't exist, not only are the consumers leapfrogging, but Alibaba and Tencent are digitizing every consumer vertical.

Kevin Carter: (27:42)
These are not technology companies. These are all things consumer, companies operating in a smartphone world. They're in healthcare. Alibaba, JD, Tencent, all have healthcare businesses. Two of them are public. One's coming. Entertainment, Tencent's the Spotify of China, Tencent owned majority trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Food, groceries. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. This is a photo I took in Alibaba's Hema market. And I could spend an hour telling you how amazing it is, but it's the closest thing I've ever seen to the Jetsons. And it's also FinTech and the money. So everything's getting digitized by far, by far the biggest part of the story is FinTech.

Kevin Carter: (28:37)
And it starts with payments. You get the money on the phone. Anybody that's been to China knows every place you want to buy something, you'll find two QR codes, everywhere. And once you get the money on the phone, you're in business. And Alibaba and Tencent have the money on the phone now. And that has allowed them to get into investment products, insurance products, and to ... that is [inaudible 00:29:05] financial ... the banking and credit products. We'll come back to that. But all things are getting digitized, FinTech and the money especially, and it's quite a paradox. You would think someone like me, a FinTech entrepreneur in San Francisco, that I would be on the cutting edge and zap my phone to buy everything. Not me. Africa. We'll talk more about FinTech.

Kevin Carter: (29:29)
Now, there's lots of other Chinese companies. These are some of the bigger ones, Pinduoduo, an amazing company, and a great stock as well, jd.com, Baidu, Meituan. This has been largely China's story so far. But there's something else really big happening, and we're pretty excited about it. So let me tell you what is happening outside of the China story.

Kevin Carter: (29:57)
China's big. It's our biggest weight, 65%. That's for good reason. It's by far the biggest e-commerce market in the world. You can call it emerging market, but in the internet world it's developed and it's big. In fact, it is four times the size of the other 45 emerging and frontier markets on an e-commerce basis.

Kevin Carter: (30:25)
So it's dominated our weights for a long time. But, the other part's starting to get pretty exciting. You can see here that same revenue chart, the blue being the China portion, the gold being the non-China portion. You can see the China piece crossed $100 billion seven years ago. You can see the non-China piece crossed $100 billion today, basically.

Kevin Carter: (30:53)
So outside China, the story's getting hot. This has been the company that showed us this, showed us how big the FinTech part of the story was, the Amazon and the PayPal of Brazil and all of South America, not in the indexes. Sea Limited might be the best performing stock in the world for the last several years. Trades here, headquartered in Singapore. This is a mashup of gaming, e-commerce, FinTech.

Kevin Carter: (31:26)
Yandex, the Uber of Russia or the Google of Russia rather is also the Uber ... The Google of Russia is also the Uber of Russia. Now that's Yandex, not in your index. You'll get the oligarchs. Africa. Nigeria has got a company trading on the New York Stock Exchange, JMIA. E-commerce leader in several Sub-Saharan African countries.

Kevin Carter: (31:51)
Poland has its own Amazon, largest company now in the Warsaw Exchange. Kazakhstan has a super app trading in London. We didn't buy this stock after it went public because they didn't put Kazakhstan on the list of eligible countries when I made the fund. It didn't occur to me that Kazakhstan would have its own super app publicly traded.

Kevin Carter: (32:17)
Uruguay, this company is amazing, dLocal. Check it out. Hepsiburada, Turkey. Everything is here. Indonesia. These are all recent. And it's a big, big deal. The rest of the world's getting the internet and lives are changing. And this company marked a pretty big inflection point. This is an Indian IPO that happened in the last several weeks, Zomato. This is a milestone.

Kevin Carter: (32:51)
There are now more non-Chinese companies in the internet space than Chinese, and they've doubled in the last 12 months, doubled, 30 to 60, and lots more coming. We could have 25 India internet IPOs in the next 18 months. Flipkart's coming, e-commerce leader controlled by Walmart, Tencent, and investors. One of my favorites, my heroes again, FinTech leader, Alibaba, largest shareholder, Paytm, the Indian payments leader in the papers this morning. Southeast Asia has got so much going on.

Kevin Carter: (33:39)
This is one of my favorites. This is a new merger, a mashup of two companies, Tokopedia, the Amazon of Indonesia is hitching up with the Uber of Indonesia, Gojek. They're both the Venmo of Indonesia. This company will come public. You'll hear about it, owned partially by Tencent and Alibaba and Google. Biggest online bank in the world, Brazil, Tencent, and again, Omaha, early ... Well, Tencent, an early investor. Warren Buffett and his guys just invested two months ago. This company is coming. I love this company, Nubank out of Brazil.

Kevin Carter: (34:22)
So this is a big deal. And there's lots of awesome elements as you read and see how these people's lives are changing. They're getting information for the first time. They're getting access to stuff for the first time. And it's a big deal.

Kevin Carter: (34:42)
So in summary, this is where the growth is. This is where the growth is in the world. And it's certainly where the growth is in emerging markets as these three mega trends happen at the same time, billions of people getting a computer and the internet, leapfrogging. Important side benefits in a part of the world where getting your money stolen is your biggest problem? I think you can rest a little more comfortably with these companies and you get exposure to what's going on beyond China. So it's still pretty early.

Kevin Carter: (35:24)
Now, we have a crisis right now. The Chinese word for crisis is a combination of two symbols, danger and opportunity. I think this is an opportunity. We've been crushed since February, down almost 40%. Most of that, a result of China. And July wasn't a very fun month for us, as you might imagine. I'm not going to go deep into the stuff since I've spent the last six weeks talking about China, trying to calm people down. Everyone's scared. Everybody's been scared of China for the 16 years I've been involved and the main thing I hear is fear. The Chinese government, they're communists, they're going to steal all my money. And it finally happened, not in this case, but in this one.

Kevin Carter: (36:20)
Now, this is the online tutoring crack down that freaked people out in a major way. I think it was ... Well, I don't think it's going to work what they're doing, but they had to do something with the online education and the tutoring frenzy in China. But I didn't think they'd actually make them go non-profit, but they did. And I think it's unfortunate, at least for the way people think of China. I don't think it was the wrong thing to do by the Chinese government, but it sure freaked out US investors, because finally the Chinese government did steal your money if you owned TAL or EDU. Tiananmen Square moment? Maybe. Stephen Rote's even getting scared.

Kevin Carter: (37:10)
You got to know what Kathy's doing. She sold it all. Ironic. Ironic. The front page of the New York Times has an article about Joe Biden's team coming for the FAANG stocks that are making new highs. The Chinese government's involved? Sell. Run. I don't think it means all that much negatively when I look at the fundamentals of each of the different regulatory actions starting with the Ant Group. Sure helps valuations. Easy to pound the table when blood is in the streets.

Kevin Carter: (37:48)
I like the way Ray Dalio thinks about China. He articulates what I think is a more appropriate way to think about China for investors. But I'm not going to go into all the details of the Chinese government. I'm not here to do that. But they did tell me when I was young, you're supposed to buy fear. And on the 27th of July, I had never seen so much fear about China coming to steal your money.

Kevin Carter: (38:19)
So they told me to buy fear, and that's what I was doing on the 27th of July. Could get more fearful. Maybe they will steal more people's money, but I don't think so. I think they're all in favor of capitalism. Valuations are good right now. The peg ratio about 0.75, maybe 0.8, about half the peg of the US tech leaders, a third, the peg of the S&P 500.

Kevin Carter: (38:50)
So I don't make short-term stock market predictions, but I'm pretty confident if you've got three years or five years or seven years, you're going to do very well in the EMQQ and its companies. It's been the right way to go since we made it. When my friend asked me what was the best emerging markets ETF for long-term investors, even after a 40% decline. And I think, if we come back here five, six, seven years from now, I'm pretty sure it will be number one again, or maybe number two out of everything.

Kevin Carter: (39:38)
And the reason I think we might be number two is because there's something new that we are putting together that we're pretty excited about that I think ... I think it's going to be close for long-term investors, but we have a new thing coming, a new index that'll be available sometime soon. It owns all of the same companies as EMQQ, but it doesn't own China. So the next frontier, all of the non-Chinese internet companies are going to have their own vehicle for investors, and I think it's going to do pretty darn well too. And actually, I think investors should be excited about it and they should be excited because of two things, of two statistics.

Kevin Carter: (40:36)
You can see here, again, in purple that these companies, the non-Chinese companies have just passed $100 billion basically today. That's what the Chinese companies did seven years ago. There's four times as many people in this next frontier. Four times as many people. And the e-commerce penetration is about a quarter or a fifth of China.

Kevin Carter: (41:20)
So thank you for coming. That's all.

How Gold Fits Into Modern Portfolios with Ashraf Rizvi & Anthony Scaramucci | #SALTNY

How Gold Fits Into Modern Portfolios with Ashraf Rizvi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Gilded.

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci, Founder & Managing Partner, SkyBridge.

Powered by RedCircle

 

MODERATOR

SPEAKER

Headshot - Rizvi, Ashraf - Cropped.png

Ashraf Rizvi

Chief Executive Officer & Founder

Gilded

Headshot - Scaramucci, Anthony.jpeg

Anthony Scaramucci

Founder & Managing Partner

SkyBridge

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Anthony Scaramucci : (00:07)
What do we have coming out here? Introduce the product that you're bringing out here. What is this?

Ashraf Rizvi: (00:13)
So Anthony, pretty excited to show off something really special that most people never get a chance to see in their lifetime. We got a million dollars worth of real gold coming out and here it comes. So we've got a 12.5 kg bar. That's $750,000 and five little guys, which are 1.0 Kg, each, about $60,000 a piece, right from the vault. There we go. Okay. [crosstalk 00:00:41] Now grab it, you want to grab it?

Anthony Scaramucci : (00:43)
The larger gold? I do want to grab it. Okay guys, ladies and gentlemen enjoy the rest of the conference. I'll see you guys. It's just going to be hard for me to get out of here with this thing though, okay?

Ashraf Rizvi: (00:53)
You can't run with that. Pretty amazing?

Anthony Scaramucci : (00:57)
How much does this weigh?

Ashraf Rizvi: (00:58)
That's about 27.5 pounds.

Anthony Scaramucci : (01:01)
Wow. 12.5 kg, $750,000.

Ashraf Rizvi: (01:05)
Getting the workout in. You can get a few curls in.

Anthony Scaramucci : (01:07)
Yeah if you haven't done a workout in a couple of days, a couple of years. All right, here we go. And what about these? What do these weigh? Thank you, sir.

Ashraf Rizvi: (01:14)
Little over two pounds, about $60,000.

Anthony Scaramucci : (01:16)
So when it says 99.99 that's what?

Ashraf Rizvi: (01:23)
That it's 99.99% pure. So that's why it's got that beautiful shine.

Anthony Scaramucci : (01:30)
Okay. And so that's sort of the purest gold that you can get, that's it? [crosstalk 00:01:35] And this is a representation of $1 million of gold.

Anthony Scaramucci : (01:40)
All right. So before we get into gold and Gilded, sit please, tell our delegates a little bit about your background.

Ashraf Rizvi: (01:48)
Well first I want to just start by saying Anthony, it's great to be on stage, great conference, and excited to be here.

Ashraf Rizvi: (01:55)
So, I feel like I've been preparing my whole life for this opportunity to do what Gilded is doing and what we're building starts with 30 plus years on Wall Street, like you. I had a chance to work for all the big Swiss banks: Credit Suisse, UBS, Swiss Bank Corporation. Run a lot of different businesses, emerging markets, FX, fixed income repo, and probably more importantly, the global metals and commodities businesses. Was fortunate enough to start two successful companies, one in 1986, fresh out of school. And then another one in the heights of the Great Financial Crisis, just like you managed billions of dollars for endowments, foundations, pension funds, family offices.

Ashraf Rizvi: (02:42)
And then there's also a personal story for me. My parents are first generation immigrants from India, and I can remember as a kid growing up, my dad telling me about how he was sending money back home to his family and how expensive it was. The Indian rupee was a 7.5 rupees to the dollar. Gold was at the time 35 bucks to an ounce. Today, of course, we're looking at 74 rupees to the dollar and we're looking at $1800 per ounce.

Ashraf Rizvi: (03:11)
And so as I look back now, after all these years, I see why Indians loved to buy gold because it's been such a great store of value for them. And of course, that's the big topic these days: store of value, given the decline of currencies worldwide.

Ashraf Rizvi: (03:27)
And the last thing is, I think at this stage in my career, I really wanted to do something where I thought I could make a difference and help people, whether it was in terms of financial planning, longterm wealth creation for their family, for their kids, and also making things easy.

Anthony Scaramucci : (03:44)
So gold culturally, 5,000 plus years of history as a store of value. And now you've created a company called Gilded. We have a lot of cryptocurrency people here, digital currency people. And tell us about the intersection, give us the elevator pitch for Gilded.

Ashraf Rizvi: (04:03)
Yeah, so I think the really exciting thing is that we're using blockchain technology, a smartphone and modern day apps to deliver that physical asset in a digital, mobile, and a usable form. And so that means making it functional like money, right? So that's the beautiful thing here is that we can make it such that you can buy it, hold it, store it, send it. We can already do that in 12 countries across the world, instantly 24/7. And then in the future, I'm expecting that we'll be able to add things like spend it through a debit card or credit card or borrow money against it, or even pledge it as collateral, for example.

Anthony Scaramucci : (04:54)
What's the benefit of using gold as a base asset in the crypto space?

Ashraf Rizvi: (05:00)
Yeah, so I would say two things. So one, it's important to know we're not a crypto or a stable coin or in fractional banking. So, and the reason for that is that in our case, we allow you to own that asset directly. It becomes your property, your title. So that's, that's very important. The second part I think is what we talked about, the store of value. This is not about getting rich quick or anything like that. It's about storing and preserving your value. And we all know that inflation has been eating it. Whether it's the dollar or currencies across the world. And I think gold has served that purpose for 5,000 years. And so we're now making that possible that we can bring it into 21st century where we can access it easily.

Anthony Scaramucci : (05:44)
So you've been in the currency space, the commodity space, three decades on wall street. And we've watched an erosion of fiat currency. How does this help against that erosion?

Ashraf Rizvi: (06:02)
So I think if we think about investors everywhere, whether it's the retail person, the hedge fund, the asset manager, the pension fund, the government, the corporation, everybody is faced with this and that today we're earning little or no interest on our currency, but we have inflation of 5%. So we're eroding our value. Gold has over the last 20 years returned about 9% a year. Our interest accounts are earning one and a half percent. Last 50 years, gold has earned 8%. Doesn't seem like it would be that high given it's a non-yielding asset, but money that you kept in the bank only four and a half percent over those 50 years. And so it's providing that protection. It's not fiat and it's no government's liability.

Anthony Scaramucci : (06:50)
When you think of the traditional cash apps versus Gilded, what is the analysis that you would give us there and what's the benefit of Gilded?

Ashraf Rizvi: (07:02)
So the nice thing here is we can make it easy, simple. I have the app and anybody's welcome to come by our booth. You can sign up, create an account, literally in five minutes, complete the whole KYC AML process. So we're very focused on good regulatory compliance, but you can do it in matter of minutes. Think about how long it takes to open a bank account. We don't have any of those problems and you can make a purchase with your debit card, credit card, or even through your bank account and you're off and running. And now you've got your store of value and independently audited verified and see even that you can actually see the bar that you have and that you own right on your app.

Anthony Scaramucci : (07:44)
So everybody talks about the future of smart wallets. At some point on our phone a secure, smart wallet, it'll have, perhaps some cryptocurrencies, maybe a fiat currency that's been digitized. Do you see Gilded and your digital gold in the wallet? People could transfer in and out of it into other currencies? Is that what you're seeing?

Ashraf Rizvi: (08:06)
I think the opportunity is big on so many different levels. I said, I think right from the beginning, once you digitize it and fractionalize it, which is what we've been able to do, now we can do so many things with it. And I think the really powerful thing, which is that we can make it happen instantaneously. So now we're no longer limited by the banking system. We can operate 24/7 and once other people are on that network and who've gone through the necessary KYC AML process, you can transfer value to them as well.

Anthony Scaramucci : (08:41)
So tell us the vision for the company. How do you see the company evolving over the next five years?

Ashraf Rizvi: (08:49)
So I'm really excited about a whole bunch of things. I think first, probably most important is that we can give people an opportunity to have that store of value and be able to do that easily by leveraging the fact that we're making that physical gold digital, mobile, and usable, and that we're making it your title, your property. And so, as you know, from the great financial crisis, if it's not your title or your property, it's often sitting with somebody else, the bank or some other custodian, and you could be at risk. And so given that a lot of people use gold as that ultimate store of value, you don't want to buy, as I would say, you don't want to buy CDSes on Bear Stearns from Lehman. That's not a good business. So I think that's the most important thing is to give them that store of value.

Ashraf Rizvi: (09:35)
The other is, I think we can do some social good too, which is we can help people who are trying to send money back home, very expensive, 6% on average, we can do it for far less, typically half that price or less, depending on the country involved. We can help in the fact that we can get the asset directly to the person who's intended to be the recipient. And we can also help with things like illicit or nefarious activity, because we're storing all the information on blockchain, so we can trace whoever's the owner of the asset or the product.

Ashraf Rizvi: (10:09)
Not to mention, the big opportunity, which I'm really excited about in the future is the unbanked space. Billion people who don't have access to a bank account. They've clearly been left out of the financial system. We can do something of value for them, too. They have phones, they have smartphones. If we can reach that audience so that they can have that ability to save and store value and create wealth for their family, that's I think a really good thing.

Anthony Scaramucci : (10:36)
We've known each other a long time. I'm obviously very good friends with your brother Suhail as well. You've been traveling the entire world during a pandemic to explain this company to people. What's the in general international reception?

Ashraf Rizvi: (10:54)
So I've been really excited about the fact that we're seeing interest on so many different levels. We started in India, initial beta testing. We've got a few hundred thousand downloads pretty quickly with relatively little advertising.

Ashraf Rizvi: (11:08)
I started showing it to friends, others, and what we've seen is interest now, not just at the retail side, family offices, corporations, financial institutions, and governments who want to leverage our technology for cross border trade or store of value, things that apply to them. And of course, the things that apply for all of them are: one, store of value; two, the ability to actually move value on an instantaneous basis. They care about that. Three, they care about the fact that they can operate on their own terms. They're not limited by the banking system, et cetera. So all of these things matter to each of them, and again, I think this is the beauty of having the asset where it's your title, your property, nobody else's liability, and being able to leverage the fact that you're making it digital, mobile, and usable. Really resonating with people.

Anthony Scaramucci : (12:07)
So some of the largest commodities in the world, like oil, are denominated in US dollars, or sometimes other fiat currencies, but predominantly US dollars. Is that a vision for you that at some point you would be transacting in gold over the blockchain, nations doing that?

Ashraf Rizvi: (12:28)
I think that's exactly where we're headed. I think there's the possibility once you've leveraged that blockchain technology, the mobile phone, and the app, and digitized and fractionalized, the possibilities become so widespread. And so I think that's exactly what, when we're thinking about companies or financial institutions or governments, thinking about is that how effectively they could use it in so many different ways.

Anthony Scaramucci : (12:55)
And how does this differ from cryptocurrency?

Ashraf Rizvi: (12:57)
So I think there's a number of different [video skips 00:13:00] but here, the biggest difference I think, most important is, it's your title, it's your property so it becomes your asset. And so if you think about it like a house or your car, but it goes back to a law which is around bailment, which is about English common law, hundreds of years of history, and only applies in commodities. And it's because it's a real asset and so when we move things, even if it's partially yours and somebody else's. You and I, let's say our tanker, half of it is mine, half is yours. That's bailment. It's similar to a coat check or a valet. When you valet your car, you didn't give that person your car. You expect it back, so that bailment concept is very powerful. It's part of English common law and all around the world. So it makes it your property, your title, your asset.

Ashraf Rizvi: (13:50)
And that's not the case, as you know, with the banking system. It's an IOU, that's fractional reserve banking where a stable coin even is sort of an IOU because they've got the money in a bank, et cetera. So that's really the big difference at the end day.

Ashraf Rizvi: (14:04)
The similarity I would say is freedom from fiat. We also share that vision. We want freedom from fiat.

Anthony Scaramucci : (14:11)
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, Ashraf Rizvi from Gilded. Thank you very much Ashraf.

Investing for Financial Storms | #SALTNY

Investing for Financial Storms with Mark Spitznagel, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Universa Investments.

Moderated by William Cohan, Bestselling Author & Founding Partner, Puck.

Powered by RedCircle

 

MODERATOR

SPEAKER

Headshot - Spitznagel, Mark - Cropped.jpeg

Mark Spitznagel

Founder & Chief Investment Officer

Universa Investments

Headshot - Cohan, Bill - Cropped.jpeg

William Cohan

Bestselling Author

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

William Cohan: (00:07)
It's nice to see people outside of their box, and I just want to say thank you to Anthony for bringing this to New York City and pulling this off. I think he deserves an amazing round of applause. This is incredible.

William Cohan: (00:30)
I'm here with Mark Spitznagel, who's an incredible investor. My first question, Mark, is on weeks like we've just had, where the market goes down every day, I know it's up a little bit today.

William Cohan: (00:48)
Do you get more calls on weeks like last week? Or more calls when the market's hitting its all-time highs?

Mark Spitznagel: (00:57)
Good question. Universa clients tend to be very strategic, as opposed to tactical. So I would say that in general, it doesn't really matter, and I would characterize this week as basically being noise. But it's a good question, because it really is when the market is going up that risk mitigation in the right way, cost-effective risk mitigation is so important.

Mark Spitznagel: (01:26)
Because I argue that cost effective risk mitigation, when done well, doesn't just take you out of risk, but actually allows you to take on more risk, so maybe it's better to say, take more exposure. This is really important. So the more the market rallies, the more that's really something.

Mark Spitznagel: (01:41)
That's important. But, of course, we also know that the more the market rallies, the more it can take all that back. It tends to be how boom-bust cycles work. But in general, I would say that it's noise.

William Cohan: (01:54)
It's a toss-up.

Mark Spitznagel: (01:55)
It's a toss-up.

William Cohan: (01:57)
How do people get in touch with you? And who are your clients? Who are they? Who are your investors?

Mark Spitznagel: (02:10)
It would tend to be your typical institutions, so ...

William Cohan: (02:16)
Looking for risk mitigation?

Mark Spitznagel: (02:18)
Well, exactly. I mean, institutions, think of a pension fund, the problem that they face is, what I call the great dilemma of risk, which is, if you don't take enough risk, of course, it costs you wealth over time.

Mark Spitznagel: (02:33)
If you take too much risk, it costs you wealth over time, so we're forced to kind of navigate and fine-tune, and find what is termed the Holy Grail, somewhere in the middle. The Holy Grail doesn't exist.

Mark Spitznagel: (02:45)
The modern portfolio theory of modern finance can't help with that problem. Of course, we know what modern finance tells us is that you take less risk, your return goes down. As long as that ratio is, all your risk adjusted returns are going up, that's an okay thing. This is the whole machinery of modern finance.

Mark Spitznagel: (03:07)
I would argue that this is something that we should question. What that's really telling us is that the cure is worse than disease, when it comes to risk mitigation.

Mark Spitznagel: (03:17)
I argue that we should mitigate risk, specifically to save us from the losses, and we should do better than had we experienced the losses without risk mitigation. It shouldn't cost us to do that, because it begs the question, then why do we do it?

Mark Spitznagel: (03:34)
But this is what modern portfolio theory is all about. My whole point, in my book, for instance, is it doesn't have to be that way. We just need to think about it differently.

William Cohan: (03:47)
You told me the other day, that you're as bearish as you could possibly be, but also, that it doesn't matter what you think, whether the market's going up or down. Can you explain how that could possibly be?

Mark Spitznagel: (04:04)
Yeah. I mean, Cassandras make very lousy investors. I don't think there's any question about that. They know they have to get their timing there, tactically, they have to be perfect, and they never are.

Mark Spitznagel: (04:17)
But it goes to my point about how, when risk mitigation is cost-effective, it's strategic, and we actually want the market to go up more, when we are risk mitigated. A good analogy would be when dark clouds loom, do you go hide inside? If you do, when dark clouds are always looming, you're always hiding inside.

Mark Spitznagel: (04:40)
But then, an analogy for a different type of risk mitigation, one that's more explosive, and one that's more efficient would be going outside when dark clouds loom, but having an umbrella that pops open when you need it. I guess that what this is showing is that risk mitigation, a safe haven, to be cost effective, needs to be explosive.

Mark Spitznagel: (04:59)
It needs to maximize the bang for the buck that you get out of it. What that really means is you need less of it. This is the whole problem with these risk mitigation strategies, diworsifiers, as Peter Lynch called them.

Mark Spitznagel: (05:12)
You could take hedge funds as a group, for example. You could take the strategy of certainly, risk parity, or you could take certainly fixed income. It gives you such little return in a crash, that you need so much of it in your portfolio, in order to be effective. The fact that you need so much of in your portfolio creates such a drag the rest of the time.

Mark Spitznagel: (05:35)
It just ends up making you poor, that the cure ends up having been worse than the disease, for all these strategies that I'm describing. It doesn't matter if there's a crash or no crash, which again, begs the question, what was the point of it all?

Mark Spitznagel: (05:47)
But if you need it for anything, and I'm not just saying this about tail hedging, it doesn't need parts, it doesn't need ... There's other ways that one could think about this.

Mark Spitznagel: (05:55)
If all you need is a very allocation, and it has enough crash bang for the buck, as I call it, then you actually are able to take on more systematic exposure, and you actually want the market to continue. I, for one, would like this boom to go on forever.

Mark Spitznagel: (06:12)
I'm saying that as a hedge fund manager, it really only expects to make large returns when there's a crash. But the effectiveness, the cost-effective effectiveness of what we do, exists, whether there's a crash or not, historically.

William Cohan: (06:27)
Why don't you explain how this works at Universa? I mean, you've put out some incredible numbers. 2020, correct me if I'm wrong, something around 4,000% increase, but overall in the life of your fund, more than 100%, which you say in the book here.

William Cohan: (06:49)
What exactly are you doing for investors? How does it work? How does this insurance, in effect, that you're selling investors work? How do you make money? How do they make money? Why should anybody be interested in what you're doing?

Mark Spitznagel: (07:04)
But I don't claim that they should, and I have no interest in, I have no reason to get into that level of detail. People often tell me that it feels like I'm dangling this idea in front of them, because I'm not going to talk about specific trades that I do, but I would ...

William Cohan: (07:19)
No, no, forget the specific trades.

Mark Spitznagel: (07:21)
Yeah.

William Cohan: (07:21)
The idea behind your trades, what are you offering? What is this protection that you're offering?

Mark Spitznagel: (07:28)
Well, I mean, it's the result. That is what I like to talk about, because it gives a better understanding of what it's offering to the end user. That is something that explodes in value in a crash, and loses small amounts of the rest of the time.

Mark Spitznagel: (07:40)
Obviously, that looks like a far out of the money put, but I never want to lead someone in that direction, because puts, to just to stay put, and to have somebody buy a put, you could even identify a strike, and a duration is, that that's not managed correctly. You're doing something and someone an extreme disservice.

Mark Spitznagel: (07:58)
This is something that we've been, we've been working on for 25 years, and we still learn every day, how best to do this. If you don't get the bang for the buck, and you're not able to monetize these things the way you need to, it's going to be a waste of your time, it's going to be very costly.

Mark Spitznagel: (08:13)
Like I said, it's far more important, I think, for people to understand the purpose of what we try to do in risk mitigation. I don't just mean we, I mean, we all try to do, as risk mitigators, why we're doing it. Because I think these are the sort of first principle questions that we don't ask.

Mark Spitznagel: (08:30)
It's why we find ourselves creating what I call the risk mitigation irony. We mitigate against the risk, but it ends up costing us more than that, the risk of that loss would have ever cost us in the first place. But like I said, this is modern portfolio theory.

Mark Spitznagel: (08:46)
If people just think about risk mitigation in terms of its cost effectiveness, what you need to do to be cost effective, I think they're way ahead of the game. I think that levels the playing field for most people, far more than if I were to just talk, or give a basic cartoon example of what Universa does.

William Cohan: (09:05)
You also once told me that you sell peace of mind for investors. That's a pretty great product to sell.

Mark Spitznagel: (09:17)
Peace of mind, but that, I mean, look, that too sounds like a ... At what cost? At what cost do we pay for peace of mind, right? There's this expression from one of the great German commodities traders is, "The better to sleep well to than to eat well."

Mark Spitznagel: (09:36)
I don't necessarily agree with that. I think if you're just looking for peace of mind, you're going to end up having overpaid for it. Maybe I said that, but it needs to be done cost effectively. That ultimately is the key.

Mark Spitznagel: (09:47)
The only way to do that is to do it in a way that you need to put so, so little into it. And this is the problem with gold, first and foremost. I mean, I'm an advocate of gold, clearly, because of my beliefs, I'm sorry, economic beliefs.

Mark Spitznagel: (10:00)
But the problem with gold is, for it to give you the hedge that it needs to give you, you have to have so much of it in your portfolio, that when it's not doing anything for you, it represents a massive drag. And over long periods of time, you really need to have gotten the tactical call right to make that work.

Mark Spitznagel: (10:17)
I think most people probably would agree with that, because they think of gold as sort of a tactical inflation hedge. But I just don't think that tactical risk mitigation is something that any of us will ever be able to do very well. It presumes that crystal ball that risk mitigation presupposes in the first place, that we don't, none of us have.

William Cohan: (10:38)
How about crypto? Is that a store of value? Is that something akin to gold at this point? Is Bitcoin akin to golds? Or is it riskier than that?

Mark Spitznagel: (10:51)
Crypto? I mean, I think I can I get the feeling that a lot of people who are into cryptocurrencies are, I mean, they're definitely my people. I mean, I'm considering myself a libertarian, and Ron Paul, but I think the problem is that it's the speculative aspect of it that bothers me.

Mark Spitznagel: (11:11)
I mean, we think of it as an antidote to this problem that we're living through right now, we all recognize it, but I think what ends up happening with the speculation behind it is, it's turned itself into a symptom. I mean, you've got to remember, it's very easy to put your blinders on and look at something like Bitcoin, or choose your cryptocurrency, and say, "Look at what this thing is doing."

Mark Spitznagel: (11:34)
There's something special going on here, just by price action. You can't argue with that, but then you take your blinders off, and you got to look around and say, "You can say the same thing about Rolex watches and baseball cards." These things are being pushed by the same fundamental liquidity driven speculative excess.

Mark Spitznagel: (11:58)
That's not to say that there's nothing that there isn't something special going on in crypto, I firmly do believe that, but I just think we need to recognize that there are other things driving it. It isn't just the sort of idiosyncratic story.

William Cohan: (12:14)
When we spoke in February of 2020, right before the full impact of the pandemic became clear to Americans, anyway, and I remember the high yield bond then was yielding about 5%, which I thought was ridiculous, and the market was at another one of its all time highs. And I was very concerned that the market was going to correct, and I think you were, too.

William Cohan: (12:49)
In March, it did correct, in a bad, big, bad way. Of course, then the Fed stepped in, in both March and April. And now, we're levitating again, and what you were just talking about, asset prices, across the board, the market's pretty much at an all time high again.

William Cohan: (13:06)
I looked yesterday, the high yield bond is yielding under 4%. To me, this is screaming correction. You said, when we talked a few weeks ago, that you were as nervous as ever or worried is ever about the markets. What do you think it was going on here?

William Cohan: (13:30)
I mean, it's almost October, so that's usually correction time in America, in the markets. What's your take?

Mark Spitznagel: (13:39)
Well, I agree that we should all be very concerned, but the more overvalued markets get, the more they tend to get. But overvaluation is the ultimate source of crashes. This notion of a black swan event, I mean, I can show empirically, at least historically, it doesn't have to always be the case, but they have basically all come from a period of overvaluation.

Mark Spitznagel: (14:01)
The market just gets more fragile, and is more prone to pay, it pays more attention to bad news, and it's overvalued, right? I agree with you, but I just don't think that we should all of a sudden pretend that we can time this. We should be ready for it. We should absolutely be ready for it.

Mark Spitznagel: (14:16)
The problem is, when you, if you adjust your portfolio accordingly, with the sort of linear instruments, if your disposition is wrong, what you could be exposing yourself to is getting squeezed back in as the market goes higher, and just trade short. Or do you make yourself short gamma?

Mark Spitznagel: (14:34)
This is the problem when someone says, "Should I get out of the market?" There's no way to answer that question to somebody, without knowing what they're being able to forecast what they would do in certain environments, how short gamma they would be, conditional on different market moves, if the market were to run away from them.

Mark Spitznagel: (14:53)
Similarly, when someone is too long, and the market goes down, they're susceptible to selling it in the hole. I think this is the problem the question people need to ask themselves is, "What would I do in the scenario where the market moves against me?" And we probably aren't even able to answer that question honesty.

Mark Spitznagel: (15:13)
I'm not just talking about retail investors here. I mean, there are huge sophisticated pension funds that succumb to this problem of being short gamma, as a result of some grandiose forecast that they make, and position their portfolio accordingly.

William Cohan: (15:29)
I mean, do you have any sense of what the catalyst might be for correction?

Mark Spitznagel: (15:36)
I don't even have to think about that.

William Cohan: (15:37)
No, you don't, but ...

Mark Spitznagel: (15:37)
But I don't have to think about that. So the question can always be asked. It's a credit bubble, and if that credit is being generated by the Fed, why should it ever end, as long as the Fed doesn't ever end it?

Mark Spitznagel: (15:52)
I don't think that the central banks will ever pop this bubble. I think that they cannot afford to do that. It will have to come from something else. I don't think that that's a controversial statement.

William Cohan: (16:03)
No.

Mark Spitznagel: (16:04)
But the problem is, there's a limit to how much debt any entity can take on. That's why it ends up its own sort of weight.

William Cohan: (16:16)
Well, and there's, I think, at least in my judgment, a clear mispricing of risk. I mean, back in my younger days, high yield investors demanded 10, 11, 12%-plus warrants, and if Mike Milken didn't put them in his pocket, then they might actually get them. Now you've got under 4% yield, no one talks about warrants.

Mark Spitznagel: (16:45)
Yeah, yeah.

William Cohan: (16:46)
I mean, how do you reconcile the investor capitulation that's gone on, and their willingness to take incredible risk, and not get compensated for it? I mean, maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't.

William Cohan: (17:00)
On a relative basis, it's better than owning Treasuries, or whatever, that yeld under 1%. I get that whole argument, but I just don't understand why, once upon a time, they demanded 800 basis points more yield, plus warrants, and now?

Mark Spitznagel: (17:18)
Yeah.

William Cohan: (17:19)
No big deal.

Mark Spitznagel: (17:20)
Or you can just lever it up. I mean, leverage is so the panacea for a strategy that doesn't make enough money for you. I mean, it is also the excuse that risk parity, for example, uses.

Mark Spitznagel: (17:33)
Risk parity, for instance, I'm not just picking on risk parity, diworsifying strategies cost you well, but the presumption, then, is that you will just lever them up, and it won't cost you well. But of course, that's preposterous to think that it should blow your mind that you need to use leverage, financial engineering leverage, in order for a risk mitigation strategy to be effective.

Mark Spitznagel: (17:52)
But I think that is sort of a presumption, that we just do more of it, do more of it. There's a Margaret Thatcher quote that says, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Mark Spitznagel: (18:06)
But I think that when it comes to these credit booms, credit bubbles, the problem with credit bubbles is, eventually, you're no longer able to borrow other people's money. There's a limit to that. And I think we need to remember that. This is not just an infinite source.

Mark Spitznagel: (18:22)
This is not necessarily helicopter money, it's a debt. And fundamental to all of this is thinking, is equating debt with wealth, fundamental to the belief in this going on forever.

William Cohan: (18:36)
You have to pay debt back, last time I ...

Mark Spitznagel: (18:38)
It's a liability.

William Cohan: (18:39)
Yeah.

Mark Spitznagel: (18:39)
It's not an asset.

William Cohan: (18:40)
Not an asset. Okay. So you wrote this book, Safe Haven. Why'd you do this?

Mark Spitznagel: (18:48)
You know ...

William Cohan: (18:49)
Write a book this hard?

Mark Spitznagel: (18:50)
I almost didn't. It was very hard to get done, and it was introspection for me.

Mark Spitznagel: (18:55)
I mean, the general idea is why I approach risk mitigation the way I do. I think it's a framework, right, on how I think people should think about it.

Mark Spitznagel: (19:07)
As I said before, I think there's so much superficial narrative in what risk mitigation or safe haven investing is, so much superficial narrative, people don't ask what they're trying to accomplish in doing it.

Mark Spitznagel: (19:20)
If they did that, I think we wouldn't have these diwosrfiying strategies out there, nearly as popular as we do, because there wouldn't be a reason to do that. The logic would dictate that people would have to stop doing that.

William Cohan: (19:35)
Yeah, but we've talked about this before. I mean, retail investors, regular investors, non-institutional investors, can't really get access to your risk mitigation strategies. Being in cash, as you said, is not a great strategy.

William Cohan: (19:55)
I have found, having lived through now, three or four crashes, that if you just sort of stick with it, the market does seem to rebound, and everything sort of works out despite the pain that you're experiencing during the market disruption. What's the common man to do in this situation?

Mark Spitznagel: (20:14)
I mean, the common man is, they're kind of screwed there. They're trapped in this dilemma that I've described. This is the trap that, that has been set by central banks for our whole life.

William Cohan: (20:30)
Pretty close.

Mark Spitznagel: (20:30)
Let's say it started in the '80s, big time. Listen, everything can't be about cookbook on what your next trade should be. First of all, we got to get our first principles right.

Mark Spitznagel: (20:46)
We got to understand we're doing what we're doing. We've got to understand what to expect out of our safe haven, out of our risk mitigation strategy. Are we making a forecast? Is it a punt on its own?

Mark Spitznagel: (21:00)
Or do we think we're actually using it strategically to mitigate our risks? And if so, what should we expect of it? Is this something that we should always have on? Or do we think that we know something special about the world right now, that we're going to get this right?

Mark Spitznagel: (21:13)
I think, most people think of it, it looks like diversification is the way to go for most people. So I think most people think about safe havens and risk mitigation as just a cost that you bear.

Mark Spitznagel: (21:28)
But if you look historically at it, what you find is that that cost, you can go through all the cycles that you can find. That cost is something that you would never have made up. So then, why did you do it?

Mark Spitznagel: (21:43)
This is particularly relevant today, with interest rates where they are. Because, of course, it's fixed income that is the ultimate diversification.

William Cohan: (21:52)
It's personally relevant, particularly with interest rates where they are, and where the markets are where they are, and where other assets are where they are. I mean, it just is screaming out for correction, if you ask me. Because I've been like a broken clock right twice a day for the last five years.

Mark Spitznagel: (22:07)
But I don't disagree with what you're saying. But I still think we all need to take this sort of benevolent universe premise. What that means is, it doesn't mean that everything will turn out okay.

Mark Spitznagel: (22:17)
It means that we can adapt, and we should be working to make those changes, in order to make our way through. And that doesn't necessarily just mean we have to hide in the basement, right?

William Cohan: (22:28)
In the three or four minutes we have left here, so if we can't, by and large, get access to your risk mitigation strategies, we can get access to your goat cheese.

William Cohan: (22:43)
You have an incredible farm in Michigan, and you make incredible goat cheese, but you have a philosophy of farming that I think is pretty fascinating too. Could you share that with us?

Mark Spitznagel: (22:58)
Well, I mean, we do regenerative farming at Idyll Farms, and that's based on a very managed way, moving these ruminant goats around pasture, on this basically mimicking nature the way ruminants used to roam around the landscape.

Mark Spitznagel: (23:16)
When you do that, you get this sort of interesting symbiotic relationship between the ruminants and the pasture and the soil. What ends up happening is, the productivity of the soil and the health of the soil explodes. So this is something that is a movement that's going on right now.

Mark Spitznagel: (23:35)
But the connection that I make is, when you do this, the whole is, is pretty much greater than the sum of the parts. And I think that modern agriculture, really, that's the one thing they really miss.

Mark Spitznagel: (23:47)
Because what has modern, industrial farming done? It's taken the ruminants, put them inside, and it's planted monoculture, chemical monoculture crops on that land, and then moves it to feed them inside.

Mark Spitznagel: (23:59)
Of course, when you do that as an ecological disaster, and it's very unhealthy, and our top soil is being depleted, but that's just looking at the parts. It's looking at it in a reductionist way, which is a perfect analogy to what modern finance has done.

Mark Spitznagel: (24:13)
You break down the portfolio in a very reductionist way by optimizing some meaningless mean variance, sharp ratio in your portfolio, that just ends up making everybody poor, without looking at the whole, when you're looking at what different types of, as I said before, explosive types of payouts can do for the whole. Yeah, it seems that that has been very important to me for a long time.

William Cohan: (24:42)
Why didn't you decide to do this, as a sidelight to your investing?

Mark Spitznagel: (24:47)
Well, it was a wonderful antidote to trading and investing, but we know, of course, goats are these wonderful herding animals. And it sort of occurred to me too late, that as long as I'm out there with them, that all I've really done is moved from one herding beast, in investing in the markets, to another herding beast. There are great similarities, but it's a ...

William Cohan: (25:12)
Goats can be nicer, though, than people.

Mark Spitznagel: (25:14)
Oh, they tend to be. They tend to be.

William Cohan: (25:15)
Yeah.

Mark Spitznagel: (25:16)
But everybody needs something sort of tangible, I think, in their lives like that.

William Cohan: (25:21)
And is it a viable business for you?

Mark Spitznagel: (25:24)
It is. The other great byproduct of this sort of symbiotic relationship between ruminant and pasture and soil, is that it makes particularly good milk for cheese.

Mark Spitznagel: (25:37)
I mean, it's interesting, even in the Loire Valley, they stopped using this pasture-based model, and our cheese is far better than goat cheese from Loire Valley. There's no bias in that.

William Cohan: (25:50)
No, and I was going to say, you say so yourself. But your other location is Miami. Why there?

Mark Spitznagel: (25:58)
Well, we moved the firm from California in 2014. Listen, we all know what's going on, from Wall Street to South Florida. I think it's a very positive thing. It keeps both ends of that transaction more disciplined. People vote with their feet. It's a very business friendly environment, better time zones and things like that, too.

William Cohan: (26:23)
Well, thank you very much. Mark is an incredible investor and a great maker of goat cheese. So if you can ever get him to let you into his risk mitigation strategy, you will be better off for it. I haven't convinced him yet.

Mark Spitznagel: (26:38)
Thank you.

William Cohan: (26:39)
Thank you.

Innovation & Inclusion: Why Diversity Yields Better Results | #SALTNY

Innovation & Inclusion: Why Diversity Yields Better Results with Cathie Wood, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, ARK Invest. Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald, Divisional Vice Chairman, GWM, UHNW, UBS. Michaela Edwards, Partner & Member, Investment Committee, Capricorn Investment Group. Rupal Bhansali, Chief Investment Officer & Portfolio Manager, International & Global Equities, Ariel Investments.

Moderated by Lisa Diaz, President & Chief Executive Officer, Prince Street Capital.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Cathie Wood

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer

ARK investment Management

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Jolyne Caruso-FitzGerald

Divisional Vice Chairman, GWM, UHNW

UBS

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Michaela Edwards

Partner

Capricorn Investment Group

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Rupal Bhansali

Chief Investment Officer & Portfolio Manager, International & Global Equities

Ariel Investments

 

MODERATOR

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Lisa Diaz

President & Chief Executive Officer

Prince Street Capital

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Lisa Diaz: (00:07)
Good afternoon, and welcome to our panel on Diversity and Inclusion and Innovation.

Lisa Diaz: (00:15)
We're going to outline, today, the reasons that it's interesting to invest in both innovation, as well as inclusion. I'm Lisa Diaz, President, CEO of Prince Street Capital Management. We are an emerging markets innovation fund, and I want to extend a special thanks to Anthony Scaramucci, and John Darsie, as well as Joe Alletto, for organizing and supporting this important panel today.

Lisa Diaz: (00:44)
So, innovation has become a consensus good. The market is thirsty for more innovation as a source of economic returns. Innovation, by its very nature, is about challenging the status quo. It's about finding new solutions to age-old problems, and addressing friction points. In the asset-management business, what's the biggest friction point? How do you generate alpha, and how do you deliver outsized returns?

Lisa Diaz: (01:16)
We believe that diversity, and perspective, insight, experience, and styles provided by women-led managers, and minority managers is an undervalued asset.

Lisa Diaz: (01:30)
A recent Goldman Sachs analysis of portfolio-management performance actually found out that diverse managers outperformed by 100 basis points. Think what that means over decade timeframe. However, in the US, only 3% of total assets are controlled by woman-led firms. That means that 97% of total assets are managed by the traditional power group, AKA, people who have a tendency to have a similar perspective.

Lisa Diaz: (02:06)
So we think that represents an arbitrage because, despite the small numbers, nearly 30% of top quartile managers are, in fact, women. So that's a great opportunity for allocators. We see inclusion as a next big innovation in asset-management business, and we hope that more capital should be allocated to woman-led managers, because it makes economic sense, because it delivers returns.

Lisa Diaz: (02:39)
I am very honored to be here with four trendsetters, innovators, change agents, who have been the forefront of transforming the face of finance.

Lisa Diaz: (02:51)
To my left, Cathie Wood, who is founder, CEO, and CIO of Ark Asset, who blazed a new path dedicated to innovation investing, and has disrupted the asset-management industry through her success in raising over 80 billion dollars in AUM. And now, some of the major mutual fund complexes such as JP Morgan and the American Funds are following Cathy's suit. Pretty impressive.

Lisa Diaz: (03:21)
Next to her left, we have Jolyne Caruso-FitzGerald, who is Divisional Vice Chairman of Global Wealth Management at UBS. She oversees UBS's top advisors who work exclusively with global ultra [inaudible 00:03:35] net families, and she was a founder of The Alberleen Group, a woman-owned and woman-led boutique investment bank. Before that, she was President and Co-Founder of the $8 billion Andor Capital hedge fund complex, as well as earlier in her career was both a Managing Director at Lehman and JP Morgan Securities.

Lisa Diaz: (03:58)
Next, we have Michaela Edwards, who is Partner and Portfolio Manager at Capricorn Investment Group, one of the largest mission-aligned firms in the world, with over eight billion dollars invested for families, foundations, and institutional clients. Prior to Capricorn, Michaela spent nine years as a Portfolio Manager at Norges Bank, the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, overseeing a $10 billion portfolio.

Lisa Diaz: (04:26)
And finally, we have Rupal Bhansali, who is Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager at Ariel Investments, International Global Equity Strategy. She's a three-time intrapreneur, having founded multimillion dollar international equities capabilities throughout her 30 year career, not once, but three times. Once at Oppenheimer, at MacKay Shields, and now at Ariel Investments.

Lisa Diaz: (04:54)
So this is a rock star group of thought leaders in the industry.

Lisa Diaz: (04:59)
So, to camper off our conversation on innovation inclusion, Cathie, can we start with you? I would love for you to share your thoughts on innovation as Ark Investment has literally created a new asset class, and has harnessed the power of ETFs, and evolved the thinking with [inaudible 00:05:18], and coming up with a new set of KPIs.

Lisa Diaz: (05:20)
So tell us what you're thinking about these days and how you came up with the inspiration for this new asset class.

Cathie Wood: (05:27)
Okay. Well, thank you, Lisa.

Cathie Wood: (05:30)
I started in our business a very long time ago, 1977. I was in college at the time and, I worked at Capital Group and, as many of you know, Capital Group group is known for its in-depth research. And I remember being 1977 and I was put on a project to work with a team focused on Hong Kong, 1997.

Cathie Wood: (06:00)
And I said, I want to be in this business. I want to understand how the world is going to work. Fast forward, great two decades, eighties and nineties, tech and telecom bust, '08, '09, incredible risk aversion, I would say, permeating our industry, and this concept of benchmarks and indexes, directing investors as to how they should invest, and our strategy, which is all about innovation in a traditional asset-management firm was looking more and more like an odd duck and not receiving the support that I thought it should.

Cathie Wood: (06:44)
And I just said, "Okay, there is a huge arbitrage opportunity out there", just what you said in your intro, huge arbitrage opportunity. The private markets are pricing innovation here, sometimes five and 10 times higher than the public markets were willing to price innovation, and I thought, "Okay, starting my own firm would, would be a good way to go."

Cathie Wood: (07:10)
But even more, I think, when I thought, "Well, wait a minute, if you're going to start a firm, why don't you become a little more disruptive than that, and use some of the technologies that have disrupted all these other industries to, at the margin, at least disrupt our industry?"

Cathie Wood: (07:28)
So, social media giving away our research and really doing that to educate, that is one of our missions and values, but also to engage with the communities we're researching, those who are doing the innovating and become a part of those communities. And I have to tell you, I think it's given us an enormous competitive edge, because most compliance departments in traditional asset-management firms will not let their portfolio managers or their analysts say anything about their research or their portfolios on social media. We hired someone from the SEC to help us with that, and I think we're on the right side of regulation.

Cathie Wood: (08:16)
It's been enormous, the gratitude we get for the research we share, and for the investment ideas that we share freely, since we disclose our holdings at the end of every day, and we also disclose our trades.

Cathie Wood: (08:33)
So we have a lot of people with their PAs, their personal accounts, looking at what we do today, and other who don't want to do that themselves. They just say, "I'll let you do it, this is your area of expertise."

Cathie Wood: (08:46)
So it's been a wild ride from 15 million dollars in October 2014, to north Of 75 billion, as you said earlier, and very gratifying.

Lisa Diaz: (09:01)
Fantastic. So, Rupal, turning to you, how does integrate innovation into your portfolios at Ariel Investment? And, also, can you talk about, is innovation just the domain of young upstart companies, or do you find companies in your portfolio who are "traditional", who can innovate?

Rupal Bhansali: (09:22)
Well, thank you for that. It's always hard to follow Cathie Woods, on that topic of innovation, but I'll try.

Rupal Bhansali: (09:29)
No, I don't think innovation is a preserve of just upstart companies. I think Cathie makes a fair point that there was an arbitrage between private and public markets.

Rupal Bhansali: (09:39)
I personally believe that a lot of investors got very complacent and did research in a very traditional, backward-looking way. I'm a non-consensus thinker, and I'm a contrarian. So I believe can you actually identify innovation amongst incumbent companies and arbitrage that, by having a long term horizon.

Rupal Bhansali: (10:05)
I think that's the disconnect, sometimes, between the private markets and the public markets. It takes time to generate the payoff from an R&D investment and it takes patience, and that's sometimes lacking in people who invest based on benchmarks and based on tracking errors. I don't.

Rupal Bhansali: (10:24)
So, I think, with that kind of freedom, we've invested in a lot of companies. In a country where people rarely associate that country with innovation because it's known to be a country that's socialist, and of course we identify innovation with capitalism, and yet this country has over-indexed on innovation.

Rupal Bhansali: (10:49)
I'll give you a couple of seconds to think about which country I'm going to mention in the world. I hope it blows your mind. Whenever I talk to my clients, they are stunned by it. So here's the answer: it's France.

Rupal Bhansali: (11:04)
French companies, you look at Airbus, the aircraft that they came up with in terms of the Airbus 330, and the 350, and the whole line, it is giving a run for the money to Boeing.

Rupal Bhansali: (11:16)
Dassault Systemes, they do CAD/CAM software, and even IBM could not produce that kind of software. No American company has produced that kind of heavy duty, three-dimensional software that Dassault does. And I can go company after company. If you think Louis Vuitton is not innovative, you've got something coming in the luxury market, and Hermès, and L'Oreal.

Rupal Bhansali: (11:41)
You look at Proctor and Gamble, L'Oreal has stolen a [inaudible 00:11:45] on P&G in America in the category of shampoos. So, I think innovation can happen anywhere, anyhow, if you put your mind to it, in any sector. And, as an investor, if you think outside the box, which is I really think what Cathie is talking about, you can find opportunity everywhere.

Rupal Bhansali: (12:05)
So we own a lot of these sorts of companies. Safran comes to mind, it's in our portfolio, for example. It came up with a composite material to produce a next-gen aircraft engine. It had to spend billions of euros in R&D in the first 10 years or so, and it wasn't reporting profits from that endeavor, because the revenues not there, but the costs are, like what happens in a Tesla, or it happens in any of these new companies.

Rupal Bhansali: (12:34)
It just happened to be a publicly-listed company. But, now that they've got this product commercial, on the market, you have a 15 years line of sight to the spare parts, aftermarket opportunity, which is their business model.

Rupal Bhansali: (12:48)
So I think if you look for it, you can find it anywhere. And if I can tie it back, therefore, to diversity and inclusion, I think that's what it's all about. If you know how to look for it, you'll find it everywhere. And what you'll actually find is that diverse people tend to be the most innovative because they've got to be, they've been left behind. And so, for them, it's differentiate or die.

Rupal Bhansali: (13:11)
And so I think if allocators want to get a piece of innovation, they should back diversity. It comes full circle to inclusion.

Lisa Diaz: (13:21)
A very well spoken point.

Lisa Diaz: (13:23)
So, Michaela, pivoting to the second aspect of this conversation about innovation inclusion. Tell us about your vision to disrupt and transform the asset-management industry, and some of the catalysts that have driven your journey to this point.

Michaela Edwards: (13:41)
Well, thank you for the question.

Michaela Edwards: (13:44)
I would say the under-representation that we have in asset management of both female, but also black and brown investors, really hasn't budged much in the last two decades aids. And, for me, that is something that we need to address, especially on the pipeline side of it.

Michaela Edwards: (14:01)
So, at Capricorn, we've spent over a decade seeding and anchoring new, emerging, early-stage managers, and what we find is really two things: one being that there's a lot of innovation, there's entrepreneurial models that are happening with new managers, and, secondly, I would say is that there's a broader set of representation. So by just being earlier stage, we get a bigger opportunity set. It's less efficient, but also you get the opportunity to partner with the likes of Cathie Woods and the Rupals of the world, early on.

Michaela Edwards: (14:42)
And on that, we really want to partner with these new fund managers. We want to bring them to scale, so that we can crowd in other institutional investors, and, hopefully, we will, at some point, get an industry that is representative of the world that we live in.

Lisa Diaz: (14:57)
I sure hope so.

Lisa Diaz: (14:58)
So, Jolyne, given your role at UBS overseeing the firm's top advisors who serve large family offices, can you offer perspective from your client base as it relates to the issue of female founders, both as fund managers and business owners, do they have a different perspective?

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (15:19)
So I am actually thrilled to be up here, and, Lisa, thank you for... I have a very different background than my colleagues on the stage, so I'd like to offer it from the family office perspective because we've done, at UBS, a lot of analysis around this and for the family offices in the room, thank you for leading, and this will resonate with you as I'm speaking, for sure.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (15:41)
So I think this actually might be a watershed moment where family offices, who have grown in stature, and wealth in buying power, influence in the investment community, this is the moment for you all to make the change. And there's four reasons why I think this could be a very pivotal moment for this challenging issue that I've been facing for three and a half decades in my career. One, it's the family office's global wealth increasing.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (16:13)
We saw family office assets soar. They're getting wealthier, they're getting more influential. The second trend is the institutionalization of the family office. You are all so smart. You are disintermediating Wall Street, you are doing deals, you are seating managers, you are clubbing direct investments into private companies. That whole trend gives you tremendous power to actually move the needle, and you are.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (16:42)
I think the third thing, which I will talk about a little bit more, hopefully, later in the conversation is we are in the midst of somewhere, depending on who you ask $30-60 trillion generational wealth transfer. Well, guess what? That is disproportionately going to women. We have all the statistics on that.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (17:01)
And the fourth issue, tied to that, is how do women invest? How do millennial women, how do next-gen women invest? They're investing with purpose. We have the stats on this, 65% of our family offices that we surveyed in our global family office report, have said that they are investing with ESG principles. And that that is going to constitute 25% of their asset allocation within the next five years. When I look at the confluence of these four factors, I say, "Bring it on."

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (17:38)
The family offices are the ones that actually can change the equation here. Seed hedge funds that are started by women, seed direct women-owned businesses that are increasingly solving global issues. Put your buying power here, and I see it happening and I'm super excited about it.

Lisa Diaz: (18:02)
That's incredibly exciting and encouraging. So can we go back through history? Cathie, when you were starting Ark, there was this whole emerging manager programs that we've all heard lots about. I think it's been a focus of New York state in particular. What was your personal experience, and were they some of the big underwriters when you were just starting out on this vision to pursue innovation?

Cathie Wood: (18:28)
Not at all. Sorry.

Cathie Wood: (18:32)
No, what happened is the institutional world, which these consultants serve had gone, also had gone, the consultant world, had moved towards benchmarks, and we looked absolutely out of our minds. And so just too volatile, too radical. So, they were interested, because it was daring, they thought, but they could never come around, and I understand it. It's the world they grew up in. So I'm just happy I grew up more in the seventies, eighties, nineties, when I knew that, and this might sound a little cheeky, but when I was describing what I wanted to do, what I felt was missing in the investment world, when it came to innovation, certainly, someone not even in the business said to me, "Oh, so you mean the future of investing is investing in the future?" And I said, "Yes! Yes! Benchmarks are backwards looking."

Cathie Wood: (19:45)
And if, as we believe, there are four major innovation platforms that are going to transform, we think, every industry out there, and the convergence of those technologies is going to be very confusing, but is going to present explosive growth opportunities. We had to go out and go social to get our message out.

Cathie Wood: (20:12)
They understood much more than the consultants who were anchored to these benchmarks. And I think that anchor is going to become a dead weight if they don't watch out.

Lisa Diaz: (20:27)
So you didn't fit in the box?

Cathie Wood: (20:28)
I didn't fit in any box.

Lisa Diaz: (20:29)
You didn't fit in any box?

Cathie Wood: (20:30)
No.

Lisa Diaz: (20:31)
So you created your own box, or your own canvas?

Cathie Wood: (20:34)
Yes. And, just on that, I'm going to credit MSCI.

Cathie Wood: (20:38)
In 2018, MSCI actually came to us and said, "It seems as though what you're doing here is creating a new asset category."

Cathie Wood: (20:52)
I won't say asset class, but much like the emerging markets they moved from, they helped in invent, I suppose, the investability of emerging markets by combining countries in one portfolio. That seemed radical and transformational at the time. Well, we're doing the same with innovation, and the correlations among these 14 technologies involved in these five platforms is not that high, surprisingly.

Lisa Diaz: (21:25)
Which is exciting.

Lisa Diaz: (21:26)
So, Rupal, you've also been hugely successful. So, globally, the number is even more disturbing. Only 1.3% of total global assets are run by diverse managers. You are one of them.

Lisa Diaz: (21:42)
So tell us, what was your own path and experience with being in the DEI space? Did you get encouragement? Were there certain pockets that were supportive? Tell us the story.

Rupal Bhansali: (21:57)
Well, I think I get asked this question a lot. What does it feel like to be one of the rare female portfolio managers? And the only answer I can give is, not successful, or great, or gratified. It feels lonely.

Rupal Bhansali: (22:16)
There should be more of us, and I think that's what needs to change. And I've said this five years ago, and 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and the clock is ticking, and I think the numbers don't move, and I think that's the travesty.

Rupal Bhansali: (22:35)
But I do believe that the future is going to look very different from the past, and there is going to be a disruption of a different sort in our industry, which is to say, it's been easy to invest passively, and not think about it, because markets have gone up. A bull market, you can suspend your thinking and just go long and think that you are skilled, even if you're just lucky, but I don't think the next decade or the decade thereafter, it's going to be that easy to make money passively. Valuations in the markets are sky high and you really got to curate your portfolio.

Rupal Bhansali: (23:20)
You got to pick your spots, and those are the kinds of things that I think people on this side of the table tend to do. We pick our spots, we don't just lean on a benchmark and accept whatever it brings to us. We differentiate from it, we actually stand out.

Rupal Bhansali: (23:39)
And I think when it comes to, therefore, picking managers, not just picking asset-losses, people will have to think outside the box there too, because the incumbents have really just hugged the benchmark and it's been fine, and so have the allocators, and that's fine, because the benchmarks just kept going up. But when they don't, and they actually start coming down and you have what I call, for the first time, potentially, a protracted bear market, which we frankly never had for 70 years. We've had quick ones, we've had short-lived ones, but we've never had a protracted one.

Rupal Bhansali: (24:21)
Now I cover global equities, and I can tell you, I covered Japan, tortuous. Try going passive, investing in a market that's falling. You'll have your head handed to you. And I think that the US markets, and every Western market, like we went through in many other markets in the world that have done nothing but fall, if they simply stop thinking, all you experience is losses.

Rupal Bhansali: (24:51)
So in investing, ignorance is not bliss, it's loss. So I think they will wake up to reality that they need to do things differently. And part of that means looking for new blood, and new blood happens to be diverse. It's not pale, male, and stale. It's usually female, and I think that's what's going to turn the numbers, partly, because they will have no choice.

Rupal Bhansali: (25:21)
That said, I think if they are smart about it, they will try to get ahead of that curve, because one of the things about active management is that it's capacity gated. Try getting into Cathie's funds, now, at 70 billion compared to when she was at 10 or 15 million, as she started out. It's harder and harder to put that money to work. So you need to get in early, and part of that means trying to identify that talent early on.

Rupal Bhansali: (25:50)
That is the market inefficiency that allocators can exploit, and should exploit, if they're smart about it. But as they say, if you want to move the mouse, you got to move the cheese, otherwise a mouse ain't moving. So I think allocators, if they are serious about ESG, DEI, all these buzzwords being thrown about, they need to set targets, and they need to have consequences for meeting them or missing them. There haven't been any and nobody got fired for hiring IBM.

Rupal Bhansali: (26:32)
That's what's playing out in our industry, and look what happened in technology. I think a lot of people eventually did get fired for hiring IBM, and they would be well enough to learn from that industry into ours. Our industry is facing massive disruption, massive change, and people are in denial about it.

Rupal Bhansali: (26:52)
So I would just suggest: create targets, measure them, hold people accountable for both meeting them and missing them, and that's how you move the mouse to the cheese.

Lisa Diaz: (27:04)
Sounds like a great idea.

Lisa Diaz: (27:05)
So, Michaela, can you talk to us? What are some of the hurdles that less-established managers face when being considered by larger institutions? And can you think about how you changed the criteria used to enable, to facilitate investment, in this next generation of thought leaders and investors?

Michaela Edwards: (27:26)
Absolutely.

Michaela Edwards: (27:27)
I think Rupal is spot on. There needs to be innovation in our industry, and that means the traditional way of allocating clearly hasn't worked for representation. And we all know the three major hurdles, they tend to be track, record, scale or size, and pedigree. If you don't have a minimum of a three year, or, hopefully, a five year track record, or a minimum of a hundred million under assets, assets under management, and hopefully a name brand or two on your resume, either a school or a firm, you don't check the box.

Michaela Edwards: (28:02)
So you get screened out. Now, when people look at a track record, I feel that they use that as a proxy for scale, we're saying, "Okay, I see the track record, there must be some skill here and not just luck."

Michaela Edwards: (28:16)
Well, I think that's an easy way out. I think performance is an outcome of people and process, and that's on the allocator side, that we really need to do the job of identifying differentiated talent, differentiated process, so hopefully, we can estimate that there's a probability of outperformance. And not only probability of outperformance, but a repeatability of that outperformance. That's the allocator job, and not being willing to do that, I think you leave a lot of alpha on the table by not being early.

Michaela Edwards: (28:51)
And when it comes to scale, what we found to be a good solution for a lot of our big-ticket clients, is to take a portfolio approach. A lot of our big allocators can't allocate to a hundred million dollar fund, but they want to get in. They want to be in the new startups, but they can't make the single ticket themselves. So if you can create a fund structure or a separate managed account, you can get around that.

Michaela Edwards: (29:18)
So if you find a compelling strategy, a team that you believe in, there's ways around it, if you're willing to. And then last, on pedigree, I would say, of course, it's easy to tick the box and you find comfort in name brands, but at the same time as Rupal was pointing out, I think there's a lot to be said for cognitive diversity, and especially for innovation.

Michaela Edwards: (29:44)
You need creative solutions. And around that, I would say just working for a company that's B corporation. We have half of our firm from other countries, globally. We have 50% women. I see it every day, the benefit of diversity of thought and of experiences, and that it leads to creative solutions and bold decision making.

Michaela Edwards: (30:06)
I want that tension in the room of different views, I think that leads us to better decisions. So, I think, instead of just talking about the risk factors of going early, and not having a track record, et cetera, I would love for us to switch it and say, "Well, what's the opportunity cost of losing out on the five first years of compounding returns?"

Michaela Edwards: (30:27)
That's the cost, and it's not just risk.

Lisa Diaz: (30:30)
So, Jolyne, let's talk to you.

Lisa Diaz: (30:32)
The family office universe seems to be, that could be at the forefront of this evolution and change. They have more flexibility. Often they are, themselves, innovators, they thought differently.

Lisa Diaz: (30:44)
So, can you share some of your numbers about how Millennials generation acts are likely to allocate and how they're going to think about their allocation in this great wealth transfer?

Lisa Diaz: (30:56)
Are they going to be more open to more innovative ways and innovative types of managers?

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (31:03)
Yeah, we think so.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (31:05)
We've done a lot of measurement at UBS around family offices. We have an annual survey, and we spend all our time in the ultra, at least I spend all my time in the ultra space, and the global family office space. And I think there are a couple of trends that will help this dilemma and move the needle here.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (31:26)
One, as I mentioned before, this 30-60 trillion that is coming over the next 20 years will go to women. We need to see more women step up in their family offices. The endowment and foundation market has a lot of female CIOs. We don't have as many in the family office. I hope that that will be a seed change, but to speak, specifically, to Millennials, we see a lot of families coming to us, to generation one, saying, "Oh my gosh, my grandchildren, they want to change how we do everything, from philanthropy, the causes we give to." As everyone knows, Millennials are more left leaning, so their politics are very, very different. How will that change?

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (32:14)
One: they care about climate. They care, in a post-COVID world, about how women in particular have been affected globally by COVID, disproportionately. They care about social inequity and gender parity. So as we see this cohort, Millennials, by the way, they're 70 million strong, they're actually bigger than the Boomer generation right now, in number.

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (32:43)
As we see them grow in their family offices, as they get wealth passed to them, I actually think we're going to see a change in how the money is allocated, who the leaders of the next generation asset managers are.

Lisa Diaz: (33:00)
So finally, we're running out of time, but as four powerful change agents and leaders, if you can each make one specific recommendation or aspiration, what would it be?

Lisa Diaz: (33:13)
So, Cathie, can we start with you?

Cathie Wood: (33:16)
Sure. In terms of, are you talking about for women?

Lisa Diaz: (33:19)
Women to increase the number, so how do we get from 3% to 10%, right Rupal, or maybe 25? We have a couple of ideas?

Rupal Bhansali: (33:29)
10% by 2025, 30% by 2030, and 50% by 2050. We'll give you guys time.

Cathie Wood: (33:41)
Well, I'm on record as saying I've loved being a woman in this business, I have.

Cathie Wood: (33:47)
Because when I started, it was '77, I was in college, quite young, very low expectations, but I had high ambitions and it's easy to surprise if you're willing to put yourself out there, make yourself vulnerable.

Cathie Wood: (34:05)
So the first is, participate, but only if you have really good ideas that actually are questioning the conventional wisdom. And then, in terms of the career itself, make sure you move into a position where you can be measured, for better or worse. So last year was better for us this year, worse. You take your performance with you. No one's going to take that away from me and Ark.

Cathie Wood: (34:33)
And, by the way, I'm not worried about this year's performance, just saying. We have a five year time horizon.

Cathie Wood: (34:38)
And then the third thing is if you want to start your own business, look for a huge unmet need out there. What is missing? And I think there is a lot missing in the financial world right now that innovators come can come in and change.

Lisa Diaz: (34:56)
Sounds good. What about you, Jolyne?

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (34:58)
Women have to invest in other women. As we get wealthier, we have to put our money into other women, other successful women.

Lisa Diaz: (35:08)
So money's power?

Jolyne Caruso-Fitzgerald: (35:10)
We haven't always done that, by the way.

Lisa Diaz: (35:13)
Michaela, what about you?

Michaela Edwards: (35:14)
I say set a target and works towards it. Whatever that allocation is, if it's realistic and measurable, you can get there

Lisa Diaz: (35:23)
Rupal, you have some bold numbers. I like numbers.

Rupal Bhansali: (35:28)
Well, we'll come up with a pledge, because I think people need to sign up for these things, and we need to measure them against it. So, stay tuned.

Rupal Bhansali: (35:37)
But I think in terms of suggestions, again, innovation to the rescue. Board members and board seats, women are very underrepresented on corporate boards, even in this country, but worldwide. And one head hunter decided that she would only present female candidates whenever any board search took place to the Nom/Gov committees. And, initially, all she would tell the Nom/Gov chairman and the members of the board is that, "look, let the women go first, if you don't like any of them, I'll present you with a male candidate, but first go check out these women." And there's not been a single instance when she done they've ever had to go back and identify a male candidate.

Rupal Bhansali: (36:21)
So I think there are lessons and parallels here for us too in asset management. Insist on finding diverse managers, tell your consultants, tell your clients, tell whoever it is that you are, "Only find me women, and I won't give you business if you don't find me women."

Rupal Bhansali: (36:38)
That's what happened to the head, that's the mandate she put forward. And suddenly they're able to find all these women. And that's what happened in another shop where the boss was looking to increase diversity in his team. And initially, his own team said, "well, we can't find anybody, we can't, it's not possible. There aren't any." And he said, "Okay, we won't fill the position." Well, the moment he said, "We are not going to fill the position. They were like, "Oh my God, we've got to do all this work." They found a diverse candidate.

Rupal Bhansali: (37:10)
And so I think, sometimes, you just got to draw the line draw, and it's about time.

Lisa Diaz: (37:16)
So it sounds like we need a step change in the asset management industry.

Lisa Diaz: (37:21)
This illustrious group of women are going to create a manifesto, and try to brainstorm on actionable next-step items with metrics and a call to action for you to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity of diverse thinking, innovative thinking, in the next generation.

Lisa Diaz: (37:42)
So thanks everyone, today. This was exciting and we'll be back.

Saving the Planet: ESG & Impact Investing | #SALTNY

Saving the Planet: ESG & Impact Investing with Faheen Allibhoy, Head, Development Finance Institution, J.P. Morgan. Les Brun, Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Ariel Alternatives. Karen Karniol-Tambour, Co-Chief Investment Officer for Sustainability, Bridgewater. Gareth Shepherd, Co-Head, Equity Machine Intelligence, Voya. Tina Byles Williams, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer & Founder, Xponance.

Moderated by Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board & Editor-at-Large, Financial Times.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

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Faheen Allibhoy

Managing Director & Head

JP Morgan Development Finance Institution

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Leslie A. Brun

Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Ariel Alternatives

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Karen Karniol-Tambour

Co-Chief Investment Officer for Sustainability

Bridgewater

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Gareth Shepherd

Portfolio Manager & Co-Head of Equity Machine Intelligence

Voya Investment Management

 
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Tina Byles Williams

Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer & Founder

Xponance

MODERATOR

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Gillian Tett

Editor-at-Large

Financial Times

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Gillian Tett: (00:07)
Well, good morning, everybody. My name's Gillian Tett, I'm with the Financial Times, and I'm going to be chairing what some of you might think is the do-gooding panel, the panel on ESG, environmental, social, and governance issues and impact investing. And I have to be honest, when I first heard the phrase ESG as a journalist a few years ago, I joked to colleagues that it should stand for eye-roll, sneer, and groan, in the sense that to a journalist used to covering the financial markets, having covered Wall Street for years, and the great financial crisis, a lot of this seemed to be a lot about corporate PR spin rather than hardcore investing and didn't seem to be particularly core to the financial sector.

Gillian Tett: (00:54)
Well, guess what? I was dead wrong, because in the last few years, the ESG world has exploded in size dramatically and it's become very clear that ESG is actually about a fundamental zeitgeist shift that no company or investor can afford to ignore. It's about moving from tunnel vision, where you just look at a narrow definition of the balance sheet towards lateral vision, where you recognize that things that used to be viewed as footnotes in the balance sheet or externalities to the economic models, like the environment, actually cannot be ignored. They're not external, they really matter. It's about recognizing that ESG is not so much about activism these days about trying to change the world, it's also about risk management, about recognizing the environmental risks, the social risks, the supply chain risks and other issues that can trip up investors and companies if they think that ESG is just, eye-roll, sneer, and groan, it really matters.

Gillian Tett: (02:02)
We have fantastic group of people to talk about this with us today. Starting on my far left, your right, we've got Tina Byles Williams, who's Chief Executive Officer from Xponance, large asset manager. Next to her is Gareth Shepherd, who's Co-Head of Equity Machine Intelligence at Voya. Next to him is Karen Karniol-Tambour, who is Co-Chief Investment Officer for Sustainability at Bridgewater. Then we have Les Brun, who's Co-Founder of Ariel Alternatives, and Faheen Allibhoy, who's Head of the Development Finance Initiative at J.P. Morgan. So four asset managers and one banker.

Gillian Tett: (02:40)
Thank you for coming here today. Welcome, it's great to have you. And what I want to do in this conversation is not talk so much about the why of ESG, because we can spend a lot of time looking backwards at that. I want to talk about the how and how it's changing and what people in this audience need to know about the shifts in this space, which are very rapid. Perhaps I can start with you Gareth and say, from your perspective, what are the key ways in which the ESG and impact investing world is changing right now that people here need to know about, even if they haven't traditionally cared much about trying to do good?

Gareth Shepherd: (03:20)
If I can start with... It's been a long time, but if I can start with George Bushism, I think ESG is misunderestimated in many different ways, but one of the main ways in recent times it's been labeled a fad, as you said, Gillian, but we're at a point now where even in the U.S, which is behind Europe, et cetera, there's about 12 trillion in assets in public markets that are allocated to ESG strategies. That's a big and growing part of the book, in fact, many of the flows are going in that direction. So clearly if it's a fad it's a pretty long term and pretty big fad.

Gareth Shepherd: (04:01)
We definitely think there are a lot of things happening that makes this legitimately an important source of future growth and value. And in part it's a convergence of incredible new sets of data, which can really make it hard for companies to hide. It's a convergence of new technologies, so machine learning, natural language processing, all of these technologies can be brought to bear on very specific problems. And it's also a consequence of some new thinking on the topic, and we're getting much more rigorous now. This is not a cottage industry and a starry-eyed view, this is rigorous investment managers applying the same tools that they do to financial analysis through ESG and there is some value to be gained if you dig deep enough.

Gillian Tett: (04:51)
Right. Well, I'm going to come back to the question of data and greenwashing later on, but, Karen, I'd like to ask you from Bridgewater's point of view, because Bridgewater has spent much of the last few decades not looking like it was out to try and save the planet but rather to make a lot of money for its founders. Why has Bridgewater got involved in this and what for you are the key, big challenges right now?

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (05:19)
Bridgewater, we've been around for 40 years and the one constant we've always had is engaging with our clients that are investors all around the world to basically say, "How do you accomplish your goals? How do you best engineer for that? Start with a deep understanding of whatever it is that's happening in the world and markets and then engineer for that." And three, three and a half years ago, I let a small team saying, "I think more and more of our clients are going to be interested in thinking about environmental and social goals when they're investing."

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (05:52)
And I think it seemed a little bit crazy that the type of investors that we have that are large global institutions would feel this way. Today that's taken almost as a given. We have almost no investors around the world that don't think about these issues with the simple understanding that investment is about taking money and leaving it for some time in the future for the next generation or generations. More, more people are asking themselves, "What's the point in thinking about investing for the next generations if the world I'm leaving behind is not the world I really want to leave behind?"

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (06:25)
Different investors have different ways of thinking about how they incorporate these goals, but in our minds, we want to be there to apply the same rigor, the same structure, the same amount of deep, systematic, and fundamental understanding to this new set of challenges. And it's really, in my view, pretty revolutionary in terms of how you look at markets to have to incorporate the impact on the world dimension into everything you look at. And so what you have to make is risk management. When risk management was new, it seemed like a fundamental change from just talking about how much an investment was going to make to thinking about risk and we've developed, I mean, just decades now of different ways to measure risk. You can have a tail risk, you can have this kind of measure, that kind of measure, and it seems obvious to all of us that as investment professionals, of course, we have to do very deep and rigorous risk analysis. That seems obvious.

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (07:22)
In my view, we're going towards a world where that same amount of rigor it'll seem obvious to investors that you need to do rigorous analysis of how your investments affect the real world. What is their interaction with the social, the environment, the governance of the world? That'll seem just as intuitive to us as a risk practice. And we decided we're very committed to developing that, to developing that same amount of rigor through that sort of study.

Gillian Tett: (07:46)
Right. I mean, it's interesting you say three and a half years ago, because in fact three, four years ago was when I first started paying attention to ESG. And we noticed that certainly amongst readers of the Financial Times was a huge increase in interest, a huge rise in the hit rate of stories linked to things like climate. And partly because of that we went out at the Financial Times and created this platform called Moral Money, which is a newsletter that covers ESG issues. And I'll be honest, we had people inside the FT saying, "Well, do we really need to do this? Is this really going to be core Ft stuff?"

Gillian Tett: (08:24)
It's become one of our most successful newsletters, one of our most highly read bits of our newsletter universe, which has come as a surprise to many people and really something did change about three or four years ago. I do want to get to the question in a moment about whether though we're seeing a bit of a bubble in this area. Before we do, though, Lee, can you tell me from the point of view of Ariel, how and when did you guys start focusing on this and how core is it to your investment operations now?

Les Brun: (08:58)
Thank you for the question, and good morning to everyone. ESG, three letters that have varying meanings to different constituencies. And so I'll start with the premise that no one really has focused on, a general consensus-driven definition to the term. And so everyone focuses on that which is most important or that which resonates most for them. And at least in the corporate world in which I tend to live, the focus has been on the E and G and less so on the S, and so from Ariel's perspective we're focused on the S. And that is just suggest, as Karen was suggesting, that folks who are investing have a view as to what it is that they would like that investment to yield both from a financial return perspective as well as from a social impact perspective or a broader impact perspective.

Les Brun: (09:52)
And there's now this convergence and a belief fundamentally that you can do good and do well at the same time, so you can actually... There is no discord, there is no disconnect between achieving an appropriate financial return and accomplishing some other element of your mission especially as we look at a world that is to be inherited by a group of people who are mission-driven in many respects and for whom these questions are of equal and in some instances, greater importance than what is that financial return that's driving the activity that you're undertaking.

Les Brun: (10:25)
From our point of view and from our limited little world we're trying to do those things which have a significant S impact in trying to begin to address inequality that exists between the majority community and the black and brown communities, both in terms of wealth creation and life in the more broad terms.

Gillian Tett: (10:45)
So you're treating it more like an impact investment opportunity, are you, or more of a targeted hunt for new opportunities for investment?

Les Brun: (10:53)
Yeah. There's a tendency to fall into... For me to check a box in terms of a definition. And I think of it as being a true capitalist investing for a solid financial return first and foremost, but being able to do that in a way which drives, as a corollary, in a social impact, if you will. Yes, we're driven by a social impact to some degree but that can only come if you generate the appropriate financial return, otherwise it's broadly philanthropy.

Gillian Tett: (11:26)
Right. Well, Tina, you are also quite focused on the S factor, aren't you? Because, and it's worth stressing that because certainly when we started Moral Money at the Financial Times in the summer of 201, for the first six months or so almost everything was about the E the environmental aspect, courtesy of Greta Thunberg, who has this wonderful knack for irritating middle-aged CEOs and putting herself on the front page. Everything was about E and yet, of course COVID put S into the radar to a greater degree and then of course the Black Lives Matter movement again put S into the radar more. But I mean, how do you navigate the S and are you looking at all aspects for just the S factor?

Tina Byles Williams: (12:10)
No, we look at all aspects but the last 20 months have been a wake up call that have refocused the importance of addressing the S. And so, Xponance is 25 years old and the notion of diversity being an alpha driver was core to our founding mission. And so we incorporate ESG factors across our fixed income and equity strategies. We have multi-manager strategies of roughly 200 products that we've seeded. 60% were offered by female or diverse founders. And then in our private equity business which is focused on providing strategic acceleration and seed capital to diverse and female-owned GPs in the mid-market.

Tina Byles Williams: (13:25)
Again, it's this notion that that focus leads to differentiated alpha Y because in the mid-market you tend to find founder-led firms where performance is competitive dynamics. And then particularly diverse private equity GPs we've found have access to differentiated network and the ability to proprietarily access deals in under-researched, under-invested segments of the economy. I would just sum it up to say, we live and are entirely about in our entire history about the notion of driving alpha through diversity and ESG factors.

Gillian Tett: (14:20)
Right. Well, I'm going to come back and ask both of you in a second about how this does or does not impact returns and create opportunities because we have an audience that's all about returns and opportunities. But before I do, I'd like to ask you, Faheen, you are looking at development finance institutions from the point of view of J.P. Morgan, which used to be seen as a rather slow-moving sedate part of the financial landscape, lots of multilateral groups doing projects. And yet now it's really in the crosshairs of a lot of investors because if we are going to start moving the dial on things like green climate initiatives, there's going to be have to be a lot of blended finance, a lot of investment capital flowing into innovative types of financing structures. Can you give us a sense of what you are up to from J.P. Morgan's point of view?

Faheen Allibhoy: (15:10)
Thank you, Gillian. No, I think absolutely. I think that the other realization to talk about about trends is that this is not just a U.S., developed world or financial sector issue, this is a global issue. And we've seen this, I think COVID has also highlighted we have a global health pandemic. We've had supplied chain issues that affect global companies. And so as we work together, there are many of these different institutions that can come and play a role. And I think for example development finance, what has brought to the market are two things. One is an impact framework. I think these institutions have been way ahead. I think, well, before your three-year mark, I think 15, 20 years ago, all the MDBs and DFIs had a framework to evaluate E and S risk, environmental and social risk, and to look at impact metrics.

Faheen Allibhoy: (16:06)
And so I think that's something that we have taken from and the MDBs, is to have a framework to say, "When I look at a transaction, what are the development caps? What are the investment contributions and how can I bring increased disclosure to my clients?" So as a sell side player in the market, our job is to work with our clients to help them raise money, but to tell the whole story to their clients. And today investor clients want to know about ESG risk, they want to know about potential impacts of that transaction. And so I think the best practice of the MDBs and the DFIs can be brought to bear.

Faheen Allibhoy: (16:42)
The second is the interlinking of all of these things. I think it's very hard to, and I will be harder just to put E, S, and G as separate and say I focus on one and not the other, if you build infrastructure it's going to have a link to productivity or technology, not just to climate change. If you build a solar farm, for example, it's going to impact bringing goods to market or agric or the MDBs to bear. And then if we want to be as ambitious as the world to be, and that's why we have some of these global agenda, be it the Paris alignments or the Sustainable Development Goals, we will need potentially funding by way of governments. There's going to be regulation and many other factors that take us to the next level.

Gillian Tett: (17:28)
Yeah, absolutely. And the scale of potential capital flows in the coming years, if people are even half serious about trying to get action on climate change are going to be absolutely enormous. I mean, people like Larry Fink.-

Faheen Allibhoy: (17:39)
It's a fact.

Gillian Tett: (17:39)
... have said it's the biggest shift in the financial sector he's seen in his career beating even the securitization revolution and the mortgage revolution. For Larry Fink to say that given that the securitization and mortgage revolution is what made him originally so successful, for him to say that he thinks climate is going to be even bigger is quite remarkable. But one of the things that my more cynical journalist colleagues often say is, "But what about greenwashing? What about..." This new phrase woke-washing? When you get a bunch of middle aged asset managers thoughts about developments are happening that could give people comfort on the greenwashing issue. I mean, how bad is greenwashing? I mean, Karen, you said you're spending time looking at data sources at Bridgewater. How do you deal with the greenwashing charges or the woke-washing charges?

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (18:29)
Hey, now, I think this is a very normal part of the development of an ecosystem, which is, you get an interest. Investors say, "I'm interested in this topic. I'd like to know about this topic." And then a whole industry has to line up behind that to try to meet those needs and be able to fulfill those needs. And what's happened in this area is there's this for barrage of data. I mean, you can literally be buried under a mountain of data that providers will tell you is ESG-related. And right now it takes a lot of work to figure out what here's relevant, what here's not relevant. Why am I even looking at this series? Does just have anything to do with impact on the world or evaluation of a company. And a lot of hard is required to basically say, "What are your goals? What are you trying to do?"

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (19:14)
I mean, for us, I thought about it like any other investment challenge that we've had for many years, which is, it's also not easy to say what do you think the U.S. economy or the Chinese economy will do tomorrow? There's lots of data out there and it's messy and part of the reason that you have investment professionals is to help sort that out and have a process that's fundamental, that's systematic, that helps figure that out. And we really emphasize systemization and diversification with the idea that you have to be able to move past someone's personal opinion on ESG issues, something that feels good and measure it as objectively as possible. And diversification in terms of, if I triangulate a bunch of different reads, I feel a lot better, then I'm on the right track than if I just have one data point pointing in that direction.

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (19:58)
And so when you look at the industry now, there are a lot of products called ESG that actually do very little, they look almost identical to the index they're matching. In fact, many of them say, "Our goal is to deviate as little as possible from the index and still be ESG." That's obviously going to change. Investors are going to raise the bar and say, "That's not what we want. It was a way to get started." And at the same time, the data providers are going to catch on and there'll be standards and governments hopefully will play their role in starting to mandate certain amount of disclosures and accounting standards and so on just like the process of having accounting standards in the United States has made a huge global difference in how hard it is to assess whether or not everything is going as you'd expect in a company. That's probably going to develop and make it in 10 years a lot easier to both sort out the data, understand what are the relevant questions to answer, and be able to do this in a rigorous way.

Gillian Tett: (20:50)
Right. Tina, I can see you smiling when Karen said about trying to produce things that seem right close to the index, because basically it's recycling a lot of regular data.

Tina Byles Williams: (21:00)
Well, first of all, I love the term, woke-washing. I told you I'll steal it. I'll steal, but... Look, this is an industry that as we just said has had explosive growth. And with any sector as it gets to maturation, there's a weeding out and standards are established, then there's a weeding out of the wheat versus its shape, so to speak. And so we are in that phase. I saw a study for example where a significant majority, a significant number of firms that are PRI signatories clearly said, "Well, we just did it to gather some assets." So there is going to be a lot of that going on but I do think that as standards still develop, as the SEC completes its work that we're all waiting on by the end of the year, there will be some greater discernment.

Tina Byles Williams: (22:11)
And certainly in the woke-washing and category, because of the events of last summer, you see a lot of folks purport to address that. And I think quite frankly, the racial disparity gap and gender disparity gap is so wide. We welcome all new converts. But I do think, look, we are in the investment industry where track record matters. And so many years ago I invested in a pension fund, and what I would look for is a track record. Did the firm or the principles of the firm evidence any sort of track record in driving change and driving value from those factors in their prior lives? And if they didn't, we welcome all newcomers, but I think what I'm hearing from investors it's a clear ability and a desire to identify those who have been on the threshing floor, if you will, in driving change.

Gillian Tett: (23:46)
Lee, I can see you wanted to come in here.

Les Brun: (23:52)
I think it's really interesting that we're always looking as investors, we're always looking for some arbitrage. We're just looking for a place where we have some asymmetrical informational advantage or something, or rather, that allows us to identify a spot where we can intermediate our capital and drive a better outcome than would otherwise be the case. And it happens to be that ESG is the new flavor of the day. It's been a flavor for quite a while and it becomes more institutionalized as each day goes by, and it will have its naysayers. It will have those who look at it and suggest that it's temporary or it's driven by something other than financial return. But at the end of the day we're all living off what we make and so if we don't make it sooner or later we won't have the raw material required to try to make it right.

Les Brun: (24:41)
Unless we can drive return as the first order of the day in any of these activities and have the other benefits be corollary, then we're just wasting our breath in many respects. And I do believe that first movers, and even though the ESG topic, investing topic has been around for a few years now, we're still first movers because it hasn't been fully embraced. And yet that embracing will be drew driven by the folks who control the capital as it's currently being driven. The index funds certainly demand some ESG philosophy if not policy of all of the investments that they have. Others will continue to do likewise and so at the end of the day, this is an opportunity that we either grab the bull by the horns on or go find someplace else to play in somebody else's sandbox.

Gillian Tett: (25:30)
Yeah, well, certainly a number of people, financial veterans draw parallels between ESG and say what happened in the early years of leverage finance in the sense that you get the proliferation of labels, a lot of apposity, a lot of category confusion. And some people, as you say, arbitraging information gaps are doing very well, and then gradually hopefully the industry matures and grows up. But, Gareth, you were saying that you think machine learning and other innovations can help tackle the data issues? I mean, tell us what you mean by that.

Gareth Shepherd: (25:59)
Yeah. I think it will help because it's a chess game, some of this stuff. Let's take greenwashing, specifically. Right now, corporate treasuries and CFOs have figured out that if you can window-dress some of your ESG characteristics at your big public-listed corporation, that you'll get increased investor flows. And just as a quicker aside, because I just saw this this morning from a McKinsey study in 2020, they find that companies that have a high ESG rating have a 10% lower cost of capital, so CFOs are all over that. That is a real number to them because it influences in a competitive sense what it is they can invest in. If you can get 10% lower cost of capital you're going to do it.

Gareth Shepherd: (26:53)
Back to greenwashing, it's very tempting just as management teams might want to manipulate their earnings and you need to forensically look through that as great investment managers as will. Similarly, you need to look across the whole spectrum of ESG and figure out if corporate teams are playing with things. And very, very interestingly, there is some data to show that companies that have a plethora of ESG policies, for instance, actually underperform because they're focused too much on the window dressing than they are on the reality.

Gareth Shepherd: (27:29)
Back to your question, machines are great at this. It's a chess game and machines kill at chess. And so we employ machine learning in a big way to tease through some of these problems. And it will get us past this greenwashing phase, which by the way is a sign of success. Why do people greenwash? Because it brings investor flows and because ultimately it brings value. So it's in a sense it's a necessary evil along the path to enlightenment, and in machine learning to be very specific, not only can it help in teasing through the mundaneness of filings and corporate footnotes, et cetera, but then it can go to the next step.

Gareth Shepherd: (28:11)
Why don't we know precisely what the contribution is of ESG data and ESG factors? Why don't we know precisely the contribution of that to your investment performance, both returns and volatility, that can be explicit. Explainable AI tools can make... Another example, why do we say, well, supply chains are important and leave it at that. It's because, why not use technology to weave through that web, to crawl through that data?

Gareth Shepherd: (28:44)
Another final point because there's so many advantages, but another real problem right now for any folks in the room in the investment management space is, ESG data, let's say you have 3000 data points on a company, to be real practical. You've got Disney. That was a company that Dan Loeb spoke about this morning. There are 3000 ESG data points about that company, what are you going to do with that? How do you figure out what's the signal and what's the noise?

Gareth Shepherd: (29:15)
And machine learning again is very good at conditioning that, what industry, what material, what geography are we playing in, and how do we impute missing values, which is really boring and really technical, but there are ways that machines can help figure out what's the best estimate of a missing value and fill in some of the gaps. And then you've got some information to play with. This is all technical real stuff. This is not ESG is great and you can be good and do well, this is actually just drilling for value in the data and it's there for those that are working hard to get it. Sorry for the long answer but that was a bit-

Gillian Tett: (29:55)
No, it's fascinating, because, I mean, as Lee says, us investing is all about information arbitrage. And the one thing that's clear about ESG right now is it is an incredibly murky, murky complex world with numerous data points where so much rests on the ratings and the ratings are if not untested often incomplete. It reminds me a lot in many ways of what was happening in the mortgage and securitization world pre-2008. We're so much resting on the ratings and because of all the apposity and yet out of apposity comes amazing opportunity as well. But I'm curious, Faheen. I mean, tell me what you make of it from J.P. Mortgage's perspective.

Faheen Allibhoy: (30:35)
Yeah. Now, I think I fully agree with the panel that we're on this journey and I think we're coming from the perspective of risk mitigation, but we're moving towards much more intentional, what is the impact? What is the outcome? We're moving from corporate level data to say, "I'm this corporate. I have a sustainability framework. This is my ESG report," at the end of the year, to getting down to the instrument level, to actually following the money, looking at use of proceeds. If someone raises a bond or raises a financing, can there be intentionality to say, "This is going to fund this expansion of a certain project," a project and infrastructure piece and then track it.

Faheen Allibhoy: (31:22)
I think this naysayer world wants more disclosure, wants more data, but then is going to move away from getting to be at the company level but to be at the instrument level, to be at the project level, and then to demand for outputs and outcomes, not just where is the money going. For example, it won't be good enough to say I spent half a billion dollars on the solar farm, we're going to say, how many megawats of energy did that create? How many households did that connect? Was it provided to rule households that didn't have access to electricity before, or how did that change the energy mix in a certain country? I think that's the level of data that the industry is going to demand to be satisfied that some of these things that are being done really do have the impact that people are paying to have.

Faheen Allibhoy: (32:19)
Right. So getting much more granular, much more microlevel, much more demanding, frankly, much high levels of transparency. But at the same time there's a collision of trying to be standardized because you can't get too bespoke. I think these two worlds are colliding needing that very granular data, which I think you can have, and we have so much technology and AI to help us with but at the same time to say, "What are standards and metrics that we can all understand and apply?" Because we can't be all doing our own thing at the same time.

Gillian Tett: (32:52)
I mean, do you on the panel all think that adopting this lens and these tools produces outperformance? I mean, is it possible, do you think, to justify ESG today on the basis that it's going to give you a big investment edge? Tina, you are nodding enthusiastically.

Tina Byles Williams: (33:10)
Yes. I mean, that's actually when we sell our wares, so to speak, or more better said, go to prospective clients that's what we say. And, again, we've been doing it for 25 years so we actually have a track record to back it. I will also note that if you... It tends to take you to larger and growthier stock. And so I think what needs to happen, and everyone has said it, is to have better, more granular data to dissect that. But I truly believe if the world has to move to a more sustainable place, then those factors is that measure that movement will outperform.

Gillian Tett: (34:06)
Karen, do you see that from-

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (34:08)
And then when you get the specifics, it feels totally intuitive and obvious to people that you'd have to look at these issues. And so if I tell an investor that I'm thinking about how the Fed is going to make decisions they're going to say, "Of course you have to do that. Of course that's what you're here for." But guess what? The Fed is telling you, "We care about the quality of employment, how it affects different communities. We're going to think about these issues in deciding how to set monetary policy." If I tell an investor I'm looking at things like whether or not the government is going to spend money, they would say, "Of course, you're supposed to be doing that." But then I would say, "Well, look at Biden's plan. Many of them are about combating climate change, affecting inequality." That just is actually what's happening in the world so if you want to study the world, that's what you're going to see.

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (34:50)
And I'll give you the more obvious one, which is, there's no real serious investor looking at anything in any commodity sector not thinking what's the supply and demand for this commodity going to be like in 10 years, they have to consider questions like, will oil be phased out? How am I going to know? Will my commodity be a piece of making electric vehicles? That's going to radically affect the demand. And so to me when you're actually in it doing investment analysis you want to be thinking about the pertinent issues that are obvious, and when you look at how the world's changed, the last decade, something extreme has happened and that social environmental concerns have just clearly become more pertinent to how the world is being run and managed.

Gillian Tett: (35:32)
Right? Gareth and Lee, do you have views on outperformance, at all?

Les Brun: (35:38)
I think there is outperformance and I think it will continue to manifest itself. And I take the point that Faheen and Karen have made, and Gareth really started it, around the data. Because as you can continue to drill down through the data and get more granular and find those elements of arbitrage that really move performance, you'll continue to see that outperformance. And what's interesting and fascinating to me is the connectivity at that point with the data between the E, the S, and the G, they all converge when you drill down through the data.

Les Brun: (36:10)
For example, and this is awfully simplistic, but if you think about the environmental aspect of having your workers closer to your productive facilities, does that improve performance if it diminishes your cost of getting your goods to market? Does it improve the social benefit of having your workers have a better life because they're closer to where they're working? You can go down and drill through the data and find those real elements of arbitrage that are unexploited, that can really affect and drive that outperformance.

Gillian Tett: (36:44)
Interesting. Have you seen that as well, Gareth?

Gareth Shepherd: (36:48)
Yes. But I hesitate because, of course if it was as easy as buying the ratings, the ESG scores, if that was the story then markets are going to look through that and arbitrage that away. We need to be in order to bring everyone into the tent, why don't we be realistic and talk about the fact that if there was easy ways to outperform the market, very quickly public markets will figure that out as they should. If we're talking about price discovery on companies who their ESG qualities are underappreciated, that's where it gets interesting. Finding not just a great company that is recycling 1% more but maybe an industrial mid-American company where they're improving their environmental footprint, their social relations are getting better, their employees are turning over less, they're stronger sentiment, et cetera, all of these really important things, that company which is trending in ESG has a much better prospect not only of outperforming it's sector peers, but actually of having a bigger impact on the environment and the society because they're coming from a place in the middle, not a place right at the edge.

Gareth Shepherd: (38:08)
We're much more interested in finding those stories. And that means looking way beyond the headline ratings, and that means treating ESG as an alternate data source and bringing some science to it. And again, the question you asked, Gillian, is exactly the right question and investment managers should be able to say, "But for ESG data, here are our returns." Meaning, if we run our entire investment process and take out our ESG factors and data, what are the residual returns? How much better are they with that data? And that should be part of the conversation. It shouldn't be, we just think it's great.

Gillian Tett: (38:50)
I mean, it also means looking at the rise of activists because certainly when I first started in financial journalism, activist was something associated with barbarians at the gate, a lot of profit-hungry, greed-is-good kind of activists. Now, activists seem to be more driven by ESG goals often. I mean, we've all seen what happened with ESG number one. Are you expecting a lot more activism to occur on the ESG side in the coming year? And do you welcome that? Do you think it's helpful or not?

Gareth Shepherd: (39:23)
There's activism on all levels, though. This is why this is the future of investing. Because you're a management team at a company, you've got your employees talking about this as a core value of this, especially millennials. You have your investors asking you what it is you're doing in this space. The regulator is treating you according to how you are perceived in the market, and then your customers are demanding it from you. That is enough constraints around corporations to ensure that they're going in this direction so the activism is a 360.

Karen Karniol-Tambour: (40:04)
I think the activism is probably the most intelligent backlash I'd heard against ESG. Is whether nerdy investors will just figure it out you don't have anything important to do anymore. And it misses that these things are very much connected. It's always an easy excuse for governments to say, "Well, I can't do anything on this issue. My companies are all against it. I'm being lobbied against it. I couldn't. Possibly it's going to destroy my economy." And so companies being pushed by activists to say, "These are the preparations you need to make. This is the future we're going towards." That has this positive feedback loop up with governments and their role is extremely important as a part of that. So I agree activism at all levels, the company part and the investor's role in that being extremely important and actually getting change.

Gillian Tett: (40:47)
Right. I can see that both Lee and Faheen were nodding pertinently.

Faheen Allibhoy: (40:49)
I mean, I think some of the activism we have seen especially around climate in the past 10 years have almost become institutionalized. The fact that we've had a 20, 30 climate goal, the fact that people are making net zero commitments, that's already translated into companies wanting to say, "We're in lockstep with the trends of the time and we're part of this institutional movement and framework towards improving environmentally. And then I would really second the fact that I think activism doesn't come from people with placards on the street, it's really coming from employees, stakeholders, communities around.

Faheen Allibhoy: (41:29)
I mean, if you think of the typical company town in the U.S. or somewhere else, those companies have provided healthcare, social services, there's a clinic. There's always been that sense that we have to take care of more than just the manufacturing process because the people who are part of it and live around it are also important. So I think it's coming from different ways and is becoming institutionalized and then will be part of our regulatory frameworks.

Gillian Tett: (41:54)
Right? Well, I often joke, I think we're seeing the rise of the activist accountants because I used to think it would be tie-dye wearing climate change protestors who chain themselves, the bulldozers who change the world, now, I think it's going to be the accountants when they start actually doing green accounting. But, Lee.

Les Brun: (42:09)
But I think to your point about the fact that activists are interested is the ultimate affirmation that there is alpha to be had in investing in ESG. Because in theory if you think about it, the notion of the activist, and everyone would accept this as a general supposition, is that they see an opportunity that's being missed. They see an opportunity to generate investment return that's being otherwise ignored by whoever else is looking at this. And so their presence alone effectively legitimizes ESG investing in the ability of ESG investment to generate alpha.

Gillian Tett: (42:47)
Right. Who knew that accounting and investment management could be so exciting? But, Tina, last word, you got 10 seconds, 20 seconds.

Tina Byles Williams: (42:55)
Oh. Well, my last word is I agree with everything that has been said. I mean, I do think though that, and this is perhaps unpopular in this rate milieu, but that there is a role for government interaction. I mean, if you look at the studies that look at the delta, if you will, between intentions and execution, where is that delta small? Things like avoiding corruption through fact and workplace and occupational safety where there's been lots of time and government regulation. Where is the delta big, where there's been light or no regulation. You have lots of business groups that have done a great job in providing standards and best practices but there's no enforcement.

Gillian Tett: (44:04)
Right. Well, I'd say it's a very interesting moment in history. I never thought I'd see the time when what people like Greenpeace are doing would collide with a world of arbitrage, delta, accounting and things like that. But it is indeed, as they say, it's genuine, it's serious. It's a very significant shift in the financial landscape. For all of you who are engaged in ESG, not eye-roll, sneer, and groan, but environmental, social and governance, I wish you the very best of luck in charting this new course over the next year. I'm sure it's going to be a very busy one. And thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you.

Macro Shifts & Best Ideas Coming Out of the Pandemic | #SALTNY

Macro Shifts & Best Ideas Coming Out of the Pandemic with Todd Lemkin, Partner & Chief Investment Officer, Canyon Partners. Peter Wallach, Executive Managing Director & Head of Risk Management, Sculptor Capital. Jason Mudrick, Chief Investment Officer, Mudrick Capital Management. Leslee Cowen, Management Committee Partner, Credit Funds, Fortress Investment Group.

Moderated by Troy Gayeski, CFA.

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SPEAKERS

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Todd Lemkin

Chief Investment Officer

Canyon Partners

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Peter Wallach

Executive Managing Director & Head of Risk Management

Sculptor Capital

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Jason Mudrick

Chief Investment Officer

Mudrick Capital Management

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Leslee Cowen

Management Committee Partner, Credit Fund

Fortress

 

MODERATOR

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Troy Gayeski

Former Partner, Co-Chief Investment Officer & Senior Portfolio Manager

SkyBridge

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Troy Gayeski: (00:07)
Hello, everyone. It's great to be here at SALT. We were going through many iterations of how to start this panel out, but given the immense impact that the pandemic had on capital markets, the economy, society, and given that this is the first time we've all been together at this incredible celebration of investment excellence, we thought we would segue back to that and walk through what was going through the minds of some of the greatest multi-strategy distressed credit and value investors on the planet as the pandemic start to kick in impact markets and as the recovery began. So without further ado, I want to start with Peter Wallach at Sculptor. We're starting there because Sculptor, as you probably know, has an incredible focus on risk management and that happens to be his title. So Peter, as the pandemic started to evolve from just being a more of an epidemiological problem to more of an economic and market problem, how are you guys managing that process? What was going through your mind? How were you trying to protect capital during the acute stages of the debacle?

Peter Wallach: (01:10)
Thanks so much, Troy. Wow, it seems like ancient history, but it's still also a little bit fresh. So, we have a global reach at Sculptor, and one of the things that sometimes differentiates us is having that global reach is the ability to have a bead on certain theses in various corners of the market. We felt very fortunate in the February timeframe of 2020 to develop a proprietary, and at the time, thankfully accurate thesis on the scope and potential impact of the virus and as is as is our typical practice, the combination of active risk management, portfolio management, and a lot of hedge overlays sort of combined to allow us to really take down risk in a hurry, and what that means is we cut all market value by half.

Peter Wallach: (02:07)
We cut our beta to basically zero, our net to zero, and that really allowed us to play offense for a good portion of the early days of the pandemic in February, March, and April. And, when the dust had settled, it seemed like one of the biggest opportunities was really getting off of the inertia and getting out of the sort of paralysis and deciding where to invest and where we decided to place our chips where we thought the highest and best use of capital was, was in safe spread across the globe. So, that's in corporate credit and structured credit, blue chips in credit, and in very seasoned borrowers in structured credit and mortgages were offered hundreds and sometimes thousands of basis points wide to where they had been into fundamental value. So, within it seemed like a cup of coffee, but in very short order, we had doubled our global credit exposure in the fund, and then over the remaining part of the year, we did the same within equities and convertible and derivatives, but really it started with what we thought was a very compelling opportunity in some blue chip areas.

Troy Gayeski: (03:19)
So Peter, the key point there would be help protecting capital on the way down helped you to go on offense on the way up, and you started with investigated credit and worked your way down the capital structure from there.

Peter Wallach: (03:28)
That's right.

Troy Gayeski: (03:29)
Now Jason, segueing to you, you're known as more of an alpha generative guy, big idea guy when it comes to idiosyncratic opportunities. How are you managing that process, given the much more idiosyncratic nature of your portfolio versus some of your competitors?

Jason Mudrick: (03:44)
Well we're all, but we're distressed credit investors and you have to understand in March of 2020, we went from a relatively benign environment for distressed credit to having the largest quantum of distressed credit we've ever seen in the history of the world over the course of four weeks. There was literally $1 trillion, and I'm not just saying that to be dramatic when people use the word a trillion, it was actually $1 trillion of distress credit in the US by April 20th of 2020. So that was one, two, a lot of these businesses were completely healthy a month prior. So normally in our business, these capital structures break down gradually over time and you have a lot of time to diligence them and prepare yourselves. Names don't go from 100 to 50 overnight, they go from a 100 to 90, to 90 to 85, and you're starting to do your work and hire lawyers and do all this stuff, so that you have conviction to invest in these capital structures when they finally break down. That didn't happen. We didn't have that luxury. A lot of this analysis needed to be done from scratch businesses.

Jason Mudrick: (04:42)
Businesses we'd never even heard of that now had first lien debt trading at 50 cents. Three, a lot of the tools that we use to invest in these capital structures, our firm, we like to roll up our sleeves and get on airplanes and go meet with management teams and walk factory floors and talk to competitors and talk to suppliers. You couldn't do any of this. We were forced to be desktop analysts, which that's not our style. And, also the way COVID impacted a lot of these businesses was like nothing we had ever seen before. I've been through a number of recessions and you see revenue go down 20%. There was industries where revenue went down 100%, more than 100% if there was contra revenue accounts. If you were investing in casinos or restaurants or gymnasiums or movie theaters, these businesses saw revenue literally go down 100%.

Jason Mudrick: (05:27)
There's no case study in business school to say, here's how you analyze these types of businesses. And then finally, and not to state at the obvious, but while all this was going on, while you had the largest quantum of distressed credit ever, we were all told to go home and work remotely. And while we all got pretty good at that over time, initially when there was the most acute amount of distress, we were all figuring it out. We were using Skype for Business. Nobody even knows what that is anymore. That was the video conference system that was downloaded on all our PCs and trying to figure out how to work at home with your kids running around and your significant other in the other room, the emotional stress and trauma that COVID impacted, particularly on younger analysts, it was very challenging.

Jason Mudrick: (06:07)
So, what did we do? What can you do? You just put your head down and work. I sat around with my team very early on and I said, "Look, guys, this is our time to shine. It's not like you guys have anything else going on. We're all just sitting at home doing nothing. So, let's just spend the next six months working as hard as we've ever worked." And, that's what we did. We did 12 to 14 hour days every day, including weekends for the first 90 days. We drew all of our committed capital down, took all of our cash and our open-end vehicles, and by the end of June, all of our funds were fully invested in. There's a positive end of this story. While it was incredibly stressful and intense, it ended up being very fruitful because those funds did very well over the ensuing 12 months.

Troy Gayeski: (06:46)
It's great commentary, Jason. So Todd, we watched you in real time put the foot on the gas in late March, early April and really seize opportunities that you hadn't seen really since the global financial crisis. Can you walk us through that mindset as you're coming off a tough period and then it's time to go on offense and go after the most opportunistic targets you see?

Todd Lemkin: (07:10)
Sure, thank you. I echo some of the comments here. I think the biggest struggle was really trying to figure out the timeframe. All the scientific experts were telling you this was going to go on for some time, you had no visibility on vaccines obviously in that timeframe. Any sector that was remotely touching on the consumer or gathering of people, be it retail or gaming or-

Troy Gayeski: (07:35)
Airlines.

Todd Lemkin: (07:35)
Travel, airlines, any of that, you're sitting there going, "Okay, these businesses are literally running at zero revenue." And so, it wasn't stress testing a company for an economic downturn, it was stress testing a company for how many months of liquidity do they have with zero revenue. And not surprising, particularly in the gaming industry or some of these other industries, there's a lot of fixed costs, a lot of operating leverage in these businesses. So, they didn't look like they had a whole great degree of running room.

Todd Lemkin: (08:02)
We tried to be very nimble. We rotated initially into a lot of these higher blue chip investment grade quality credits. You could buy Coca-Cola, you could buy Apple, you could buy Boeing bonds, things like that that seemed like good initial expressions. And then as we got, I think, some more comfort and some more visibility into how to think about the virus by sort of May, June I'd say, we definitely started rotating more into the travel and leisure space focusing on top of the capital structure under the theory that if they did run out of liquidity, at least we were, from a loan to value perspective, well collateralized or well covered we felt. We also focused a lot on structured products. There were some very interesting opportunities. Naturally, those structures were levered and very exposed to the initial shock of the crisis-

Troy Gayeski: (08:55)
The consumer, the housing market-

Todd Lemkin: (08:57)
Exactly. There was some mortgage lenders that had needs for media capital that by almost the time we were putting the documents together had already really started to come out of it because the Fed acted as quickly as they did, but those were some pretty interesting opportunities as well. It was challenging, and I agree with Jason, we just got to a point where you couldn't go out and see the companies, you couldn't really touch and feel what was going on, which is ordinarily what you'd like to do. In many cases, you couldn't reach other people involved. They weren't in the office and that sort of thing.

Todd Lemkin: (09:30)
So, you really did just kind of put your head down and try to power through it. Every day was intense there for several months. It really wasn't until the summer that it felt like there was a little bit of calm. You could take a breath.

Troy Gayeski: (09:43)
Somewhat more normalized.

Todd Lemkin: (09:45)
Exactly, but the timing still to this day, is part of the struggle, and I was reading this morning we're 20 months into this disease, if you want to call it that. They're talking about potentially new strands coming from Africa. Without [crosstalk 00:10:01] liquidity in the system it would have been a very different dynamic. I think it would have dragged on quite a bit longer.

Troy Gayeski: (10:07)
God bless the Fed and the fiscal stimulus, right?

Todd Lemkin: (10:09)
Absolutely.

Troy Gayeski: (10:11)
So Leslee, we were joking around before the panel started about given the nature of what you guys invest in and the fact that it's not market to market as frequently, you weren't as concerned about market to market risk. And I asked you, what were you sweating? And, your answer was?

Leslee Cowen: (10:26)
We were still sweating it all. There's no question-

Troy Gayeski: (10:29)
Sweating everything, and that was the key, right? So, given how great Fortress as a firm is at investing in special situations credits, can you walk us through when you as a firm and yourself became comfortable that many of those credits would make it and end up having really attractive realized value, because obviously mid-March, much more stressful, maybe by April you started to feel a little bit more comfortable?

Leslee Cowen: (10:54)
Yes, and as everyone has said before, it goes without saying we were all dealing with personal and professional challenges, and the immediate thing was to make sure everybody was safe and then also to figure out how to work logistically from home because that was a new phenomenon for all of us. And, what we decided and realized quickly was that we had two agendas. One was to preserve capital and protect our existing investments, and the second was to capitalize on what were opportunities, the likes of which we hadn't seen since the financial crisis. And so, we needed to do both, and we made an immediate and very important decision, which was to invest aggressively and decisively rather than proceeding with caution.

Leslee Cowen: (11:36)
And with that as a backdrop, based on all of our prior experiences and the multiple cycles we've been through, we mapped out for ourselves what we considered to be or expected to be the three phases of dislocation. The first was forced liquidation in which expected to be taking advantage of opportunities on the back of margin calls, redemptions, and fire sales. The second was illiquidity in which we expected there to be short-term cash needs in order to fill gaps, and in order to feel the void where the capital markets were otherwise closed. And, the third phase of dislocation we expected to be reconstruction in which companies were going to then have to rebuild their balance sheets and move on to the post-COVID world. So, what we determined was that March and April really were that first phase of forced liquidation, and they were quickly followed by the phase of illiquidity, which went through the fourth quarter of last year. In that whole timeframe, we were able to deploy approximately $10 billion.

Troy Gayeski: (12:45)
Wow.

Leslee Cowen: (12:45)
And, it was a pretty major effort and the reason why we were able to do that, and we were really able to invest right out of the gates starting in March, and the reason for that was that we have a team of 160 investment professionals worldwide, and we gathered them all up together and that team has an enormous laundry list of names and library of names that they knew of credits, assets, securities of all kinds. And so, people went back to the names they knew. They went back to what we consider to be the low-hanging fruit and started out really with stressed and distressed securities in the corporate world and asset backed securities. We looked at broken mortgage rates, et cetera, and we found opportunities based on names we already knew.

Leslee Cowen: (13:31)
So, we weren't starting from scratch. This was not original research. This was reviewing names and we were able to go back and assess the names that had the best risk reward and pursue them immediately and we were able to fill a void where there was otherwise no capital available. That quickly then transitioned into investing in direct lending and buying into liquidations and buying other types of assets along the way. And, that's really how we transitioned. And then ultimately, I think we feel like we called those three phases of dislocation pretty well, and if there was one mistake we made, it was actually the timing. It went way quicker than we ever would have imagined.

Troy Gayeski: (14:11)
And, you would have preferred it to go slower, so you could deploy-

Leslee Cowen: (14:12)
Of course, the Fed came in and took our jobs away, but the truth is that the phases went very quickly. And so, the only regret is maybe if we could have invested more we would have, but time ran out. And that being said, we've now moved into that phase of reconstruction and that's where we are today.

Troy Gayeski: (14:31)
So, why don't we segue now into the present? I think we all know that the macro economic environment and capital market environment is incredibly different than what we're all discussing. You have a Fed that's already starting to pull back liquidity underneath the scenes. A lot of people aren't aware of how much liquidity has been sucked out of the system already, and how much money supply growth slowed. You obviously have a situation where GDP estimates keep getting ratcheted down, revenue growth, earnings growth, more uncertainty than usual in DC around future budgets. So, in an environment where equities are 21 times forward earnings, absolute yields on high yields are 400 basis points. Can anyone in this room even imagine that two years ago? Where are you finding opportunities today? And Leslee, why don't we start with you again? You can jump in first here. You started to touch upon it briefly, but my understanding is a lot of it is off the run esoteric credit where today's best opportunities are in a world where vanilla assets are fairly richly priced.

Leslee Cowen: (15:36)
You're absolutely right. As I mentioned, we are now in the phase of reconstruction, and then in some cases, even we've moved beyond that in certain sectors. And so, there were lots of distressed and stressed opportunities in the public markets last year, and those have largely been resolved. So, we have now regrouped and refocused our efforts on what we consider to be private credit. There are three areas that we're focused on in particular these days that I'd like to mention. One that I'd highlight is in private lending, the second is net lease, and the third is SPACs.

Troy Gayeski: (16:09)
And, the private lending would mainly be the corporate entities?

Leslee Cowen: (16:13)
Corporate, real estate, all kinds, but in particular on the direct lending, we kind of bifurcated in our minds between middle market and larger scale. And on the middle market side, this has been our bread and butter since our inception in 2002. So, this has always been a core part of our investing practice. Well, one of the things that really carried over from the pandemic last year, during that time we were able to really expand our network of borrowers, and the reason why we were able to do that is because we were able to provide capital quickly, efficiently. We knew how to do it, we knew how to structure transactions, and we were able to be of service to all kinds of companies in their times of need. That loyalty has paid off, so it paid off during the pandemic, and it's now paying off now as well because we're actually finding that we're able to help provide capital to those same companies that are now focused on M&A and growth and restructuring or refinancing their balance sheets.

Leslee Cowen: (17:07)
The other one notable change that's happened during the course of this year that I think is also worth mentioning, and one that we're seeing and participating in is the larger scale transactions in the billion dollar range, and we're seeing the disintermediation of the commercial banks. Once upon a time, not too long ago, commercial banks were in charge of agenting and broadly syndicating such transactions, and what we're seeing now is an increase in transactions where a handful of lenders get together and provide a borrower with a single solution that the borrower is willing to do to pay a slightly higher coupon in exchange for certainty of closing, lack of flex in pricing, and efficiency. And so, that's a major trend that we're seeing this year post-pandemic.

Troy Gayeski: (18:00)
So Leslee, it's almost like it's back to the future for Fortress. You had your pandemic investing period where you killed it, and now it's back to the future doing what you were doing prior to the pandemic and given those opportunities, what type of returns are we talking about for investors? And, I don't think there's any compliance... Oh, I see a compliance person. Maybe you can't say anything, but give us a rough guide on what you think is realistic?

Leslee Cowen: (18:24)
Well, basically it all is a function of what you do unlevered versus levered. That's how it basically works. So on an unlevered basis, we're still talking about single digits kinds of returns, but based on the financing facilities that we've put together in our various funds, it allows us to generate returns that are in the mid to high teens and sometimes higher just as a function of, again, what our assets and liabilities are.

Troy Gayeski: (18:48)
So, I got to get my slide rule out for this, but I think mid to high teens is a little better than risk-free right now, just a tad bit. I have to go back to the old school calculator for that one, but Jason, so we were talking about this before and there's a narrative out there, obviously that there's no distress, 400 over, or not 400 over, 400 absolute for high yield, default rates have collapsed, but your point of view is that this is actually a great environment for a fund like yours because you can harvest a lot of the intellectual capital that you put in over the last six to 12 months. Can you kind of flip that narrative on its head for us, so we understand a little bit more what we're you talking about?

Jason Mudrick: (19:29)
Sure, and by the way, I love getting invited to talk on a panel about finding value in distress when credit spreads are at all time heights and the equity markets are at all time highs. I would talk to generally two themes. One, I would say macro versus micro, and two, trading versus investing. I think this is the point you're making about how you harvest these investments. So on the first, we're not a macro investor. Distressed is an asset class, it's not something that we would invest in ever. Even last year, it's a macro trade and it's not what we're good at. I think there's others that are very good at it. We're special situation investors with a focus on over leveraged capital structures. We're trying to find mispriced securities and I think overleveraged capital structures lend themselves very well to that for a variety of reasons. They're opaque, they're in transition, you need to have a very unique skillset, contract law, bankruptcy law, negotiating dynamics, management won't talk to you, they're illiquid.

Jason Mudrick: (20:29)
There's all these things, and many others that allow these situations to be fertile hunting grounds for a strategy like ours. So, if you told me, should I buy an index of distressed credit right now? This is the macro, I would say absolutely not. You want spreads to be wide, you want the distress ratio to be high, you want the default ratio to be high, and we have none of those three things now.

Troy Gayeski: (20:49)
So, a terrible beta environment basically.

Jason Mudrick: (20:51)
Yeah, I don't know that it will get tighter or who knows what's going to happen over the next year, but this is not a favorable risk reward for that asset class, but what we do have is a tremendous amount of overleveraged businesses. When you keep interest rates low for 12 years, companies borrow and coming out of great financial crisis, we had a little over a trillion of levered credit and it's close to 3 trillion now. And if you look at average debt to EBITDA multiples at new issue over the last five years, it's all over five times, and by the way, that's debt to adjusted EBITDA. There's a lot of very aggressive add-backs to get to an adjusted, but it's probably closer to six times.

Troy Gayeski: (21:25)
Jason, are you seeing the private equity guys play games with EBITDA? Are you suggesting that?

Jason Mudrick: (21:31)
Well interestingly, we give them credit for some add-backs and we don't give them credit for others. We call them recurring non-recurrings, but it's usually about half of what they're adding back is kind of BS and half is probably real, so probably five and a half to six times. So, big opportunity set, that's sort of the positive macro negative.

Jason Mudrick: (21:51)
And then to your point, trading versus investing. We're not buying things that are down 20 points hoping they go up 10 points, and we're trying to buy businesses through their debt. We're buying fulcrum debt securities underwriting to a default where we can convert that to equity and own the business cheaply, and you have to understand, that takes a long time. It's usually like a year to restructure the balance sheet. Then, the company is private and you own it, and now it's like a year or two where you start fixing it and putting new management teams in and sending them the right way and shedding businesses and buying businesses, then you go and exit. This is what a lot of people don't get when they think about distressed return streams. Oftentimes because of the way we're forced to market these situations, it's a big J curve.

Jason Mudrick: (22:33)
You're usually losing money when you're buying these things, and then you're doing all this stuff to optimize the business and nobody's giving you credit for it because it's not a quoted... It never trades, it trades by appointment, and guys are still quoting it from an analysis that's two years old because it's private, and a lot of the return is made when you go an exit. And to exit, you need healthy equity markets and healthy M&A markets because that's usually the exit. So, people will look at our return stream because we have this more private equity-like approach to distressed investing and they're like, "When I would've thought you guys would do really well, you'd do okay, and in years where there's nothing to do in distress, you guys kill it." And I'm like, "Yes, because we're selling things that we bought three or four years ago."

Jason Mudrick: (23:09)
And, that's a lot of what we're doing now, and what I think we'll expect that we'll do over the next 12 to 24 months not knowing what the market's going to throw at us, but a lot of things that we bought that we owned pre-COVID, that we sort of navigated through COVID, and also things that we bought during COVID, we'll be looking to exit and that will drive a lot of performance. So, it is somewhat counterintuitive with the approach that we take finding value in distress. A lot of times some of your best performance can be in years where you might think there's nothing to do in distress.

Troy Gayeski: (23:37)
And Jason, you don't have to be as specific as Leslee was. Thank you for the specificity on the return expectations, but in an environment like this, what type of returns do you think you can generate for investors?

Jason Mudrick: (23:47)
We're always trying to make 20.

Troy Gayeski: (23:49)
Net, right?

Jason Mudrick: (23:51)
20 net, yeah. Some of our funds have been successful with that and others are [crosstalk 00:23:57], but that's what we're targeting.

Troy Gayeski: (23:59)
So Todd.

Todd Lemkin: (24:00)
Yes.

Troy Gayeski: (24:01)
You're not asleep yet, are you? Sorry, it was a long time in between.

Todd Lemkin: (24:05)
[crosstalk 00:24:05].

Troy Gayeski: (24:05)
I saw you dozing off there. No, I'm just kidding. So, equity or credit.

Todd Lemkin: (24:11)
Right.

Troy Gayeski: (24:12)
In which sectors specifically do you think now offer the best value in your space?

Todd Lemkin: (24:20)
I think almost like Lee Cooperman said the other day, you see it really in credit, you see it in equities too. It's sort of all the other stuff. It's the value, it's the travel leisure, it's sort of the COVID hangover relics that I think you still find.

Troy Gayeski: (24:36)
There's still the catch-up trade.

Todd Lemkin: (24:38)
There's still the catch-up trade there. There's still a question mark about you take a credit like Travelport, which is software for the airlines to communicate with travel agents. There's still a big question mark about when does business travel come back, travel in Asia come back, et cetera. I think there are some [crosstalk 00:24:54]-

Troy Gayeski: (24:54)
In five years is the latest estimate right now.

Todd Lemkin: (24:57)
It moves around all the time.

Troy Gayeski: (24:58)
Obviously-

Todd Lemkin: (24:58)
It keeps getting extended and the businesses themselves keep adopting to this new environment as well, so you've got that going on real time also. I think there's very much the haves and have nots in this market, and I think in a way it all stems from asset management has become so slotted with verticals. You've got a lot of money in private credit, a lot of money in distressed, a lot of money chasing these very well-defined mandates, and what we've tried to look for as a multi-strat is really what's falling in between the cracks, in between those verticals.

Troy Gayeski: (25:33)
And, cutting across capital-

Todd Lemkin: (25:34)
And, cutting across capital structures. I think without leverage it's difficult to say you're going to generate 20% net in this environment, but I think you take some structured products, opportunities where we're getting 10, 12% total returns.

Troy Gayeski: (25:48)
Still?

Todd Lemkin: (25:48)
Yeah, I think you still are, and some interesting corporate credit opportunities, the Travelports of the world, or even the mall space, something like CBL, where there are opportunities to make 20 plus there because you're playing in a more fulcrum security, but it's a real upswing, cyclical upswing when and if we come out of this, and then there are some interesting things in real estate, there's a lot of interesting things in the capital solution, excuse me, part of the market special situations part of the market. We're working on a deal right now for a business outsourcing business sort of software, call centers, that kind of thing that just sort of overstayed its welcome on its capital structure.

Todd Lemkin: (26:26)
You see a lot of that where particularly the private companies, they miscalculated. They didn't obviously see this coming. Now, their capital structures are coming due in a year and a half, and they've got to pay up to get some short of short-term bridge-type financing and you can actually get high teens type total returns there unlevered. But again, I think it's needle in the haystack. You've got to be nimble and you've got to look across all these asset classes and really cherry pick them. I think it's challenging to be out there with this one dedicated mandate if you're not just going to find the market. There's just so much capital in the system.

Troy Gayeski: (26:59)
So, anything in commodity still, or have you faded that?

Todd Lemkin: (27:02)
We've pretty much faded it out. We still have some of our offshore drilling equity exposure. Most of them have restructured. I think that space, believe it or not, is actually pretty interesting right now.

Troy Gayeski: (27:13)
It's part of the catch-up theme, right?

Todd Lemkin: (27:14)
Very much the catch-up theme with these new capital structures and management teams are much more incentivized to act rationally, take non-performing boats out of the water, consolidation, not holding out to try to make money on equity options with all this leverage from the past. I think it's a little bit of a left for dead sector, which is interesting, but again, you're tied to oil prices, you're tied to the global economy. It should arguably be a very good environment for credit, stating the obvious and that, and that is why spreads and yields are where they are. But on the other hand, it's a very artificial feeling of stability. And so, we're also running hedges to this day against just sort of broader market indices, high yield as well as S&P on the theory that we're okay with the range of outcomes being here. We just don't want that [crosstalk 00:28:00] shock moment again. We want to hedge that out as much as we can.

Troy Gayeski: (28:05)
So, what do you think that leads to for investors' net of fees?

Todd Lemkin: (28:08)
I think you can get to kind of, again, we're running unlevered, so more like low teens type of return.

Troy Gayeski: (28:14)
12 to 15?

Todd Lemkin: (28:15)
Yeah, I think you can.

Troy Gayeski: (28:18)
Thank you. So, to segue to you, Peter, really quick, we've been talking a lot about corporate capital structures, but one of the focuses at Sculptor that many of you may be unaware of is they have a very healthy convertible bond exposure and they run convertible arbitrage. They've also been very active in the SPAC market and yes, not every SPAC is bad. I think we can all hopefully agree on that. And then lastly, you've been buying more convexity recently, so I know those are three different topics, so you can touch upon the opportunity in converts, convert ARB, SPACs and talk about how excited you are to buy downside protection as cheaply as you've done in quite some time.

Peter Wallach: (28:55)
Sure. Thanks, Troy. Now, the first thing is knowing what ballpark you're playing in, which is I think a pretty common aphorism, and what you said is first and second derivative of growth is slowing. The second derivative of global stimulus is slowing. And so, some of the places that we're interested in looking are places that are, one, potentially uncorrelated to just direction in the market to whether it's credit equity, et cetera. Another is another fear in a common potential tripping point. It could be the reemergence of inflation and an inflection point in monetary policy here and elsewhere, so a couple of the places that you touched on. So, first with convertible bonds and we like convertible bonds and SPACs for different reasons. The convertible bond market right now, and particularly in Asia, has very interesting pockets of cheapness that are in some cases rarely seen and convertible bonds broadly are a type of asset.

Peter Wallach: (29:57)
It's a very big asset class that hasn't recovered nearly to its pre-pandemic level, and then also on a relative basis, relative to where credit and equities are trading, it looks even more attractive. And so with Asia, you have a constellation of factors of regulatory, a lot of exogenous factors, whether it's regulatory, trade, and sometimes liquidity and access to markets that we've been able to bridge. And, we're seeing types of convertible bonds that are trading multiple hundreds of basis points cheap to where they were trading pre-pandemic, and on an absolute basis, you can get mid-single digits unlevered of cheapness, and then way the way we do it in convertible bonds is we hedge the equity, we hedge the credit, we can hedge duration, we hedge to term, we have some locked in term financing.

Peter Wallach: (30:48)
And, what we were able to do is on an unlevered basis, mid high singles in some areas, which obviously levers to well into the teens for a non-directional exposure. So, an interesting way to play Asia right now, or some parts of China in greater China for that reason. Now on SPACs, obviously for a different reason, we've been involved in the SPAC market in various forms for the last couple of decades, so not just over the last 18 or 24 months, and we've seen periods of euphoria like Q1 2021. We've seen periods of despair and uncertainty somewhat like the summer of 2021 and October of last year and everything in between. And, what's interesting about that market right now is the ability to invest at several hundred basis points cheap to the cash in the trust. So, you could buy cash in the trust at call it close to 3% discount.

Peter Wallach: (31:45)
And, then with conservative leverage and very little term and very little duration, you can access high singles, low double digits, and in a market where some people are doing that instead of potentially a cash investment, and there are so many ways that you were getting some free options, you can have early business combinations as opposed to the one or two years that are expected, you could have a positive response in the public markets for a type of company that the business combines with, and then there's more and more negotiations that are ongoing and I don't think this is a secret of sponsor economics can certainly be transferred in some instances, given the supply demand imbalance. There's 130 billion of SPACs out there that are looking for businesses to combine with. There's 30 or 40 billion that have announced, but not yet completed.

Peter Wallach: (32:34)
And, a lot of these are trading at a discount. So, I think that is a very interesting short duration, uncorrelated, non-directional way to play right now, and certainly as part of one of the building blocks of our multi-strategy funds. And, that last point that you mentioned as far as always protecting the left tail, it's a building block. It's part of our social contract with investors and it's part of our value proposition, and one of the ways we do this is through sourcing cheap volatility. If I told you that the last 30 days S&P vol is eight and the last five days is four, and you're able to buy implied protection on that for not much more than what it's realized, I think that people might be surprised of the relative bargain.

Peter Wallach: (33:16)
So there are certain structures that we employ, sometimes it's synthetic puts, sometimes it's others where basically allows you to buy cheap volatility, and then when the flood comes, once again, you're not a forced seller, you're able to monetize the hedges and play off them. So, that's one of the ways that we've used that as a complement to our sort of broad strokes investment program.

Troy Gayeski: (33:38)
Great, and along those lines, Todd, what do you think the biggest risk to markets and your strategies right now? Is it as simple as Fed monetary policy shift, or marginal tax rates going up to 60% plus in New York City, or what would you pen it as?

Todd Lemkin: (33:53)
I think those are all on the list and you've got to obviously put the pandemic on the list as well, the virus itself on the list. I think it's, again, at the end of the day, the evaluations and the equity markets reflect a lot of optimism about growth for the future. Next year will be obviously a more challenging year to generate those comps year over year. If you spice that up with a little Fed restraint tapering going on, you could definitely see something maybe reminiscent of what we saw in '15 where you just get a pulling back general breaking-

Troy Gayeski: (34:28)
A sloppy, messy environment [crosstalk 00:34:30]-

Todd Lemkin: (34:29)
Which has ripple effect.

Troy Gayeski: (34:32)
Are you ramping up your hedges now?

Todd Lemkin: (34:33)
We have been, yeah. And, what we're trying to do really is take chips off the table, and we've been looking for opportunities to monetize positions like Jason was touching on. We have been trying to keep our investing very short-term with a lot of endogenous liquidity under the theory that if we can get that money back we can play offense in a more interesting environment.

Troy Gayeski: (34:54)
[crosstalk 00:34:54].

Todd Lemkin: (34:55)
And, trying to stay higher in the capital structure, but you never really see what that magic moment is.

Troy Gayeski: (35:03)
We only have a couple more seconds, so Leslee, are you guys getting more defensive now or are you just sailing through?

Leslee Cowen: (35:09)
We are defensive, but our whole DNA is basically defensive, and so one of the things we do, we try to stay at the top of the capital structure. We have largely a variable rate portfolio, so we're not taking a lot of interest rate risk, and we look for a lot of idiosyncratic and uncorrelated risks and opportunities that are not market-driven.

Investing in Innovation & Deeptech with Josh Wolfe | #SALTNY

Investing in Innovation & Deeptech with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Lux Capital.

Moderated by AJ Scaramucci, Managing Director, The SALT Fund.

Powered by RedCircle

 

MODERATOR

SPEAKER

Headshot - Wolfe, Josh - Cropped.jpeg

Josh Wolfe

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Lux Capital

Headshot - Scaramucci, AJ - Cropped.jpeg

AJ Scaramucci

Founder & Managing Partner

SALT Fund

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

AJ Scaramucci: (00:08)
Josh, great to see you here at SALT, I've been a long admirer of your work at Lux and happy to have you here with us today.

Josh Wolfe: (00:15)
Great to be here, AJ.

AJ Scaramucci: (00:16)
Yeah, so to kick things off, Josh, you recently raised a new fund, congratulations, earlier this year you announced a billion and a half dollars in fresh capital for Lux. And one of the many unique aspects of your firm is you have this thesis driven approach and I'd love to understand what verticals will you be focusing on with this new capital?

Josh Wolfe: (00:40)
Yeah, so we love to find directional arrows of progress and the directional arrows of progress are basically it doesn't point to who the entrepreneur is or what specific company it is, but it tells you with a reasonably high level of confidence where things are headed. When you think about lighting, we went from flames, to incandescent bulbs, to LEDs, and then computing, we went from mechanical disks that were moving to solid state storage and end compute, in automobiles we went from a horse-drawn carriages to cars, to electric vehicles, to autonomous electric vehicles. We're not going back to sconces and offices with fires, we're not going back to horses on streets and we're not going back to spinning disks.

Josh Wolfe: (01:14)
So, what are those directional arrows of progress? One definitive one is the control interfaces of how we compute. We went from when I was a kid, my mother would say, "Turn the TV," and I would have to get up and literally change from channel two to channel four, and then you get a remote control. Today you have neural brain machine interfaces that are wearable devices that will let you make a simple gesture to control the world around you without actually hitting control devices or button pads or remote controls. And that will be the same thing with our thermostats and basically any sort of smart thing inside of a home. So, I think that's a directional arrow of progress where you're going to see a lot of entrepreneurs at the intersection of neurotech and design and consumer devices.

Josh Wolfe: (01:51)
Another one is resolution, and this is resolution of imaging in life sciences, the tools and techniques and instruments that let us see ever fine a resolution of things to be able to make discoveries, whether it's for new materials or for drugs that save lives, so I think that's a critical area.

Josh Wolfe: (02:05)
And then a third area where there's a clear directional arrow of progress is space, and in space it's everything from manufacturing to satellites and autonomous systems that are basically doing the dull, dirty, dangerous things that astronauts ought not be doing.

AJ Scaramucci: (02:19)
Sure, let's go ahead and double click a bit on that third piece, which is space, right? You've been very active in this particular vector. There's actually a company here that is one of your portfolio companies called Varda, which you basically recently made an investment into.

Josh Wolfe: (02:35)
Amazing entrepreneurs.

AJ Scaramucci: (02:36)
Amazing entrepreneurs, how are you thinking about that space, pun intended? I've heard you use analogies of, "Hey, it's almost like the railroad days, except we're building up." There's a lot of launch companies, many of them are actually here including Astra, what other elements beyond just launch are you excited about?

Josh Wolfe: (02:56)
Well, I think cliches, like stereotypes, have merit in elements of truth, and so that cliche that history doesn't repeat but it rhymes is true. And here, if you look to the history of 19th century build out of the railroads, first you had infrastructure and steel rails that got laid, then you had competition of the locomotives and the kinds of engines that were powering these, and the fuel systems from coal and steam, and then you had infrastructure that got set up around these. So, it makes sense, obviously, that you had commerce, you had way stations, you had logistics and storage, you had home development, and then you had communication, which quite literally went along the rails.

Josh Wolfe: (03:28)
So, now take those rails and flip them vertically 150 years later. And that's what we're doing, instead of having actual steel rails, we've got the rockets of SpaceX and Rocket Lab and others that are launching us. The beautiful thing about that is as there's more competition the cost per kilogram to get things up into space is decreasing, and therefore the assets that we can launch is much greater. So, those are assets today that are satellites, small satellites, instead of a billion dollar ball aerospace satellite that might depreciate over five years with capex, today you can launch dozens, if not hundreds of small sub $100,000 satellites.

Josh Wolfe: (04:02)
Well, what do those satellites do? They're taking images of the earth thrice daily, in a company like ours called Planet, that's now public, you've got people that are then processing the imagery over time using AI and machine learning to look at longitudinal analysis, whether that caravan in China is really going to productive facilities or whether it's going to ghost town residential, whether the ship building is on track or it's delayed, and they've been able to document and discover all kinds of interesting things from human rights abuses to natural resource and natural disaster issues with refugees and so forth.

Josh Wolfe: (04:34)
Then you've got people that are like Varda that are saying, "Wait a second, we can actually manufacture things in space." Now, that sounds absolutely crazy, and that's what we're in the business of, of investing in things that people think are generally crazy. And I love to find the intersection of something that is inevitable, that directional arrow of progress, when everybody else in the market believes that it's impossible, because then ultimately you're paying a lower price than what the market consensus believes.

Josh Wolfe: (04:56)
The guys at Varda basically said, "There are certain materials, exotic materials and products that are going to make sense to develop in low or zero earth gravity, and then the key thing is to bring it back down in capsules to earth." So, if you sort of were to bifurcate the two billionaires that are taking us to space right now, of Musk, who has sort of more of an escapist vision, "Let's go to Mars and there'll be amazing things that come off of that," and Bezos who is sort of like, "Let's manufacture things off planet and bring it back so that the earth can be cleaner." We're more in that latter camp.

AJ Scaramucci: (05:25)
Got it, it makes a ton of sense. And sort of parlaying from space perhaps into defense because those two are very related or co-entangled together, Lux has worked very closely and cooperatively with the Department of Defense, you yourself have been an advocate for Silicon Valley's sort of merging or collaborating with the military-industrial complex. I'd love to understand how you're thinking about that, how Lux is positioning itself to invest in defense?

Josh Wolfe: (05:58)
Well, it starts with an appreciation that the roots of Silicon Valley and venture capital investing were not just Hewlett Packard in the garage with a bunch of groves in Silicon Valley, it really was electric warfare. When Lockheed Martin came to Sunnyvale, there were zero people. Pretty soon we have tens of thousands of people and they were developing pretty cutting edge technology that helped us in the cold war. So, I think there's a return to that ethos and zeitgeists after probably 20 years of people that have been saying, "Beware," going back to Eisenhower, "of the military-industrial complex." And you've had an aversion from some of the brilliant entrepreneurs and engineers that have gone to the Valley to say, "We want to work with government." And part of that is for political reasons, for geopolitical reasons, part of it is immigrants that have come that haven't felt that same appreciation that we had in the 1980s when people were escaping as immigrants from Russia really looking to come to the US.

Josh Wolfe: (06:42)
I think that's starting to change, you have people that are patriotic that believe in what the US stands for that most importantly want to develop cutting edge technology, both hardware and software, for the men and women who are on the front lines. About three years ago, then head of US Special Operations, Tony Thomas, who has subsequently become a partner at Lux, four-star general, ran all of USSOCOM, sent me out to the Far East with some of the people at the edge of the spear, and said, "I want you to do what you do on a daily basis, which is identify things that suck."

Josh Wolfe: (07:08)
What sucks? Is usually the great question that an entrepreneur is asking to identify a market opportunity. And he said, "I want you to go and sit with these men and women and understand what sucks." And this is everything from Blue Dart Tracking. If you're tracking your family members on an Apple iPhone, that's something that some of these guys in triple canopy conditions in the Philippines chasing terrorists are not able to do for a variety of technical reasons, the ability to have satellite communication with no moving parts that can send very high bandwidth also under a triple canopy.

Josh Wolfe: (07:33)
So, we looked at this and said, "There's amazing technological things that are happening outside of DOD and Pentagon that are happening in the commercial world, and it's time for those things to come back so that we can be advantaged, particularly when we have peer adversaries in China and Russia that are completely intertwined in a military civil fusion.

AJ Scaramucci: (07:50)
Yeah, that's another perfect segue. So, in China, obviously over the last few decades, they have risen as a preeminent economic, as well as technological superpower. And today, based on my knowledge, they're graduating five times more software engineers than we are in the US, they're pouring hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into areas like AI, like biotech, quantum among other things. How does the US sort of navigate and not fall into this Thucydides Trap, if you will, while simultaneously keeping its competitive edge in technology?

Josh Wolfe: (08:29)
Well, the first thing is a qualitative and cultural one. As a culture, you get what you celebrate. So, you have a culture that is celebrating scientists and engineers, also go back to the, again, Cold War in Russia, you had brilliant chess players and engineers and doctors and scientists. So, I think as a culture, we should be celebrating the people who were quite literally inventing the future, and those are our scientists and engineers. We should be attracting them from other parts of the world, they should be developing their degrees here and getting their doctorates and staying here and starting companies, that would be a beautiful thing that would give the US a competitive advantage.

Josh Wolfe: (08:58)
I think that China is a very formidable foe in every one of the things that you named. While quantum is an area that I'm a little bit more skeptical about, I think that there's going to be a lot of frauds and a bit of a faddish element, certainly in AI and biotech in particular, and the ability for them to use mass surveillance to be able to collect troves of data that we have civil liberties that in many cases prevent. But I really believe it starts with a cultural thing, and then I think it happens from capitalists that are willing to fund these cutting edge technologies and then work with the government.

AJ Scaramucci: (09:24)
Sure, and pivoting away from sort of this macro economic piece or the investment piece or the space piece. Back to the actual founders that you invest in, one of the quotes that I've heard from you, which I've used as well is, "Chips on your shoulder put chips in your pockets." And I'd love for you to expound on that as it relates to how you think about the [inaudible 00:09:48] you use to identify founders that have that resilience and grit to actually get it done, make these visions happen?

Josh Wolfe: (09:56)
It's one of the almost a heretical things to say, but a very popular thing in Silicon Valley and throughout the country at the moment is mindfulness and meditation and being at ease. And I actually think for the individual, that is a beautiful thing. For society, it is a horrible thing. You want disaffected, really unhappy, miserable, motivated people, because that is where all great progress and changes has occurred.

Josh Wolfe: (10:17)
And you look at what the great people that we've celebrated, whether it's Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison, Oprah Winfrey, you listen to the backstories of what these people endured, whether they were in... And Bezos as well, whether they were adopted, whether they were abandoned, whether they were abused, you might be the only African-American or black person in a mostly white neighborhood, you might be the overweight person in a very skinny area, you might be the person that's the nerd in a Friday night lights Texas football town. Whatever it is that makes you that outlier, it's a thin line where you could end up sort of in a malicious, bad path, or you can be incredibly motivated to have that chip on your shoulder. There is nothing more powerful than the words I'll show them.

AJ Scaramucci: (10:55)
Mm-hmm (affirmative), I love that. And perhaps, can you tie that back to some of your own story, your own origin story? I think that people would love to hear more about that.

Josh Wolfe: (11:05)
For me, my mom, I grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn, she's a special ed teacher, public school teacher, my parents split when I was very young, for me, my father's absence was more of the presence of what I wanted to be as a husband and a father, but all I ever wanted was a strong nuclear family, but I saw people that grew up with resources and advantages, and I resented that. And I was still born a white kid in New York to a mom that was very loving, and so in many ways, I'm like absolutely privileged, but I think when I saw wealth that was inherited from people and I felt like I was more intelligent than them, I've always been psychotically competitive about that, wanting to sort of... To be the man, you must beat the man mentality.

Josh Wolfe: (11:43)
And I just love people that are absolutely psychotically driven and that it comes from some... No matter how much money they make or achievement that they achieve, there will always be this sort of hole in them, and I believe that that is the great source of human progress. So, in founders, certainly in myself, I just, I love finding that in people, that chip on their shoulder.

AJ Scaramucci: (12:03)
Yeah, I love that. And it's not enough at Lux for you guys to invest, you also very regularly incubate businesses across a wide smattering of different fields, including nuclear waste, biotechnology, immunotherapies among other things, I'd love for you to talk a bit about that from an historical context at Lux, but also going forward, where are you looking to actually start businesses from scratch?

Josh Wolfe: (12:29)
So, it often starts with what is the consensus in the market, and then what's the variant perception? What's the thing that everybody else is talking about, and what's the thing that nobody is talking about, and why are they not talking about it? Do they have a smarter insight than us or have they missed something or overlooked something or are they experiencing and enjoying too much success over years so they're not motivated to look here?

Josh Wolfe: (12:46)
If you take nuclear, which was an interesting example, the entire venture world was going crazy about clean tech, green tech, alternative energy going back 10, 11 years, nobody was looking at nuclear. In a part, it wasn't an Al Gore's movie, Inconvenient Truth, so it just wasn't being celebrated in the sort of mega church about alternative energy. And we looked and said, "Nuclear is really interesting." And then we looked at every part of the fuel cycle from the uranium miners who were mostly hucksters and fraudsters in New Mexico and Nevada, so we said no to that. The modular reactors, which were really the domain of billionaires or sovereigns that wanted to arrive instead of building a gigawatt power plan for a billion dollars, you can build 30, 30 megawatt arrays, that was interesting. But the biggest unsolved problem, going back to that earlier quote of what sucks, is what do you do with the waste?

Josh Wolfe: (13:22)
So, we ended up saying, "Is there anybody that's doing high-tech waste treatment?" And as we've dug into this, there was this entire complex in the Department of Energy, about 25%, one in every $4 they spent was on clean.... It wasn't on clean and green and alternative energy, it was on nuclear waste cleanup at places like Hanford and Savannah River that nobody had ever heard of for pre and post Cold War bomb making.

Josh Wolfe: (13:38)
So, we ended up starting a company named after Madam Curie called Kurion, locked of the best talent, because there was this LIBOR arbitrage where all the smart people in nuclear sort of moratorium on new build, went into quant shops and hedge funds like Renaissance and in Two Sigma and D.E. Shaw. And we locked up the best people, started this business, in licensed a whole bunch of technology, and then frankly got very lucky when Japan got very unlucky, and this little company called Kurion was the only game in town when the Fukushima disaster happened to clean up the radioactive cesium, strontium, technetium, uranium and plutonium. So, that was pretty crazy, it started as a brain fart of an idea, we pulled together a team in the Capitol and do that.

Josh Wolfe: (14:11)
Another area where we've done this, and then I'll give you one that I'm super excited about, was the world was going crazy about the microbiome. So, what you eat and how it affects you and your gut and then so forth. And there were probably 40 companies at the time focusing on the microbiome. And one of our very smart partners, Adam Goulburn at Lux, who's a PhD stem cell biologist said, "What about the gut brain access? So, forgetting about your nutritional health, could you go into the brain for everything from the sense of satiety when you are full for metabolic diseases and obesity, or for psychosocial disorders?" When you say, "I have butterflies in my stomach," or, "I have a gut feeling," there is a physiological truth to that. And so, we started a company around a bunch of Nobel laureates and Howard Hughes medical investigators out of Columbia called Kallyope, brought in an incredible woman, Nancy Thornberry, who ran all of [inaudible 00:14:56] discovery programs and then just capitalized that today.

Josh Wolfe: (15:00)
The thing that I'm most excited about really started... and I love the intersection between science fiction and science fact. It started as a sci-fi idea, and a lot of the things that Lux funds, you can find these examples, whether it's in the literature or graphic novels or in movies that show the decrease in gap between that which was once imagined by some sci-fi author and an entrepreneur who is making it science fact.

AJ Scaramucci: (15:19)
Sure.

Josh Wolfe: (15:20)
X-Men, I'm sure you've seen the movies or read the comic books, but Professor X puts on this helmet, Cerebro, and he's able to, in a crowd, spot mutants. And those mutants have ridiculous powers like lasers out of their eyes and conjuring fire from their fingers. But it got us thinking with seven and a half billion people on earth, could there be a one in a billion chance of somebody with some crazy phenotypes, some trait? And therefore there should be seven or eight people of these types walking around.

Josh Wolfe: (15:43)
And sure enough, we would go to people at Cold Spring Harbor and found these PhDs. And they said, "Oh my God, this is all I've ever wanted to do my entire life." So, we started a company called Variant about two years ago that went out and now has 14 partnerships globally. They hate when I talk about this idea of mutans because it's not really that, it's outlier people in outlier parts of the world who may possess the secrets in human genetics for the rest of the masses.

Josh Wolfe: (16:14)
There's a population in South America because of where they are, there's nine families that remain, when the temperature drops late at night, they have a heat shock protein that the body produces to raise their metabolism.

AJ Scaramucci: (16:24)
Sure.

Josh Wolfe: (16:25)
Now, if you could give that to the masses with a third of our country massively obese, and they were able to take something like a pill that would raise their metabolic activity while they slept. I mean, that is a $50 billion drug.

AJ Scaramucci: (16:33)
Oh, for sure.

Josh Wolfe: (16:34)
You could save lives.

AJ Scaramucci: (16:35)
Yeah, it's fascinating, on that point, we at SALT sort of think of programmable biology or the intersection of software and biotech through the lens of evolution from natural selection to intelligent direction.

Josh Wolfe: (16:49)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

AJ Scaramucci: (16:51)
And I think that's sort of what you're alluding to here. How do you think about that on a long-term time horizon 20, 50 and beyond, if you could opine on that? Where are we going to go there?

Josh Wolfe: (17:04)
The intellectually honest answer of 20 years out, I really have no idea, and what I do is try to find the brilliant people who are quite literally inventing the future that are doing that. What you touched on though, is dead on, which is the intersection between tech and biotech. And so, specifically the metaphors that we use in programmability of cells, even when people are explaining something like CRISPR, gene editing technique, they talk about almost like copy paste, control C control V, like we would in Microsoft Word. But I think it's really the use of artificial intelligence machine learning to be able to look at cells and understand what is going on to be able to understand from genetic sequences the same way that you might use natural language processing to understand texts and search where these worlds are combining.

Josh Wolfe: (17:40)
We have a public company in called Recursion that was taking computer vision and AI to be able to look at the typology of cells to understand what happens when you introduce a drug to be able to improve the effect on a whole variety of populations where you could do tens of thousands of these things in silico at the same time.

Josh Wolfe: (17:57)
So, I think the intersection between biotech and AI is going to be absolutely explosive, and it's really at the interstices between these two disciplines where you classically had biotech investors in one domain, you had software and AI investors in the other, but where those two are meeting is going to unleash a lot of opportunity.

AJ Scaramucci: (18:13)
In addition to biotechnology, another one of the mega trends here at SALT this year is crypto and blockchain. I know Lux has been thinking and investing in this area. There's a lot of froth as an emergent by-product of sort of the crazy liquidity in the area, but how are you filtering through the noise, and what opportunities are you seeing that you think will have real staying power?

Josh Wolfe: (18:37)
We have thought that the arms dealers in this case, while we're not in Coinbase, we have an incredible company called Anchorage, which is the main custodian for a lot of crypto assets. When Visa announced that they had bought this NFT, it was Anchorage that was the main proponent of that, their supplier for the infrastructure. So, I think we're in a speculative mode right now, there are frauds, there are fads, there are promoters. Generally my view here would be listened to the things that you don't hear. In other words, the people that are making a ton of money are the ones that are not really speaking that much. The ones that are constantly pumping and promoting are the ones to be more wary of.

AJ Scaramucci: (19:06)
Fair point, I think that's a great universal heuristic, candidly. So, in the last few minutes here, a few rapid fire questions for you. One is, right now, there is a massive abundance of capital, particularly in private markets, sloshing around and the late stage hedge funds are kind of coming down [inaudible 00:19:24] stage, as are sovereign wealth, pension, I mean, it really is crazy what's going on. How does Lux in this abundance of capital differentiate? What are the key differentiators relative to other venture firms, whether it be in Silicon Valley or hedge funds here in New York?

Josh Wolfe: (19:40)
So, most of the crossover funds for us are partners, they are providers of later stage capital. And they're all very smart and they've been great partners. So, the [inaudible 00:19:47] is D1s, [inaudible 00:19:49], et cetera. Early stage, I think for us, the bread and butter is really, can you start to [inaudible 00:19:54] companies? Can you put entrepreneurs in business and be their very first day one check?

Josh Wolfe: (19:57)
Today, I don't know, there's 1800 venture firms, again, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. You go back to the 2000 dot-com boom and bust, within a year and a half of that peak number, I think at that time it was about a thousand then it got cut down to about 400. So, the difference here is you also have the rise of solo GPs, where individuals are basically raising SPVs in large multi-hundred million dollar funds, capital is abundant, what happens when capital return gets scarce? Why do returns get scarce? Because you're paying a high price for a cheery consensus, as Buffett says. So, you want to invest where capital is scarce. And that means more esoteric areas, things that people might think are impossible, things that people might think are going to take longer, things that people think are more capital intensive than they actually are, and try to have that varying perception. And then if you can form new [inaudible 00:20:39] you can get disproportionate ownership early on for relatively low capital.

Josh Wolfe: (20:43)
But I think we're in a world for the next few years where the pools of capital formation very much feel like 1998, '99, 2000, where everybody is getting into the game, and eventually there'll be a massive shakeout, the distress guys will clean up. We've had probably eight or nine of our companies go through spats, we were telling all of them, "Husband your cash, be really smart about this because when the downturn happens the amount of cash that's been delivered to the balance sheet of many of these companies is an arsenal, is a war chest to do consolidation in certain industry sectors." So, that's how we're sort of thinking about the next year.

AJ Scaramucci: (21:12)
And as our final question, love a hot take from you, give us sort of what in the deep tech landscape is severely overrated and perhaps what's severely underrated? And we'll wrap there.

Josh Wolfe: (21:25)
Overrated, for me, I would say is quantum. I think it's an area that preys upon people's ignorance, and anytime there's ignorance arbitrage you get frauds and you get people making all kinds of crazy claims. Part of that is FOMO, part of that is people not wanting to admit that they don't understand it, but I'm very skeptical about vast majority of things in quantum computing. The thing that I'm most excited about that I think is under hyped by others, and we build the portfolio, so I can talk about it pretty actively, is what I call the tech of science, the technologies and instruments that are enabling people both on the hardware side, we have a company called Eikon, Nobel Prize winning work of the guy, Eric Betzig, that is able to look inside of a cell in real time and image what is happening when you introduce a drug. And then you've got a company like Benchling that is doing that on the software side to automate labs and science.

Josh Wolfe: (22:09)
The reason that's important, and I know that macro is a big part of this conference assault, the geopolitical competition that we're having with China and others, historically on the stage you had hard power and US soft power, and soft power was a combination of winning Olympic medals and exporting MTV and music and movies and so forth and winning Nobel Prizes. And I think that the race for scientific prestige is going to see a big tailwind, whether that's in space or down in the scientific labs, and the instruments and tools and hardware and software to fuel that is going to be a really big deal.

AJ Scaramucci: (22:37)
I love that. With that, Josh Wolfe.

Josh Wolfe: (22:39)
Thank you, AJ.

Macro Forces Driving Crypto Adoption | #SALTNY

Macro Forces Driving Digital Asset Adoption with Dan Tapiero, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, 10T Holdings. Bill Campbell, Portfolio Manager, International Fixed Income, DoubleLine. Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise Asset Management.

Moderated by Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Dan Tapiero.jpeg

Dan Tapiero

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner

10T

Bill Campbell.jpeg

Bill Campbell

Portfolio, Global Bond Strategy

DoubleLine

 
matt-hougan.jpeg

Matt Hougan

Chief Investment Officer

Bitwise Asset Management

MODERATOR

Boring%2C+Perianne.jpeg

Perianne Boring

Founder & President

Chamber of Digital Commerce

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Perianne Boring: (00:08)
Hi there. Good afternoon. I'm Perianne Boring, the founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. We're a trade association headquartered in Washington working on crypto policy, the public policy impacting digital assets and blockchain technology. Today we'll be talking about the macroeconomic drivers impacting the adoption of digital assets. We have an A-class team of speakers here. I'll have each of you just introduce yourselves, name, where you're from, and maybe just a quick overview of your firm's focus in the crypto space. Dan, let's start with you.

Dan Tapiero: (00:47)
Sure. Hi. Hello, everybody. Dan Tapiero, 10T holdings, founder and CEO. We are a mid to late stage private equity firm that focuses exclusively and only on businesses in the digital asset ecosystem, and as far as I know I think we're the only ones out there right now focusing just on the mid to late stage businesses. So we've put quite a bit of money to work in the first six months of the year, and look forward to being involved in the space for the foreseeable.

Bill Campbell: (01:21)
Hi, everyone. Bill Campbell. I'm a portfolio manager at DoubleLine Capital. DoubleLine is a $135 billion multi-asset management firm. I manage the global currency and global interest rate strategies. We like to think of ourselves as a forward thinking macro firm. A lot of my research has been in the crypto space on CBDC, CBDC adoption, and the DeFi wave and the macroeconomic implications across economies, both developed and emerging markets, and how it's developing itself but how it impacts the more traditional investments, and more specifically how it could be a disruptor to macroeconomic models, currencies, and interest rates.

Matt Hougan: (02:12)
Amazing. Hey, everybody. Matt Hougan, I'm the chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management. Bitwise is a crypto asset manager, we're best known for having created and today running the world's largest crypto index fund called the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund. We also have the first and largest DeFi index fund. We manage about a billion and a half in crypto assets, mostly for professional investors, hedge funds, institutions, and the advisor market.

Perianne Boring: (02:39)
Thanks, Matt. So let's just start with the basics, when we think about the macroeconomic trends impacting the adoption of digital assets, and just starting with money. Of course Satoshi called Bitcoin a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Just last weekend, the front page of the New York Times, an article on crypto that started with, "Bitcoin is changing the definition of money. For thousands of years, civilizations have flocked to commodities like gold and silver as money. Today, money looks very different." What is your... And I'll just open this up to either of you. To you, what is money? How is it changing? How is Bitcoin and crypto impacting that?

Bill Campbell: (03:25)
[inaudible 00:03:25] Do you want me to start it off?

Dan Tapiero: (03:27)
Go ahead, please.

Bill Campbell: (03:28)
Well, I think maybe just taking a step back, obviously besides a unit of account, store of value, the legal tender, the unit of exchange in an economy, I think we need to think about money as a public versus a private asset, and a public versus a private good. For a long time, money has been thought of as a public good, and I think that people in general have been willing to accept that premise. Then we hit the global financial crisis in 2008, and we saw the expansion of extraordinary policies by governments, and that caused a rethinking potentially of a lot of the policies that were being put in place that maybe are expanding the monetary base faster than people would necessarily like.

Bill Campbell: (04:13)
So that moves us to the private money side. I know crypto has deemed itself as the new bastion of private money, but in the past we've had private money. We've had bank issued private notes, and some of the issues that have come with that is there's preference of credit between different banks. If you have individual notes that are issued, there's going to be a credit preference between those [inaudible 00:04:37] as so, there's going to be credit preference between different cryptocurrencies.

Bill Campbell: (04:41)
We've also had forms of private money throughout the credit card space. When we think about the transactions from Visa and MasterCard, even though that's thought of as credit, it's transactional. That also has been a form of retail private money. So really crypto is now bridging that gap I believe between the purely public good that we initially thought money was, to maybe more of the idea that private actors, and now decentralized private actors, can be a bigger player in this space, and maybe can provide more institutional credibility than some of the governments. Not to jump the gun, but just to whet your appetite a little bit, I think especially in emerging markets where institutional strength and policies are fairly questionable, and where economies tend to not trust their sovereign currencies anywhere and are dollarized, crypto has a very big window of opportunity to potentially disrupt and transform those economies.

Matt Hougan: (05:47)
Yeah, I agree with all of that. One thing if you study the history of money is that the history of money is never over. I think a lot of people assume that the history of money was over with the dollar being the king, and all currencies being public goods. And crypto is one challenge of that. But really it's evolved many times in the past. As you mentioned, this is not the first time that the relationship of what money is to public and private sectors has changed.

Perianne Boring: (06:13)
Yeah, that's a great point. And we're seeing significant tectonic shifts underway in what money is, how it's issued, how it's regulated, how we use it. And I think one of those big macroeconomic decisions was just over 50 years ago, in 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window, which really launched us into this global fiat experiment. So just in either of your minds, how has that impacted where we are today? And what do you see as the future of fiat, given how much has changed just in the past 50 year timeline?

Dan Tapiero: (06:54)
I wanted to just say a word on the other question just for a second, and I'll link it into this one, which is that money, at least for me, has always been about return. And look, you've got negative 3, 4, 5% interest rates in the U.S. if you're using the CPI as the deflator, and I think that's caused a lot of people to think about the nature of money, that never thought about it before. And one of the interesting things is that crypto really has been a retail led phenomenon. You have average Joes out there who have [inaudible 00:07:34] Bitcoin since 2011, '12, Ethereum from '15, and the institutions have been late. And they're still very late, as far as I can see. It's still early for the general trend.

Dan Tapiero: (07:45)
So I think the idea that there is return on your money or your cash, or however you think about it in this new digital asset ecosystem, is really what's driving it. Bitcoin as a store of value, Ethereum is a little bit different, but also something of lasting and permanent value. So I think that when you're looking for alternatives, there have to be alternatives, and I think this has now grown up as a real alternative.

Dan Tapiero: (08:19)
So, sorry I didn't answer your question. And I'm a gold guy, too, so I didn't answer your question about the Nixon depeg. I'm not sure... What was the gist of... What as the impact?

Perianne Boring: (08:36)
Yeah, and when we went off the Gold Standard, and how that's changed money, and how that has impacted the future of fiat.

Dan Tapiero: (08:46)
Right. Well, I mean...

Bill Campbell: (08:49)
Go for it [crosstalk 00:08:50].

Dan Tapiero: (08:50)
I mean, it's allowed the authorities to inflate in an unlimited way. They're not pegged to anything. So again, another reason for Bitcoin, which is in finite... There's a finite amount of it. And even the other cryptocurrencies, even Ethereum is not really... The supply doesn't really expand in the way that fiat has. And of course post COVID you saw massive expansion in the balance sheets, and again, I think the average person out there is saying, "Hey, I'm losing purchasing power. I used to be able to buy this, and now I can't." And so there's no anchor.

Dan Tapiero: (09:25)
But that being said, life is better today than it was, for most people, in 1971. So I don't want to say, "Okay, well that decision 50 years ago was a disaster." I think we've had tremendous prosperity. So I think the answer to that's more nuanced.

Perianne Boring: (09:43)
Sure.

Matt Hougan: (09:44)
I want to build on that nuance, if it's okay, and then you can jump in. I think that's exactly right. Studying gold standards through history, they don't work that great in terms of launching economic growth either. The problem with fiat and inflationary fiat currencies is that eventually it ends poorly. And it gets worse in an exponential fashion. So the fact we went off the gold standard in 1970 makes it necessary to have an alternative, which Bitcoin is emerging as an alternative, and it becomes more and more important, and more and more important as a break on the natural tendency for fiat systems to eventually hit a bad state of inflation. I think it's just a time pattern. I think that's the nuance in it.

Bill Campbell: (10:32)
And if I can then further build on it, the inflation point and the debasement point are fantastic points, and depegging off the gold standard allowed the explosion of debt, allowed the explosion of credit. But what we've seen more recently, especially across developed markets, is the explosion of the monetary base, the explosion of all of the central bank activity, has actually caused anemic growth. I don't think anybody can argue that Japan has seen very strong growth, that Europe has seen very strong growth, and then after the bounceback from the recession that we saw in March 2020, I think the U.S. glide path is coming back lower.

Bill Campbell: (11:07)
Now, people can say, "Look, the cause of that might be a big debt burden," but what I really think is happening is, in the quantitative easing policies that have happened, what we've seen is a taking of private assets out of the market, but really the explosion of institutional digital money, which is wholesale reserves. And banks ultimately have not been willing to lend that out, or lend it out beyond large institutions. So I'm getting to the point that I think one of the structural drivers of low growth over time has been the headwind to productivity that large banks consolidating small regional banks, and the unwillingness of them to lend to the SME sector, is actually causing.

Bill Campbell: (11:48)
This is where DeFi and crypto could actually become a potentially game-changer, not only in our economy but other economies in addressing this problem of productivity growth, because if, say through pass-through tokens, small and medium sized enterprises are able to then access their customer base, get new sources of credit, get new sources of lending, and be able to spend that both on new business lines and potentially more hiring, I think that that can both address the productivity problem, but it could also address the structural overhang that we have on the employment side as well. And I'll maybe stop that, but happy to dive in if you want.

Perianne Boring: (12:27)
Yeah, to build on that, Bill, you've highlighted that we're in a really critical moment, and key moment, of government intervention. What are some of those areas where you have government influence on the markets? What type of distortions is that making? And ultimately what are the results of those?

Bill Campbell: (12:50)
Well, I think I touched on a few, but I can't over-emphasize the importance of the central bank policy, not only on being a headwind to productivity growth, but also squeezing out returns. When we look across the risk asset spectrum, a lot of my credit colleagues are telling me that we're back to the historical lows that we saw in spreads prior to 2020. So I think that central banks are unwilling to allow markets to clear. Crypto markets are completely unregulated, but I still think that they're in much of the adoption phase, there's a lot of risk embedded in them, they to me look much more like a VC market that has tremendous potential upside, opportunity, but also a tremendous amount of volatility.

Bill Campbell: (13:37)
But I think that, just sticking on the government intervention side, the other big aspect of it is the amount of fiscal policy and regulatory policy that's been put in place. We're seeing continued expansion of fiscal, trying to actually push money to individuals. And to get back to the inflation argument, this time around is different from prior cycles after recessions. Fiscal policies actually pushing money to areas where we can see inflation, we're seeing higher commodity prices, we're seeing higher housing prices, we're seeing higher wages right now, so all of that is real on the inflationary side.

Bill Campbell: (14:17)
And finally, just my last point on this, I think blockchain is unique in the technological solution that it's providing. It provides low latency, immediate settlement, it provides protection of individual privacy, and it's potentially the new wiring for the financial system. So for people who are pushing the whole DeFi blockchain revolution aside, I think they're missing that this could potentially be the new plumbing for the financial system that we all need to pay attention to.

Perianne Boring: (14:47)
Yeah. Very key point. Just to highlight the point on inflation, when I was a columnist for Forbes, I did a story penned, "If you want to know the real rate of inflation, don't bother with the CPI." And I interviewed a statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and talked about how they come up with their numbers. And it's very convoluted. Of course they're tracking the price of goods, where as someone who studied monetary policy in college, really it's the monetary base that really is I think the key thing you should be looking at, in terms of inflation. So I think some of those numbers that are put forward to measure inflation are a little funny. But I don't think anybody can argue that there's been this unbelievable expansion of the monetary base.

Perianne Boring: (15:36)
We hear a lot about concerns of inflation. Even Senator Cynthia Lummis has very publicly said this is a huge concern for her and her constituents, and that's why she's bought, invested in Bitcoin, and even encouraging her constituents in the State of Wyoming to do so as well. So Matt, maybe I'll focus on you, given what you guys do at Bitwise, really looking at this as a financial advisor. Bitcoin has really proved itself to be a non-correlated asset. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a report in 2018 that said Bitcoin has the potential to emerge as its own asset class, to be used for diversification purposes in portfolios. And I think that speaks a lot to your thesis at Bitwise. However, there's been a bit of hesitancy with financial advisors advising people to use Bitcoin as a diversification tool. Can you speak to how you guys are thinking about that, and how you see that, and where we're at today from a fiduciary oversight perspective?

Matt Hougan: (16:43)
Sure. If you didn't know it was called Bitcoin or crypto, and you put it into a portfolio optimizer, you would definitely want 1 to 5% of your portfolio to be allocated to it. The reason is, over any meaningful period, if you put crypto into a portfolio and you rebalance, as advisors do, it contributes to your absolute and risk adjusted returns. They have a white paper on bitwiseinvestments.com. I mean this literally. Every three year period in history, including periods with 80% drawdowns, if you put into a portfolio it increases your absolute and risk adjusted returns.

Matt Hougan: (17:18)
When we talk to advisors about it, there's really two key things that matter to them. The first thing that they have to get over is that it's not going to zero. The reason it's important to get over the fact that it's not going to zero is that, if you want to put it in a portfolio and rebalance it, you have to assume it's not going to zero in order to harvest the volatility, or you can make a small allocation. The other piece is just to appropriately size your allocation. As long as you keep your crypto allocation at a reasonable level, it doesn't create mass drawdowns in your portfolio.

Matt Hougan: (17:58)
We've seen enormous growth from the advisor market. There's enormous interest from the advisor market. I'll end with one more stat on that interest. In January, we wrote the CFA Institute's first ever guide to Bitcoin, blockchain, and crypto. I believe it's their most downloaded research report ever, just as a sign of how much interest there is. So I think that's the next big market in crypto, it's the advisor space. That's coming soon.

Perianne Boring: (18:20)
Yeah. We represent about 30 private equity funds at the Chamber, so we've gotten the opportunity to see how different fund managers are evaluating crypto, and really the general principle across the board is, if you introduce Bitcoin into your typical portfolio, 1 to 5%, you see volatility go down and performance go up. So I've heard a number of people who had said, once that is more widely understood, it will be seen as almost irresponsible to not recommend for clients to invest a percentage of their portfolio into Bitcoin for that diversification piece.

Perianne Boring: (19:03)
Further, in March of this year, the Chairman of the Fed, Jerome Powell, in his testimony to Congress, he said that Bitcoin is more of a substitute for gold than the dollar. So just to expand on this concept, would love to get, Dan, or Bill, your thoughts on... Since the Fed owns gold, and other central banks around the world own gold, what are your thoughts on the Fed and central banks substituting gold for Bitcoin?

Dan Tapiero: (19:33)
Well, I don't know that they're ready to substitute it. I think he was really talking more theoretically, that the principles behind Bitcoin as hard money are similar to the principles behind gold as hard money. People don't generally think of the dollar really as hard money, it's used to transact, and it's the currency of the world, and it's super liquid, and it's not physical. So I think he was thinking about it in those terms, but I think that's very right, that store of value... Bitcoin as store of value as a high form of collateral. I think that's absolutely right. There are other cryptocurrencies potentially that you might use for other purposes, but in terms of that pristine collateral, and again it's all laid out in Satoshi's white paper, and I think he's acknowledging this too, that it really is an invention, Bitcoin is an invention, and I always say it's an invention akin to the invention of the combustion engine or the discovery of electricity.

Dan Tapiero: (20:48)
That paper, people don't I think understand, solved a problem, the Byzantine Generals' problem, that had been unsolved for hundreds of years, and the problem of distributed trust. And so that aspect of Bitcoin as a solid, secure, backed by the proof-of-work algorithm, I think is absolutely right. But not necessarily a replacement for the dollar.

Perianne Boring: (21:18)
We'll come back to that thought. Bill, I want to focus on central bank digital currencies for a moment. We've all seen the Grayscale Drop Gold commercials, and just this past month El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. So looking at it from the central bank perspective, there's now, according to the Bank for International Settlements, over 80% of central banks around the world are already experimenting with CBDCs. So how do you see things like Bitcoin, ETH, other cryptocurrencies living in a CBDC world? Are these a threat? Are these a complement? Will they be interoperable? What does this look like, fast forward 10, 20 years from now?

Bill Campbell: (22:03)
It's a great question, and I think in my mind we need to start segmenting different parts of the market out to try to get a framework for understanding and thinking about it. I think that central back activities, the way that they really control markets and economies are through controlling the monetary base, setting interest rates, and controlling credit. And DeFi in general, and blockchain technology, is actually disrupting each one of those. For the monetary base, obviously you're having new cryptocurrencies come out that are being accepted as legal tender in El Salvador, for example. Interest rates are obviously manipulated across the globe, and you're having new interest rate markets via staking. And then when we think of credit creation, I do think there is a lot of potential for credit creation in the crypto and blockchain network.

Bill Campbell: (22:57)
In emerging markets, you're seeing about... Especially across Latin America where we think Peru, Colombia, even Mexico, about half the population is unbanked. So crypto is actually... You see a lot of DeFi protocols being picked up fairly aggressively, because it's permissionless and you get a lot of the debit card style transactions, that come with that... I would call it Banking 1.0. But you can imagine that there's going to be a lot more banking services that are going to be provided across the globe across these different networks. So I think that central banks are looking carefully at... I don't think they want to stifle this growth, but they also don't want to lose control of the credit making mechanism in that.

Bill Campbell: (23:41)
As far as the currency itself, when we think of CBDCs, I think you're just thinking of... This is true retail digital money, and right now we have that in the form of stablecoins. And when we look at digital transactions, I'm sure Dan you've seen this, 85% of one side of all transactions are very a stablecoin, whether it's USDC, USDT, or the like. So once you introduce the digital dollar, and you don't have to have the issue of trying to understand the collateral backing of the stablecoin, and I know there's been some questions about Tether, there's a big debate, but would the CDBC or the digital dollar become the preferred stablecoin in this ecosystem, as long as it didn't do what China did and set a centralized blockchain that removes your privacy. If it truly is in the form of a stablecoin that's settlable on ETH, that's settlable on any other of the blockchain networks, potentially it becomes the superior solution.

Bill Campbell: (24:38)
And then the final point is, I think that the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status is threatened by the DeFi revolution. And just to quickly expand on that, we're seeing... I think it's more the digital payment systems and the cross-border payment systems that provide the threat more than the CBDC itself. So the BIS through Project Dunbar is looking at, in Asia, between Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and I think a couple of other banks, trying to integrate the payment systems via blockchain, in that region.

Bill Campbell: (25:06)
And by the way, there's a new trade agreement, RCEP, that is looking at the regional cooperation of trade in that region. So as countries begin to develop this technology, as you have new regional trading agreements, isn't it logical that 60% of reserves being denominated in U.S. dollars might not be necessary? Don't you think that you as a country would prefer to settle the majority of your trade on a bilateral basis with your balance of payments trading partners? And I think that removing the dollar as that fundamental denomination for trade, fundamental denomination for commodity settlement, runs the risk in the long term of being a potential dethroning of the dollar's U.S. reserve currency status.

Dan Tapiero: (25:54)
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I just think that... Look, 60% or whatever the number is too big. After the war, it made sense, all the other economies were at zero, they were flattened. And for many years, I think people just got used to having the dollar in the center. But if you just look at GDP, the U.S. is I think, what, 25% of world GDP? [crosstalk 00:26:20]

Bill Campbell: (26:19)
It's actually come down. It's closer to 20, and China's gone up to 20. And Europe's about 22.

Dan Tapiero: (26:26)
Right. It's been inconsistent for years, that the dollar was overweight in everyone's portfolio. So I think it's just a slow transition. As a macro guy for 25 years in the hedge fund business, I always remember the quip that macro always takes longer than you think it will. Sitting there with investments, and you think it's going to be three months, and it's three years. And I think this is perfect case of this. I don't think the dollar's going away, I don't think America's going away. I think, and this might segue into the next question you want to ask, but I think that if we start to make some very poor decisions on the regulatory front here, vis-a-vis the digital asset ecosystem and blockchain technology, I think that is dangerous for us, because the U.S. is already behind I think the rest of the world in adoption and understanding. 90% of total world cryptocurrency volume is outside the U.S.

Dan Tapiero: (27:29)
So there is a chance here that the world moves forward without us at the lead. And that worries me a lot more than...

Perianne Boring: (27:39)
Yeah, is that the real... [crosstalk 00:27:40]

Dan Tapiero: (27:42)
Okay, I stole a little bit your thunder there, because I know you wanted to talk about that, but...

Perianne Boring: (27:42)
No, no. Especially in my role as an industry advocate working with public policymakers, very careful not to pin the crypto against the status of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. In fact, I don't think it's a helpful argument to say they're competitors, especially with something like Bitcoin that's really operating as a store of value, akin to a digital gold. That serves a very different function than payments. And I think both can coexist, and you have U.S. dollars and stablecoins as your transactional layer, and Bitcoin as that store of value.

Perianne Boring: (28:21)
Dan, I did want to come back to your thought on the combustion engine. You have said Bitcoin and blockchain, they're a history invention, akin to the invention of the combustion engine, and will have a similar transformative impact on our world. I think what you're getting to is that this isn't just about money, there's a revolution beyond just money in the crypto and blockchain technology. So one of the things I really challenge our members to help articulate better is how this technology is going to have an impact on the daily lives of normal people, not necessarily just your hedge fund managers and your investors, but the citizenry. How is this technology going to impact the average person for good?

Dan Tapiero: (29:10)
Yeah, I'll just say one quick thing and then I'll let the guys answer as well. But I think it's a revolution in trust, and so it's a permanent record. I've read, and other people have also called it, a truth machine.

Perianne Boring: (29:24)
The cover of The Economist a couple of years ago.

Dan Tapiero: (29:26)
That's right. And there was a book also. But I think that's what the real... If you want to be abstract, think about all of the things in the course of human interaction that rely on trust. And a lot of times there isn't that trust there. And so I think that's the really big revolution. I don't know if you guys...

Bill Campbell: (29:53)
Yeah, I completely agree. The other interesting aspect of blockchain is being able to protect privacy and anonymity while still having a vast amount of publicly available information. So far, we've been lagging China as far as AI development, and network effects, because of the concerns about privacy. So blockchain, moving outside of finance, has the potential to allow network effects, the Internet of Things, like take off medical records, there are a lot of potential use cases that can come out of this technology. And I think that all comes from your point that the key element is trust and keeping privacy.

Dan Tapiero: (30:34)
And this also is a massive decentralized network that, from a security perspective, is really bulletproof. It could end up becoming... And I'm not saying which network specifically, could be the Bitcoin network, could be another one, ends up becoming the value layer for the entire internet. And so, I don't want to bring it back to this again, but I worry just now about the U.S. not being innovative enough and not seeing these bigger picture concepts.

Matt Hougan: (31:08)
Yeah, I'll agree with that, and then I want to talk big picture as well, because that's fun. I think we're already blowing it from a regulatory perspective. To put one very narrow, maybe controversial dot on it, if I agree with Dan that the U.S dollar and the U.S. position is in a slow fade as a relationship to its GDP, we had this sterling opportunity, once in a lifetime, to delay that and extend it if we had embraced Libra as a dollar backed stablecoin. What better way to get the entire world to use dollars in every transaction than to put a huge amount of money in a dollar backed asset? And we just turned up our nose at it. It was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I think we totally blew it, and we can't get that back.

Matt Hougan: (31:54)
What will your daily life look like is something that crypto struggles with. And the reason it struggles, I think, is that the primitives that crypto introduces are so large. Dan, you mentioned trust. You can talk about digital property rights, you can talk about instantaneous settlement, and the landscape of possibilities that are created by these primitives is so massive that the crypto industry typically falls back on small examples, like improving the remittance system, or lowering fees, or allowing people to make their financial assets more usable. And those are all true, and those are all the baby steps, but just like in the early '90s, predicting all the things that the internet would do was very very difficult, it's often good to dwell on one or many of those primitives, and just spend a week thinking about what is digital property rights mean 20 years from now?

Matt Hougan: (32:43)
It's easy to look at $3 million digital JPEGs of rocks and laugh at NFTs, but if you stop thinking of it like that and start thinking of it as the first instantiation of digital property rights, and allow your mind to wander for a little bit of time, thinking about what that means in ten years is huge. So it's hard to make them very specific, because it's hard to predict the future, but the primitives in crypto are so powerful and so world changing, it's very exciting to think out five, ten years.

Dan Tapiero: (33:10)
I would say one thing is that older people, they say, "What do I need digital property rights for?" Versus the under 30 crowd that are gamers, and it's very natural for them to think about digital property, because a lot of their assets are already digital. And so... Go ahead, what were you going to...

Matt Hougan: (33:31)
No, I had this great conversation with a reporter, and he was like, "I don't understand why someone would spend $5,000 on a sword, and it's not even a real sword, it's digital." It's got so much more utility to people than a physical sword. When's the last time you used a physical sword? Been a long time. But these kids are using digital swords all the time to create status, to win rewards...

Dan Tapiero: (33:54)
It's also because they're spending eight hours a day online, and that's something that none of us older guys can really... We're on the phones and everything, but literally, I think it's eight hours a day is the average usage, and these gamers are on even more. So they are going to the Metaverse, to these virtual spaces, to actually meet people and hang out and live in digital land, and all of this stuff. People are living their actual lives. We're not, but it's more and more that way. So for them digital property rights, that's not even a jump. Right?

Matt Hougan: (34:35)
Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it is hard for older people to get their head around that, I agree.

Bill Campbell: (34:42)
But the digital property rights is such a huge concept, and I think we need to figure out on regulation or litigation what exactly is protected when we start writing individual code. But when that's figured out, it has the ability to provide a lot more liquidity to venture capital space, private equity space, a lot of spaces that historically maybe haven't been accessed as widely. But also we need to think about, now we have these new entities that are digital autonomous organizations that are made up of a bunch of individuals that vote on what the platform should do. So what rights are afford to those organizations? How can they link into the true economy? Can a DAO, a digital autonomous organization, make a contract with a private company? And then what happens if the DAO does something that harms an individual? What liability do all of the holders in the DAO actually face?

Bill Campbell: (35:39)
And these are the things that need to be sorted out, and when they are, I think you'll have a tremendous amount of institutional capital chase it, because I think the scope for expansion is tremendous. But right now we're just not clear on a lot of these key issues, and I think those are where rubber meets the road issues.

Perianne Boring: (35:58)
So coming back to the public policy arguments for crypto, this year has been a year of transformation in Washington, D.C. We have the Biden administration, of course a change from a Republican to a Democrat administration. Both the House and Senate, Democrats have the majority. So there's a very strong focus on the social issues today, and how those are applying to crypto. We are not a partisan organization at the Chamber, we're very, very careful to make sure this technology is not seen through partisan lenses, and we don't think it should be. However, it does seem that there's a more critical view from the left than the right. So as we're trying to think of the social case, what is the social case for blockchain technology? What are the benefits from a progressive perspective, in your view, for digital assets and blockchain technology?

Bill Campbell: (37:05)
I think the most basic item that I would say is it's the democratization, a way to democratize finance and lending. The permissionless aspect that is provided by all these DeFi protocols, and what that opens up for people in underserved communities in the U.S. and underserved communities in emerging markets, is tremendous. And just putting the proper protections in place to prevent bad actors from hurting people. I think a light touch would be the right way to do it. Defining what exactly activities are between credit and lending securitization is also important, but I think from the social aspect it's the true permissionless democratization of providing that access to everyone.

Matt Hougan: (37:58)
I live in the People's Republic of Berkeley, California, so I have some [inaudible 00:38:02] the thing from a liberal perspective is that they hate banks. And our financial system is built so that the poor people pay the highest fees as a percentage of assets. So the story for how crypto improves that is by making that not true, by democratizing access, by lowering fees, by opening opportunity. The examples we have today again are either isolated, like remittances. The cost of sending remittances home is about one twelfth. In other words, you work one month a year just to pay those fees, and those can go to zero. But there are more and more examples. In the DeFi space, it's not just Jane Street that's making markets and earning money from that, you could be too. Anyone could be. And people are doing that today. So I do think there's a progressive story to crypto that's maybe poorly told, but I think it'll gather steam.

Perianne Boring: (38:53)
So we've got about a minute left, so I'll just do quick closing statements from each of you. We've talked about macro, I'm going to come to micro. Within that 12 to 18 month period after the Bitcoin halving, there's different theories different investors have on what's going to happen. Between now and the end of the year, are we going to continue to see a bull market, or will we see a correction like the past two halvings? 20 seconds each. Dan, we'll start with you.

Dan Tapiero: (39:23)
I think you have to be a long term holder in this business, so what it does now over the next three or four months is sort of jump ball. But I think we're going to head up over 100,000 probably in the six to nine months in Bitcoin, and Ethereum could also continue. But it's more long term, I think in the next five, six, seven years we can be at three, four, five hundred thousand on Bitcoin, and I don't see why not 20, 25,000 on Ethereum.

Bill Campbell: (39:54)
I'll just say I think it's a long term play, and I completely agree with what Dan said.

Matt Hougan: (39:58)
I also agree it's a long term play, but I'd remind people that crypto is the single best performing asset class in the world this year, and it went down 50% this year. So I think...

Dan Tapiero: (40:09)
Well, the 10 year is 250% annualized, so the greatest return of any asset in the history of the world that we could find, going back to, I don't know, caveman times. So you just need a little bit, right? Just a few percentage points.

Matt Hougan: (40:22)
Yes. And then you need to not panic when it sells off.

Perianne Boring: (40:26)
Very macro answers from the macro team here. We'll end on that high note. Please help me thank each of our speakers. Thank you Dan, Bill, and Matt.

The Role of Active Management with Jean Hynes & Jennifer Prosek | #SALTNY

The Role of Active Management with Jean Hynes, Chief Executive Officer, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager, Wellington Management.

Moderated by Jennifer Prosek, Managing Partner, Prosek Partners.

Powered by RedCircle

 

MODERATOR

SPEAKER

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Jean Hynes

Chief Executive Officer, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager

Wellington Management

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Jennifer Prosek

Founder & Managing Partner

Prosek Partners

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Jennifer Prosek: (00:07)
Hello, everyone thrilled to be here with Jean Hynes. The CEO of Wellington, Jean is not just the CEO of Wellington, she's a great investor. One of the greatest healthcare investors in the world. She's also a mom of four daughters. We were chatting outside and I was saying, you know when you're really successful, when your children become great citizens,.she has great four great citizens that are in the working world and in college. So we'll talk about all those things, but Jean, first, I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about your journey. We graduated in the same recession. Your path is a little untraditional. You entered Wellington out of college as an administrative assistant. Tell us about that.

Jean Hynes: (00:49)
Thank you, Jen. It's really great to be here today in person and live, feel so great. So I am a daughter of immigrants. My parents immigrated from Ireland in the 1950s. My father was a bricklayer. My mother was a homemaker and I was lucky enough to go to Wellesley College Pretty much on a full scholarship. I didn't know anything about the stock market. Anything about stocks. In 1987, when the crash happened, that was my first introduction to what the stock market was. So I found my way to Wellington after graduation, which was not a great year as you know.

Jennifer Prosek: (01:28)
I do know.

Jean Hynes: (01:28)
To find a job, because I wanted to do research and I could verbalize that, but the asset management industry was really small in 1991.

Jean Hynes: (01:37)
It wasn't really a prominent industry. I started as an administrative assistant and there was just a terrific recruiter. I wish I could go back and find her and thank her, because she said, "This is a special company. You're going to have tons of opportunities. Don't worry about the title." And so I took the job. I was probably doing administrative work for a couple of years half the time, in research half the time. One of my mentors and bosses said, I open mail faster than anyone else. And that really was because I was very interested in the research part.

Jennifer Prosek: (02:11)
Excellent. Wellington is a $1.4 trillion firm with a storied culture admired around the world for that culture private partnership. Tell us what's special about Wellington. What kept you there? And we were chatting in the hallway about a new recruit who actually contacted you after an interview you did. Tell us what she said about Wellington after her initial experience.

Jean Hynes: (02:35)
Wellington's a private partnership. The private partnership is 41 years old. The company goes back longer almost a hundred years now. But as a private partnership, I think being a private partnership in the asset management industry is a gift to be able to really think long term and not worry about the P and L statement in any one year. So I really do think it really aligns us with our clients. The interesting thing about our partnership structure is now we know it has scaled to $1.4 trillion in assets. It's scaled as we've globalized in terms of having partners outside the US. I don't think that was evident. It's a merit based partnership. So there's a lot of trust put in place by our partners and the three managing partners to treat everyone very fairly. We just have a tremendous structure to be able then to operate in the asset management industry.

Jean Hynes: (03:34)
And I think that's helped us with a couple of things, Jen. I think that's helped us be really long term oriented and long term focus with talent. Be very aligned with our clients. Take long term timelines. Allow us to invest counter cyclically at times. I'll give you an example. In 2008, after the global financial crisis, many firms were moving out. We had just started our expansion, in 07 in London, in 08 in Singapore and Hong Kong. And we actually leaned in instead of taking the resources out after the global financial crisis. So it's just allows us to be very countercyclical and invest for the long term and that partnership structure.

Jennifer Prosek: (04:15)
This is an alternatives conference. So I would remiss if I didn't ask you about your alternatives portfolio and how important is that to Wellington these days?

Jean Hynes: (04:24)
So we've been in the alternatives business, if I go way up in the balcony since 1995, and that was really driven by talent, talent that wanted to run long short. So, for the first 20 years, that's been about long short, liquid long short. In the last, since 2015, we've also been in the privates business. So we have a $32 billion alternatives business, both liquid alts, as well as privates. And that's an area of strategic investment for us. One that we're expanding.

Jennifer Prosek: (04:55)
Okay. And you are an investor, like I said, you run one of the largest healthcare portfolios in the world. Curious if you'd give us a sense of where you think the healthcare world is going. There's been so many innovations. And also along with that, what makes a great healthcare investor or investor in general?

Jean Hynes: (05:16)
I think this is the most exciting time to be a healthcare investor.

Jennifer Prosek: (05:23)
Certainly.

Jean Hynes: (05:23)
And the reason I say that, I think there's innovation. The healthcare industry has always been about innovation. It's been one of the rising of the middle class, the demographics has been one driver and then innovation has been the other driver. And in some sense, both of those are accelerating with the aging of the population, as well as middle class and many of the emerging markets really accelerating volume growths around the world. And then with innovation accelerating in both the biopharmaceutical industry, and I'll get back to that, as well as in the healthcare delivery. I think in the next 10 to 20 years, how do you deliver healthcare to an aging population in a way that really drives outcomes?

Jean Hynes: (06:08)
And I think that will be enabled by digital. Data will come to healthcare in a way that is not yet obvious and will help deliver healthcare. And there'll be lots of winners and losers from that. I think that will be a fascinating time to be a healthcare investor. In the the biotech biopharm, I like to call it biopharm, because I do think it's one whole continuum of research. It is the most exciting time in my 25 plus years of covering this industry. And the reason is all based on the ability to understand biology at a level that was not even possible.

Jean Hynes: (06:48)
So just to give you a date, 20 years ago, we had the first genome was sequenced and the genome just allows you to understand biology at a deep level. It was only really in 2010 where you had a machine that allowed the companies to be able to sequence biology. And it's really only been in the last three or four years where you can do that at mass scale. And so I think we're just in the very early stages of 20 or 30 years of dramatic changes in health.

Jennifer Prosek: (07:20)
Is there anything that you're particularly excited about in our lifetime or the lifetime of the audience members? What do you think is going to be a really big bang for us all before?

Jean Hynes: (07:33)
It has the potential to happen across all health. But if you look at where the industry is investing, it's particularly right now, because cancer is a mutation based disease. I think in the next 10 or 20 years it'll be a large benefit in how we treat cancers and it will no longer be a breast cancer or a lung cancer. It'll be a mutation driven cancer. Cause we'll understand those mutations.

Jennifer Prosek: (08:00)
And going back to you as a young investor, young female investor in healthcare, was there a moment or a bet you made that you were like, "All right, I'm good at this." Can you remember a moment?

Jean Hynes: (08:13)
I would say, when I think about my career in the 1990s, that was the time to really learn how to be a great researcher. And Jen was asking me earlier, "Was there a moment you knew?" And I would say in the late 1990s, one of the big bets we had was this company called Immunex. It's now… was purchased by Amgen. And they discovered the first drug for rheumatoid arthritis, like the first disease modifying drug that was safe for rheumatoid arthritis. and I just remember the research that led up to the insight that this was going to change the standard of care. And so when I look back now, that's a 30 to $40 billion category of drugs. So good bet. That was a good bet.

Jennifer Prosek: (09:04)
Excellent. And again, I would be remissed to ask, everybody's going to ask you this, you are a female, you are a young female, probably in a world of many males. Did that ever down on you in a big way? And what do you tell your four daughters about getting ahead in the world?

Jean Hynes: (09:24)
When I joined Wellington in the 1990s, we actually had some very strong female partners on the business side. So I had some really great internal role models, but on the investment side, there were not many females. There were very, very few. I had just some tremendous male mentors. So Ed Owens, who I worked with for over 20 years, they call him the Dean of healthcare. He really started the healthcare portfolio investing as it is known today. He started running the Vanguard Healthcare Fund. I had tremendous, I had gender blind mentors, I will say. And I do think investing is so quantitative versus qualitative, that it is like such a terrific field for women.

Jennifer Prosek: (10:15)
Yeah. Tell us more about that. Because the narrative out there is that we're losing female investors. It's really hard to find, it's really hard to keep them, but you always say this is a great profession for women. Why?

Jean Hynes: (10:27)
I'm not sure we're losing female investors. I think we're not attracting them. I think we have to do a much, much better job of attracting young women into the field of an actual investing. And I think role models are so important. And like I've said for the past five to 10 years in my firm, I can't be the only one and we need 20. And that's what we've deliberately been doing, increasing our numbers out of college, as well as attracting terrific female talents across both equity and fixed income and long short. I did it without having the role models because I think I was just incredibly lucky to have tremendous mentors, but I do think, seeing someone do it allows you to, and I hope that there are many, many young women out there that say I can be CEO now. Like that's the next thing.

Jennifer Prosek: (11:27)
Absolutely. Well, you told me you were contacted after a Bloomberg experience by a woman. Who was an investor and also inspired by you and now you're hiring her. Which is really a great-

Jean Hynes: (11:43)
Sometimes it makes me, I told Dan, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm not uncomfortable being up on stage, but it's not about me really. It's about how do you inspire the next generation? And so I'm willing to put myself out there to say, you can do this too.

Jennifer Prosek: (12:00)
That's great.

Jean Hynes: (12:01)
So that's one of my goals and-

Jennifer Prosek: (12:02)
So you have been CEO for how many months?

Jean Hynes: (12:04)
I've been CEO for not quite three.

Jennifer Prosek: (12:06)
Okay. Well, this is an unfair question, but I'll ask it anyway. What's been the most difficult thing running the company versus running your wonderful portfolio?

Jean Hynes: (12:17)
So one of the interesting things about, and Jen knows is I loved, I had no aspirations about being CEO. I did have aspirations about becoming a managing partner at Wellington, because that's a very talent driven, people driven position. And that was a part of me that I thought that was missing. So I became a managing partner at Wellington in 2014. And I thought I had the best of all worlds. I was investing in biopharma. I had ran three long short strategies, ran the Vanguard Healthcare Fund. And then I was a managing partner. And I thought, that's how I would finish my career.

Jean Hynes: (12:55)
And as I worked really closely with our CEO, Brendan Swords at the time, it just became a parent to me that the skillset was similar. So the skillset of connecting dots, connecting dots on talent and connecting dots on strategy, making decisions with a lot of ambiguity, not black and white, the ability to take risk, that those were all things that I saw him doing. And in areas that I'm like, well, I can do that too. And I would say the thought of becoming CEO gradually, gradually snuck up on me over a number of years. And I would say I've been preparing for this. To get to your answer, I've been preparing for longer than the two and a half months that I've been CEO and we've had a transition that's been almost a year.

Jean Hynes: (13:55)
And I've just been studying Wellington as if I would study a company. And I would say, I know Wellington better. Maybe that's been an insight to me, like after spending the last year really studying Wellington, I know it better, even though I've been there for 30 years. And I've been a managing partner for seven years. So, that would be one observation. I would say a lot of people told me once you become CEO, it feels lonely. I don't think while being a CEO at Wellington is lonely because we have the managing partner structure. We have the partnership structure. There's a lot of support, but there's already been times where everyone's looking for you to make a decision.

Jennifer Prosek: (14:36)
For sure.

Jean Hynes: (14:37)
That's probably been in the last couple of months. There's been a few where on the screen, they're looking what do you... You have to say, let's go move forward. Let's do this.

Jennifer Prosek: (14:47)
Sure. And I'm sure you feel a certain amount of pressure on the legacy. I mean, this is a really private partnership, storied culture. You have to drive the ship now. Three months and totally unfair, but if there's a legacy you want to leave on Wellington and, thought of what that would be?

Jean Hynes: (15:05)
So if I look out towards the end of my career and I've been at Wellington for 30 years, I just had my 30th anniversary.

Jennifer Prosek: (15:12)
Congratulations.

Jean Hynes: (15:12)
And any time, let's put a 10 year time mark that, probably going to be plus or minus that. But I would like to see us a couple of things, be more diverse. I think we should be, our culture, we have such a strong collaborative culture. We should be a great place for diverse talent of all, females, Latinx, black heritage talent. We should be a talent magnet for diverse talent. So that would be an area that, it's not going to be in 21 or 22, it's going to be over the next decade. We have gone from being all Boston based, 15 years ago we were a Boston based firm.

Jean Hynes: (15:58)
And now we have, almost 30% of our employees are in EMEA and APAC. That's going to continue. So, will we be 40% global by the time I retire, as we continue to find talent in all corners of the globe and serve our clients in all corners of the globe? Those are probably two. And then just really importantly, we're only going to exist if we have the talent and we deliver investment performance. And that's going to be one of my key initiatives. As the markets are changing so much, how do we continue to evolve and help our investors? Whether they're a long only investor or an global industry analyst like I was, or a private investor, how do we continue to help them with skill sets, technology skill sets that help them evolve and deliver for our clients? That's going to be an area, that I think I'm being an active investor, that's an area that I think is very well suited particularly to my skill sets.

Jennifer Prosek: (17:00)
Great transition to active management, because I think this whole subject was supposed to be about active management. We have a few minutes left, we've got a lot of hedge fund and private markets investors out there. Talk about your belief in and active management and any advice you have for folks in the alternatives world or insights you have in the next few years.

Jean Hynes: (17:22)
If you take this step back and say, what do our clients want? And with our clients, I mean all the asset owners around the world from individuals to governments. They want their assets to grow. And I think since the global financial crisis, in a way that is more risk adjusted. I think active management has a vital role to play in that. When you think about interest rates, where they are in 2021 and expected returns from fixed income, where the stock market is now, I'm not going to predict where the stock market is. I really do believe that active management, if we can deliver alpha hundreds of basis points on equities and 50 to 100 on fixed income and the ability to find value and parts of the economic growth that may be private, those are all going to help our end clients.

Jean Hynes: (18:19)
I think active management has a really vital role. And maybe one last thing we haven't touched on, I do think, ESG and sustainability is going to dramatically change the structure of the financial markets. It's an area that we are investing in. I think it's an area of a lot of complexity. And I think that will be very well suited for active, for active management as well.

Jennifer Prosek: (18:45)
Okay. And alternatives, any last thoughts?

Jean Hynes: (18:48)
On alternatives, for us, we are building, so we've had a long short equity. We're building privates. I think there's just a lot of value creation in the privates. It's very aligned with our very long term investing structure at Wellington. And that's an area where if we can find talent, we're going to continue to build platforms in the private side. And I think on the liquid alts side, finding talent to come to our platform, and I'll tell you about the story. We have a new joiner who just emailed me this morning, I'm catching up with her in Asia tonight. And her observations about being in here for a few weeks is, the open collaborative research platform is astounding. How do we take that? How do we take that platform and really attract talent and put it together in a way that helps our clients?

Jennifer Prosek: (19:44)
Well, we'll be watching you. Thank you all. Thank you to SALT for having Jean and I on stage. We're thrilled to kick off this unbelievable conference. Thank you all for coming.

Investing in 2021 with Cathie Wood & Andrew Ross Sorkin | #SALTNY

Investing in 2021 with Cathie Wood, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, ARK Invest.

Moderated by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Co-Anchor, CNBC.

Powered by RedCircle

 

MODERATOR

SPEAKER

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Cathie Wood

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer

ARK investment Management

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Andrew Ross Sorkin

Co-Anchor, Squawk Box

CNBC

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (00:07)
Thank you all, for sticking around for this final act of the afternoon. Cathie Woods is here. And we were just talking backstage. I haven't seen you since pre pandemic, at least in person.

Cathie Wood: (00:20)
That's right.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (00:21)
And so much has happened to you and to Ark during this period. It has been a remarkable ride. And just to put it in perspective, you started Ark in 2014. Dare I say, you were 57 years old at the time. You don't look any older now. So you had no assets under management. Today, at age 60, she's at the peak, I would argue of your career, but I hope there's more to come. And you're managing something on the order of 85 billion.

Cathie Wood: (00:51)
Range, in that range.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (00:51)
Which is a pretty remarkable thing. She has been called on social media, and I hope this isn't considered sexist or something else, Mama Cathie. They call you Aunt Cathie. And then in South Korea, they call you Money Tree, which I love.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (01:11)
And this is what Art Laffer, who you used to work with, said about you. "The thing that's amazing about Cathie, even back then," when he was working with you, "her horizon is forever. She wasn't in it for next week or next month or next year. She was in it for the long haul."

Cathie Wood: (01:28)
Yes.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (01:29)
And so I want to start with this, before we even get into what's going on the markets today, and it's just an investment sort of horizon thesis question. When you think about the "horizon" for your fund, and the way that investors who invest in your fund should also think about that horizon, what is it?

Cathie Wood: (01:50)
Well, in terms of our investment time horizon? Five years. So we have to believe that one of the technologies, the 14 technologies around which we have based all of our research, is going to inflect within five years. Or at least start to be discounted in the market as though it is about to inflect.

Cathie Wood: (02:16)
So five-year investment time horizon. Our minimum hurdle rate of return is 15% at a compound annual rate over five years. And so I think that combination of five years plus exponential growth trajectories, is what is finally starting to get into the market. I've been waiting for years.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (02:39)
I know you've been waiting for years. So to put this in perspective, the fund over the last two years, is up about 164%, give or take. Year to date, it's down a little over 3% at a time. We all know the S&P 500 so far is up a little over 18% this year, thus far. So put it in perspective. Where are we in this market, given your five-year horizon?

Cathie Wood: (03:08)
It's going to be incredibly confusing I think to people. Just look at what's happened to the bond market this year. Against all expectations, yields have dropped from, I think it was 1.75 at the peak in March, down to 1.3 as inflation expectations are exploding.

Cathie Wood: (03:28)
We believe the reason for that is that probably, when all is said and done, and the dust clears from the supply chain problems and everything, we're probably in a highly deflationary world. And we see three sources of deflation. One is very good. It's called technologically-enabled innovation. Artificial intelligence training costs are dropping 68% per year.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (03:54)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (03:56)
When a cost drops that much, the demand for it picks up. And artificial intelligence is probably the biggest reason we're seeing the convergences between and among technologies. So we've got one S-curve feeding another, feeding another. Explosive energy, incredible deflation. That's the first deflation.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (04:15)
While the rest of the world thinks, if you were here for part of the day, everybody's talking about inflation.

Cathie Wood: (04:20)
Oh, and that's what I love. If the whole world thinks that's going to happen, and a portfolio manager and the analyst team thinks that's going to happen, well, if we're wrong, it's not going to matter that much because nobody's expecting it. It's not in the market. But if we're right, the returns are enormous. And I think that's what's going on with the technologically-enabled innovation that we see, especially in healthcare, by the way. But there are two other sources of deflation.

Cathie Wood: (04:54)
Disruptive innovation, there's another side to it. It's called creative destruction. And I think we're going to see more creative destruction than we have in all history, during the next five to 10 years. Now, you can say, "Oh, you're just talking your book." We have rights law teaching us about learning curves and cost declines that suggest we are going to see incredible boons out there in parts of the world. But it's going to mean tremendous destruction in others.

Cathie Wood: (05:27)
So when I say confusing, I mean that. And then the third source of deflation, I think will be cyclical deflation. Most people are fighting us on this one. It's hard to fight us, given our research on those other two, but this cyclical deflation, it started with lumber. $1,711 in May. Now, we're at $500. Copper, 490 I think. Now, we're at 425. Used car prices are surprisingly good. And I know we're getting pushed back on this one, too. They shot up 60% as everybody decided to avoid mass transit last year.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (06:07)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (06:07)
Right. And now, we find ourselves supposedly in a chip shortage. I do believe in the chip shortage, because-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (06:16)
You believe there's a chip shortage?

Cathie Wood: (06:17)
[crosstalk 00:06:17] I do believe there's a chip shortage because the world's going digital. But I believe-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (06:22)
But wouldn't that be inflationary?

Cathie Wood: (06:24)
Well, I believe chips are the new commodities. That's the point I'm making here. So chips are going to be what Dr. Copper has been in the industrial world. This is Dr. Digital, I don't know, in the form of chips. But you hear the auto industry screaming. Auto sales have dropped from 18-and-a-half million units in April, to 13 million.

Cathie Wood: (06:52)
Now, these are annualized rates in August. That's more than a chip's shortage. What happened last year is people bought the cars, they're in their driveways, garages, didn't want to take mass transit. And now, there's a decision. What do I want to buy, a gas-powered car or an electric vehicle? Well, that's where the short supply is.

Cathie Wood: (07:16)
And I think the excess supply is going to be in the gas-powered side. So this is a really important test case of why I formed the firm when we did. I think the disruption is happening to the auto industry now.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (07:32)
I want to get into Tesla, obviously, and a number of your picks in just a moment, but I do want to just note Morgan Stanley, City Group, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, these are all firms that have published notes within the past month, effectively saying the opposite. Most of them believe that we are expecting to have inflation. And I think across the board, either pullbacks or much flatter returns.

Cathie Wood: (07:57)
Right.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (07:57)
You just think they're off? You think they're wrong?

Cathie Wood: (08:00)
I think as I said, if you're looking at the traditional benchmarks, they may very well be right. All I know is when we are looking at the transformative growth that's going to take place in our space, and we're completely devoted to nothing else but disruptive innovation, we see explosive growth.

Cathie Wood: (08:22)
I think one of the reasons they will look right in terms of GDP is if the other side of create of disruptive innovation is creative destruction, well, what's happening? It's the industrial world evolving into the digital world, as more of the physical world goes digital.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (08:40)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (08:40)
Transportation importantly. And so the traditional benchmarks, GDP, the statistics that we look like are probably going to look pretty lousy at times, I would say. Certainly, sector by sectors, these transformations take place.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (08:57)
What do you think the role of millennials and the next generation will be? And I ask this because I've seen you make comments about demographics, both in terms of the role that millennials play in terms of the actual economy, but also the role that they may play in the markets themselves.

Cathie Wood: (09:13)
Yes.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (09:13)
Because a lot of people look at what's happened over the last 18 months, and this new generation that's now in retail, often in your fund, on Robinhood, on Reddit, and think something has changed. Some people think it's tulips, other people think it's forever.

Cathie Wood: (09:29)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, we just learned from Jolyne Caruso that millennials are 70 million strong in our economy, and now bigger than the baby boomers as a demographic. And I'm going to harken back to Stan Salvigsen, most of you won't remember who he was. He made one very important call in the early '80s.

Cathie Wood: (09:55)
He said, "Baby boomers are going to be the reason that the equity market goes up for the next 20 years." It was a brilliant call. He's no longer with us. We're in the echo now. And I do believe that both crypto and the equity markets are going to be powered by millennials. In fact, Tom Lee had fenced that.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (10:17)
Tom Lee? Yep.

Cathie Wood: (10:18)
Yeah. He has done the arithmetic the way that Stan did. And I think he says this bull market will not end at least until 2026. And maybe not until 2038 when the number of millennials peaks out there. Well, I went through the '80s and '90s and nobody believed him, thought it was a ridiculously simple call. But when you look back in history, it was a pretty good call.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (10:45)
Okay. I want to get into meme stocks and that whole phenomenon in just a minute, but I want to touch on a couple of your big investments. And also, touch on one other theme, which is China, because it's in the news. You have been thinking about that space or that region in a big way, or that country, I should say in a big way.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (11:05)
And I know you've reduced some positions, but what's your overall thesis at this point on China and what we're seeing in terms of this regulatory crackdown, which seems to be worse every single day?

Cathie Wood: (11:15)
Yeah. I think there's something going on there socially that the government is very worried about. Many of the same things that the rest of the world is worried about, where there's the divide between the rich and the poor. I saw today, Evergrande, there are protests around the Evergrande offices because the wealth management products that weren't highly regulated are not paying interest, are not paying back and so forth.

Cathie Wood: (11:48)
So I think there's social unrest taking place there. And that's why common prosperity has become the rallying cry, and hostage to capital has also become a rallying cry. So I don't think it's a very friendly place for capital now. However, focused only on innovation, China has in its various five-year plans, made innovation. And it's an incredibly important plank.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (12:15)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (12:15)
And so we don't want to avoid it, but what we do want to avoid is very high margin companies. So you look at JD Logistics or jd.com, some of the companies that are pushing innovation and access into tier two and tier three cities, we'll play with that. So what we did in the series of moves recently around China, we have taken our position down significantly, but stayed with a few of the lower margins.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (12:50)
What would it take for you to turn?

Cathie Wood: (12:50)
They need-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (12:50)
Invest more? What would you need to see?

Cathie Wood: (12:51)
What would I need to see? I think it would Xi Jinping saying, "Whoops, we made a mistake. We're open for business." I don't think he'll do that. So I don't think we'll be hugely involved with China. The other thing that I think is, and we've seen this in the crypto space, by shutting open source movements down, which is what they're doing, all open source movements, no, I think this is going to give the US a competitive advantage.

Cathie Wood: (13:21)
So we have allocated more of our innovation assets here in the US because of what's happening. China was going to be one of our biggest competitors. We saw them in the AI space, making the league tables in chips. I'm not so sure. I think they have to do some housecleaning right now, that we probably do not understand all the causes. But I think there's social unrest. That would be my guess.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (13:46)
Let me ask this. Do you think that the regulatory environment there is either going to open up opportunity in the US, or will it give and embolden regulators in the US ...

Cathie Wood: (13:56)
To shut it out?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (13:57)
To shut down what's happening here? Because it used to be that the big tech companies in the United States would say, "Well, no, no, no, you can't shut us down. Because look over there in China."

Cathie Wood: (14:06)
Right.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (14:06)
"Those companies are so big, we need to compete with them." But if they're being shut down or cracked down upon, will it just embolden Washington here?

Cathie Wood: (14:15)
It's a good point. But I think this is much more than China as RuPaul on the last panel said. France is becoming very innovative.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (14:29)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (14:29)
And Southeast Asia has stolen the March from China. So companies like Sea, it's a social media, social commerce, gaming company. It's exploding throughout the world. And capital is shifting towards that kind of name, because there are big populations in Southeast Asia, and Latin America as well.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (14:51)
Okay. Can we talk about our favorite topic?

Cathie Wood: (14:53)
Tesla?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (14:54)
Yeah.

Cathie Wood: (14:54)
Okay.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (14:54)
Let's talk about it. And we have sparred over the years. I love Tesla. I've never loved the valuation of Tesla. And you have loved Tesla and the valuation of Tesla. And you've liked the valuation. You've been at much higher levels.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:06)
And I have always thought, as you know, that that's crazy. And you have been right. So here we are. You still believe that this is a company, still believe that the valuation long term is $3,000. That's your price tag?

Cathie Wood: (15:20)
That's our base case.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:20)
That's your base case?

Cathie Wood: (15:21)
Yeah, that's not even our bull case. But let's just stick with the base case from $700.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:27)
3,000 by when?

Cathie Wood: (15:28)
Five years. Always five years.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:30)
Always five years?

Cathie Wood: (15:31)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:32)
You recently sold some last week, right?

Cathie Wood: (15:35)
Yes.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:35)
About $180 million?

Cathie Wood: (15:38)
I read that it was 130 million. So it got so much press.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:43)
Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. 180,000 shares at 130 million?

Cathie Wood: (15:46)
Yeah.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (15:46)
Right. Why'd you do that?

Cathie Wood: (15:48)
So Tesla is still the largest position in our portfolios. On that particular day, and I can tell you this because we disclose our holdings every day and we publish our trades every day, I'm always looking for cash, in especially the flagship fund, which is very concentrated and involves all of our technologies. So a company in the automation space, UiPath was down 11% that day on its earnings release.

Cathie Wood: (16:19)
And Tesla had just gone up 30%. So it was really a tactical move. So just to give you a sense, Tesla is a 10 point, I believe it's 10.5% position in the flagship fund. The next highest position is I think 5.9%. So the conviction, this was, I will take a trade, up 30% down 10%. That's like a 40% difference. That's all that was.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (16:47)
But this is not a stock, at least recently, that has been on the move higher. In fact, it's been flat to down.

Cathie Wood: (16:52)
No. Actually, if you look at it, it has been levitating. It has. We got into the 500s. It got well below 500, I believe in the-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (17:04)
But it must have crossed 10% a while ago? Meaning you must have been much higher actually?

Cathie Wood: (17:09)
So when a stock moves from 10%, we can no longer buy. And thank you, I want to address this because we keep getting questions about it. We cannot buy a stock if it is 10% or higher in the portfolio. We can sell, of course. We do not have to sell. And what we usually do, this is not science, very unpredictable, you can't replicate this in terms of trying to figure out what we're going to do, but when a stock gets to 11% or 12% in the portfolio, it means that, or that means it has appreciated by 10% to 20% relative to the other positions in the portfolio.

Cathie Wood: (17:52)
And usually, what we're doing is being opportunistic and taking advantage of a drop in a stock. Again, need the cash. Largest position above 10%.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (18:04)
Okay. Let me ask you this.

Cathie Wood: (18:05)
Does that make that a little clear?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (18:07)
No. No, it makes sense. I know there'll be bulls and bearers on this. Let me ask you a different question, though. And it's really about how to assess and think about some of the comments, projections, and other things that Elon Musk makes about the company, and how you interpret them and how the public interprets them. And frankly, how bearers interpret them.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (18:28)
Which is to say that there's a lot of times where Elon will come out and say something, whether it be about robotaxis, or when there'll be full autonomous driving, or all sorts of things that I imagine at some point, because we've had these conversations in the past, do get baked in, or should be getting baked into some kind of assessments of the stock.

Cathie Wood: (18:48)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (18:50)
And as optimistic as you can very well be about all of those things, they haven't come true. And so, how do you grapple with that?

Cathie Wood: (19:01)
This is one of the hardest problems that we are going to solve technologically. So actually, in the last three months, we have increased our projection for autonomous taxi networks.

Cathie Wood: (19:18)
Now, in the $3,000 base case, we assign a 50% probability to autonomous. So it's a really hard problem. But if anyone is going to solve it, our confidence that Tesla is that company has gone up dramatically as we've learned more about it.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (19:38)
But I guess when I ask you, when Elon says that robotaxis by the end of 2020, what numbers would you therefore have put in, in 2000 I think 19 when he said that or 18, when he was saying that?

Cathie Wood: (19:50)
Yeah. Again, five-year.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (19:51)
Oh, I know. Okay.

Cathie Wood: (19:51)
As in, our probability last year, or whenever he said that, was lower. I think we had a 25% probability.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (20:01)
Okay. So, do you discount what he says? By what number? It's a-

Cathie Wood: (20:05)
Elon, if you really look at what he's doing at SpaceX and at Tesla, he's changing our world, right?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (20:11)
Oh, you're not going to get me to dispute that.

Cathie Wood: (20:13)
So electric vehicles-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (20:14)
I think it's simply about the valuation and how investors should think about these numbers.

Cathie Wood: (20:18)
He was the first person. When we were talking about autonomous taxing networks, he said, "The last mile is going to be so hard. I'm not sure it can be done." This was about five years ago.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (20:32)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (20:33)
Maybe longer. The resources that he's putting into this program, and the talent that he's attracting, and the advancements that he's making and that are possible now, that artificial intelligence training costs are dropping by 68% per year, we think the probability of autonomous is going up.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (20:55)
I don't disagree with you. But does it frustrate you?

Cathie Wood: (20:58)
No, he's a visionary. And he sees the future so clearly.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (21:06)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (21:06)
The fact that he changed from saying last mile, I don't think that's good. There'll have to be some combination system. He changed from that, with his partner, Andrej Karpathy, who is one of the most brilliant artificial intelligence engineers. I think this is going to happen in the next few years. He is always a year or two or three too early. We adjust for that in our forecast.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (21:36)
What do you think about that prospect, that one of the-

Cathie Wood: (21:36)
Oh, and by the way.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (21:36)
Yeah?

Cathie Wood: (21:36)
May I say one other thing?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (21:36)
Please.

Cathie Wood: (21:37)
One of the reasons Elon does that, is he wants to get the supply chain in motion. And when the supply chain does not cooperate, he brings it in. He's becoming much more vertically integrated.

Cathie Wood: (21:52)
So auto suppliers and technology companies know that if they don't march to his drum and at his cadence, instead of these four to five-year design cycles, they're going to lose the business.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (22:05)
A lot of short sellers have lost a lot of money betting against Elon, as you know.

Cathie Wood: (22:09)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (22:10)
And one of the things that a lot of short sellers will tell you that they missed was not actually the technology or anything else per se, but was the scale and ability to go back to the market over and over again, to get more and more capital.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (22:26)
That the scale of the capital unto itself, that could become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, if there were people out there willing to impart their capital to you over and over again.

Cathie Wood: (22:38)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (22:38)
How much of that is in your thesis?

Cathie Wood: (22:43)
Well, the way we would frame that is we believed that Tesla had four barriers to entry. And all but one have increased in the last few years. So they have the artificial intelligence chip. They have the best battery technology, costs lower and will be lower for the next three to five years.

Cathie Wood: (23:06)
They have the most data to do the training and find corner cases. And then the last one, which I would've thought they would've lost already, is over the air software updates. I haven't had to take my Model 3 in since 2018. They have the best cars on the road.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (23:23)
So, your base case is 3000. What's your best case scenario?

Cathie Wood: (23:28)
The best case is about 4,000, because we won't go to a 100% in that autonomous. But let me give you the dynamics there. If you had asked me last year, I would've told you that the autonomous taxi network opportunity in the year 2030, would be a six to seven trillion-dollar revenue opportunity. We have in the last year, raised that to 10 to 12 trillion.

Cathie Wood: (23:57)
And it is because, before we had been modeling as though the cost would drop to where they should, given competition, which is 25 cents per mile, right now, it costs us 70 cents per mile to drive our own cars. We are learning, and it's through Uber and ride-sharing services, that convenience matters a lot. And not having to drive matters a lot. And so our price for the robotaxi service has gone up from 25. I think we're up to it's either 50 or a dollar per mile.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (24:30)
Okay. New topic, our other favorite topic. You know what it's going to be? Bitcoin.

Cathie Wood: (24:33)
Bitcoin.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (24:37)
Five years from now, what's it worth?

Cathie Wood: (24:40)
If we're right, and companies continue to diversify their cash into something like Bitcoin, and institutions, institutional investors start allocating 5% of their funds towards I'll just say Bitcoin for right now, because we did that, we framed it for Bitcoin, could be for other cryptos as well, we believe that the price will be tenfold of where it is today. So instead of 45,000, over 500,000.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (25:20)
If you could own Bitcoin, Ethereum or some other crypto currency, and you could only own one, which would it be?

Cathie Wood: (25:32)
That is becoming a harder and harder question to answer. I think I'd default still to Bitcoin because countries are now deeming it legal tender. And we haven't even put that into our thinking. Ether, however, is seeing an explosion in developer activity, thanks to NFTs and DeFi. I'm fascinated with what's going on in DeFi, which is collapsing the cost of the infrastructure for financial services in a way that I know that the traditional financial industry does not appreciate right now.

Cathie Wood: (26:06)
So it does have to move from proof of work to proof of stake. That transition is underway and seems to be taking hold. So here's how I'll answer that question. Our confidence in Ether has gone up dramatically as we've seen the beginning of this transition from proof of work to proof of stake. We'd still probably do 60% Bitcoin and 40% Ether.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (26:34)
For all of that to happen, do regulators, especially US, regulators need to buy into this in a major way? I would also say that we just saw it in the last week, Brian Armstrong runs Coinbase.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (26:48)
You have steak in Coinbase, has now gotten into a somewhat bitter feud with the SEC, over how the ability to offer effectively a yield product on some of these cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin will work.

Cathie Wood: (27:05)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. I think regulators, our working assumption from the beginning was that, and this was based on meeting with them, meeting regulators, both state and local and federal, was that no regulator wanted to be blamed from preventing the next big technology breakthrough to happen in the US. And that has proven true. Now, we've got Chairman Gary Gensler.

Cathie Wood: (27:34)
I'm really happy he understands crypto, and understands the merits of Bitcoin in particular. He is a regulator though, and he's a hard core regulator. What Coinbase did, I was shocked when I saw it. Wells Notice? Are you kidding? They haven't even released the product. What is this? And I think what that Wells Notice is doing, it's a call out by regulators saying, "We got to discuss this stuff, because this is happening very quickly."

Cathie Wood: (28:03)
And I think we are going to bring courts into the system. This happened in Canada. A company called 3iQ sued the regulator there, and won in court. So they were able to issue Bitcoin ETFs and closed-end funds. And Ether as well. So I am beginning to think that Coinbase doesn't mind this at all. And if you saw the stock reaction, it hardly budged.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (28:32)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (28:32)
Right?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (28:34)
We're going to have to wrap up in just a minute, but I do want to talk to you a little bit about the social media-enabled phenomenon that is happening. And it's impacted your fund, it's impacted the interest in all of this, diamond hands and the like. What do you make of that?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (28:50)
And also, how do you think about your own responsibility in the context of one of the things you do? Which is so interesting, is you are transparent in terms of what you're doing every single day. People see what you're doing. There's also people that are therefore trading off of what you're doing. And how you think about that?

Cathie Wood: (29:07)
I'll start with the later one. Was the first one about meme stocks? Or was it about-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (29:11)
Yeah. Well, it wasn't really a question, but it was in the context of just thinking about what's happening here, and the whole new generation that seems to be talking about these stocks. Some saying things that are factual, some saying things that are not factual. Some saying that they want to have less regulations, so that they can do more.

Cathie Wood: (29:32)
Okay.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (29:32)
But it's a very different world than it was-

Cathie Wood: (29:36)
It's a different world.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (29:36)
... post-financial crisis.

Cathie Wood: (29:38)
Yes.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (29:38)
Where everybody said that the job of the financial industry was to protect if you will, the little guy, the little investor. And now, I think the little guy is saying, don't protect me. And in fact, by protecting me, you're not protecting me at all, because what you're really doing is protecting the suit, the big guy.

Cathie Wood: (29:55)
I think it was on your show this morning, wasn't it? That Robinhood's legal council-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (29:59)
Yes.

Cathie Wood: (29:59)
... said something like that?

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (30:01)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cathie Wood: (30:01)
That's really insulting to these people that you are going to protect them.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (30:04)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (30:05)
Right? Okay. That was pretty interesting. So I'll first talk about the trading around what we do. I have been managing money since 1990. So, for 31 years. And I've always had other investors or speculators shooting against us, because guess what? Even when I was managing separately managed accounts for wire houses, I would be posting models. That word would get out there of what we were doing.

Cathie Wood: (30:39)
When we posted our models out there, it would get out. And lo and behold, these stocks would take off. So I've been managing with that in mind for years and years. And so we don't have to buy a stock. If someone wants to take it up 20%, the day after we buy, and we haven't finished our buy, I'll finish it another time. Because I know disruptive innovation is inherently controversial, and we'll get another shot.

Cathie Wood: (31:03)
In terms of what's going on now, I so admire the millennial generation. Yeah. As you say, I'm sure there are people trading just because their friends are trading. But the hunger for knowledge that they have, and the gratitude to us for the kind of research that we put out, the depth of our research, our tweets. Our analysts are all tweeting. We're on the right side of regulation. We know what we're doing there.

Cathie Wood: (31:32)
And we have someone from the SEC who became our CCO. So their hunger for information and their gratitude, has been extremely humbling in a way. We get a lot of people coming up to us and thanking us for that, because we've opened their eyes to a new world. Let me give you a bit of a difference. When my children were in high school and college, I was trying to teach them about the stock market.

Cathie Wood: (32:02)
I was trying to get their interest. Nada. It's almost like crypto had to happen. That got them interested. And to the extent they were looking at our research around crypto and others. They're educating themselves, and they love of education. It's one of our mission of values.

Cathie Wood: (32:21)
So we meant to do that, not because we knew this was going to happen, but because we want parents and grandparents, and the children themselves, to understand how rapidly the world is about to change. And to get your children, grandchildren, yourselves, on the right side of change, whether it's investing or your education, or your career.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (32:44)
Okay. Couple quickies. Do you own any NFTs?

Cathie Wood: (32:48)
I do not, but I gave one as a birthday present to Sig Segalas, Chief Investment Officer at Jennison Associates. He turned to 88, and he thinks it's the best present he's ever gotten. Angie Dalton, I don't know if you know her, from Signum Capital Growth. And I did, we split it. And his grandchildren now, get to do layers of art on top of his digital art.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (33:15)
Do you think there's a bubble in NFTs?

Cathie Wood: (33:21)
Well, when I saw this original $69 million piece, I thought, "Okay, this has gone too far, too fast." We're now talking about the creative world. And when I heard about Async Art, I don't know if you've heard of that company, Async Art has developed a digital ecosystem where artists can put out their digital art, and then anyone can buy pieces, pixels.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (33:47)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (33:48)
And change it. And so you can do layers. And the original artist gets paid. I was walking when I heard the CEO tell his story, and my smile went ear to ear. Because I said, "Oh man, this is going to be so explosive."

Cathie Wood: (34:05)
This is how I felt when the internet first came about. Like, "Oh man, this could be really big." Remember when everybody was saying, "what's the internet?" I had the same feeling here, because creators they don't get paid for every iteration.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (34:24)
Right. Robinhood, do you own a steak? Do you also own-

Cathie Wood: (34:27)
We do. It's a 1% position. Yes.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (34:28)
What do you think, long term?

Cathie Wood: (34:30)
Again, we are into the millennial generation. Pay-

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (34:35)
The payment for order flow?

Cathie Wood: (34:35)
Payment for order flow. I'd be shocked if it goes away. I agree with the general counsel, because it has been so good for zero commission trading and so forth. And you can look at the spreads and you can analyze exactly who's taking what, or how big the pie is.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (34:50)
Right.

Cathie Wood: (34:53)
I'm glad it's a discussion because it keeps coming up. Let's get some regulators making the final decision.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (35:02)
We're out of time.

Cathie Wood: (35:03)
Oh.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (35:04)
Cathie Wood, everybody. Thank you.

Cathie Wood: (35:06)
Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: (35:06)
Thank you.

Credit Investing in a Post-Pandemic World | #SALTNY

Credit Investing in a Post-Pandemic World with Chris Hentemann, Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer, 400 Capital. Jeffrey Sherman, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, DoubleLine. Dave Trucano, Managing Director, BlackRock. Sreeni Prabhu, Managing Partner, Co-Chief Executive Officer & Group Chief Investment Officer, Angel Oak Capital Advisors.

Moderated by Mei-li Da Silva Vint, Chief Compliance Officer, Brevet Capital.

Powered by RedCircle

 

SPEAKERS

Headshot - Hentemann, Chris - Cropped.jpeg

Chris Hentemann

Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer

400 Capital

Headshot - Sherman, Jeffrey - Cropped.jpeg

Jeffrey Sherman

Deputy Chief Investment Officer

DoubleLine

Headshot - Trucano, David - Cropped.jpeg

David Trucano

Managing Director

BlackRock

Headshot - Prabhu, Sreeni - Cropped.jpeg

Sreeni Prabhu

Managing Partner, Co-Chief Executive Officer & Group Chief Investment Officer

Angel Oak Capital

 

MODERATOR

MEI-LI DA SILVA VINT.jpeg

Mei-li Da Silva Vint

Chief Compliance Officer

Brevet Capital Management

 

TIMESTAMPS

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (00:07)
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SALT day two. Thank you for joining us so early. My name is Mei-li Da Silva Vint, and I'm the Chief Compliance Officer of Brevet Capital. We are an alternative credit fund based right here in New York City and we partner with governments globally to bring complex initiatives to fruition by conquering inefficiencies.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (00:26)
I'm thrilled to be moderating today's panel on Credit Investing Post-Pandemic World. Today, we're going to take you through some macro themes with a credit lens, walk you through the evolution of credit through the pandemic, and then I'll let our panelists take us where they want to go. We're lucky enough to have panelists from a variety of areas in the credit ecosystem.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (00:49)
And so, with that, I'll let each of the panelists introduce themselves with a brief background, where they sit in the credit space in their firm and how big each of their firms are. So, Chris, why don't you kick us off and we'll go down the line.

Chris Hentemann: (01:00)
Thank you, Chris Hentemann. I'm the Founder and CIO of 400 Capital. We're an alternative credit manager, primarily focusing on structured credit. We're based in New York City and we have an investment team in London. We manage both total return and absolute return strategies and hedge fund private credit separately management portfolios, primarily focusing on pension endowment foundation, family offices, and high net worth individuals.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (01:30)
Jeffrey?

Jeffrey Sherman: (01:30)
I'm Jeffrey Sherman. I'm the Deputy Chief Investment Officer at DoubleLine Capital. We're an investment management firm headquartered in Los Angeles. We run the gamut of fixed income equity strategies. We run up and down the cap structure. We run mutual funds, ETFs, hedge funds, separate accounts. If you have money, we'll invest it for you.

Dave Trucano: (01:52)
Great, David Trucano. I work at BlackRock. I won't go too much into the background of the firm. I'm sure people are familiar with it. But, within the four walls of BlackRock, I manage your opportunities to credit business. Think about that as investing across hedge fund and drawdown private equity stock credit strategies, targeting the lower end of the credit curve, stress distress securities.

Sreeni Prabhu: (02:14)
Sreeni Prabhu, Co-Founder and CIO of Angel Oak Capital. We're based in Atlanta. Again, fixed income manager. We manage sleeves of corporate credit, but primarily structured credit. We manage across mutual funds, hedge funds, private credit strategies. We have a public REIT about 20 plus billion in assets under management.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (02:34)
Great, thank you. It's a pleasure to have all of you here today.

Sreeni Prabhu: (02:37)
Thank you.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (02:38)
So, I think we'll start with the 50,000 foot view and what's going on from a macro perspective in the world right now. You have the Fed signaling that they're going to start tapering their asset purchasing program that they started at the beginning of the pandemic, you have inflation, you have geopolitical risks, you have supply chain disruption. And of course, you have the Delta variant coming into play.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (02:58)
Jeffrey, I think it'd be super helpful if you could distill some of these themes and the impact they have had, and the impact you think they will have in the credit space.

Jeffrey Sherman: (03:06)
That's it. Okay.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (03:08)
Loaded question.

Jeffrey Sherman: (03:09)
Yeah. So, I mean, look, inflation's on everyone's mind, this is unprecedented policy, it seems like that's all we talk about anymore, is unprecedented. And you have the Fed buying $120 billion a month, and people are freaked out that they're going to slow down their purchase pace. But, their purchase pace is still aggressive. I mean, during the peak in the crisis, they were buying 80 billion a month.

Jeffrey Sherman: (03:30)
So, the Fed is not going to be a minor player for a long time from now. So, the focus is on inflation, of course, but inflation, is it transitory? Is it not? We were joking backstage that, it's your time horizon that matters there. And it doesn't look transitory in some cases. And some cases, it does.

Jeffrey Sherman: (03:49)
If you talk about autos, used cars, airline tickets, hotels, except in New York City, you're seeing that those are calming down. But the big difference here is we haven't seen the wage component kick through and you haven't seen the rent and owner's equivalent rent side of the equation. So, that's what's a concern for us.

Jeffrey Sherman: (04:07)
However, I don't think we go to this hyperinflation, stagflation. I think those words are abused today. I think people are... I'm talking about a slowing growth. Yeah, when you have a 10% nominal GDP, you're probably going to slow a little bit at some point, unless your name is China.

Jeffrey Sherman: (04:22)
So, ultimately, I think, people are concerned that this is going to fall off a cliff, but we're in a very strong credit environment. It's really tough to invest in liquid credit today because everybody's crowded into it because the Feds push people there. So, when you think about it, it's been selective. The beta trade is not good today, because it's got a lot of risk.

Jeffrey Sherman: (04:42)
So, corporate America is in great shape from a debt standpoint, because they don't have maturity walls. They have a big debt burden. The servicing costs are low. It's not a problem right now. It could be in the future. So, what does it mean? It means you want to own it, but the problem with it is, if you're in the vanilla stuff, it's got a lot of duration. It's got a lot of interest rate risk. And so, you have a lot of challenges.

Jeffrey Sherman: (05:02)
So, what do you do? You don't have to buy it. You can buy things. I mean, you're talking structure credit, we talked about securitized products. And so, Sreeni, they do a lot there, too. So, what we find is that there's still ways to play credit, you just have to do it very selective, you got to buy stories, it's idiosyncratic risk at this point. But, don't be deterred by all the members of the Fed.

Jeffrey Sherman: (05:22)
At the end of the day, one person matters, his name is Jay. And until he's out of that seat, he's all that matters, and he's not tapering in the next month or two, he's going to signal it. And guess what? They're not hiking rates anytime in the future, or anytime in the near future. So, you got time by your arms, enjoy your floating rate mortgages and in Jay we trust.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (05:44)
Thank you, Jeffrey, for those insights and distilling all those trends for us. So, next, I want to bring it down to the more of a street level view and talk about the journey of credit specifically throughout the pandemic. I think it'd be helpful for each of you to discuss some of the changes in themes or focuses you saw from 2020 to 2021, and how that may have played out in your portfolio. So, if you look back 18 months ago to today, how does that look differently? So, Sreeni, maybe you can kick us off?

Sreeni Prabhu: (06:09)
Yeah, that's great. Thank you. So, pandemic was interesting. I wouldn't say our strategy has changed as much. But, the pandemic allowed us to realign in terms of at that point, there was an abundance of what I would not call distressed assets, but illiquidity that created a flow of assets where everybody had to take a step back and manage their portfolios and manage the liquidity.

Sreeni Prabhu: (06:31)
And, specifically, for Angel Oak, we had a major theme going into the crisis of originating, and owning nonqualified mortgages. We thought there was a better risk return opportunity in there. And we took a pause coming out of it as forbearances went up, and we had to redefine where unemployment was going to be, and what was going to happen to the homeowners and home borrowers coming out of it as we've seen, and as we talked back there, that there's been, as you've seen, the mortgage credit has secured a much better than people would have thought.

Sreeni Prabhu: (07:02)
And so, we are now redefining and reinitiating, our non-qm strategy. So, the shift has been. We are more and more into illiquid as we discussed. Liquid strategies are extremely competitive, creating and owning your own assets is what we focus on, on a non-qm side. And those are the ones we offer in our private credit strategies, that's been the major team that we have at Angel Oak.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (07:29)
If, maybe, you can go into what you've seen.

Dave Trucano: (07:31)
Great. So, and we always compared 2020 to kind of where we are in 2021, to walking down a flight of stairs, and then very quickly running back up. So, I think, if you looked at the balance of 2020, we obviously as the market started to sell off, we were long risk and [inaudible 00:07:46] as the market started to sell off, we got longer risk, because you can start to see the support that was going to come in from third parties.

Dave Trucano: (07:52)
So, our investment approach is typically down at the bottom end of the credit curve. But, what we really started out doing is deploying capital into the top end. So, think about investment grade dislocation, think about as you start to walk down. The opportunity set is the Fed started to step in and obviously, provide stimulus.

Dave Trucano: (08:09)
It started with investment grade and moved to businesses that frankly normally wouldn't spread at a level that would attract us. Think about the real estate market, think about some high quality corporates. And then, we stepped down the risk curve. And we typically have a focus on defaults. We have a focus on companies trying to avoid insolvency. That was a common theme last year. And we obviously played it in a way that I didn't think we expected to coming into 2020.

Dave Trucano: (08:36)
A lot of bankruptcy risks that ultimately converted into equity or post reorg securities. That's something we continue to hold today. And I think the recovery has been a big beneficiary for our portfolio. So, there's a lot of corollaries to the credit cycle. We didn't really have the restructuring period or staged within the traditional credit cycle that we normally would expect.

Dave Trucano: (08:59)
We think that's coming some time out, 18 to 24 months, just get any amount of leverage in the system. But, from our strategy, the created credit markets providing less interesting opportunities other than what we call events, and we'll talk about that as we go through the panel.

Dave Trucano: (09:12)
We also have an illiquid strategy where we've actively deployed capital as companies. I've really been trying to solve the problem of uncertain demand recovery. So, really, we bifurcate how we invest across liquid and illiquid market opportunities with the structure of our vehicles.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (09:29)
Great. Jeffrey?

Jeffrey Sherman: (09:29)
Yeah, and I mean, same thing here. I mean, you start at top of the cap stocks and crisis and you play that recovery, then you start rotating down. And the problem now you have is that, spread is almost nonexistent in most things. So, where you have to go is what's nontraditional, whether you're doing direct lending, you're doing loan origination yourself, or you're just buying securities that people hate. That's where the opportunities are.

Jeffrey Sherman: (09:53)
And so, we're big fans of the commercial real estate market, still. I think the death of office space is over exaggerated. Multifamily is obviously very strong, we've seen industrial be strong there. And so, idiosyncratic ideas there are pretty attractive. The mortgage markets still great...

Dave Trucano: (10:10)
Yup.

Jeffrey Sherman: (10:10)
Yeah, as you talked about. And so, if you're focused on these type of assets that are just real assets, the good news about them is they tend to be short life, a couple years in terms of a wall. And, therefore, duration is low, and they have a lot more spread than traditional corporate credit.

Jeffrey Sherman: (10:25)
So, that's why, I say, you can still play the recovery and credit at this point. It's just a completely nontraditional type of credit markets. But, when I say nontraditional, it's like, these markets have been around 30, 40 years. It just, most people don't know them, because they don't trade in an ETF and the likes.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (10:42)
Chris?

Chris Hentemann: (10:42)
I mean, thinking a lot of good ideas. I mean, I go a lot of the same things they said. I mean, I think the script is actually, well-known. You move from obviously, a very technically oriented, opportunistic environments is something that's much more fundamental today, and moving from the top to the bottom.

Chris Hentemann: (11:01)
The challenge, I think was mentioned is that the liquidity in the system so unprecedented, it really is squeezing out a lot of return. I mean, you can't be in the liquid generic, in our opinion, claiming all the products anymore. You have to be much more creative with your ideas. We have to do a lot more in depth research, and take really well-educated, frankly, bets or positions on things that you actually can develop high convictions around.

Chris Hentemann: (11:30)
I'd echo what Jeff said, is like, things that we think in this environment are more interesting, and trying to solve problems around bank and financial institution balance sheets, as they come back to the risk sharing markets. After COVID, a lot of that closes up right away, you get this technical environment. Everybody goes into a cave, things slowly reopen. And then, we're getting back to an environment where Rick sharing is coming back.

Chris Hentemann: (11:51)
And I think one of the things that we see that most people see, just look at the GSEs Fannie Mae has been closed from the risk transfer markets since COVID. And likely, they're going to be back in the market later this year, probably in early 2022. They're the biggest risk sharing participant in the market.

Chris Hentemann: (12:06)
But, we're seeing it in Europe, a lot of the European banks are starting to come back out which reassuring transactions and we're trying to be first at the door trying to solve those problems, trying to actually find some marginal, incremental, alpha return, that hasn't been squeezed out yet.

Chris Hentemann: (12:21)
So, it's trying to find, unique ideas sticking to the same scripts and trying to understand the way markets are evolving, currently. Fundamentally, I think, I'll the same thing, Jeff mentioned is that, we're looking at commercial real estate. It's kind of, we took advantage of a lot of the technical situations that emerged in March, in April, in May and June, they don't last very long. There's far too many sophisticated investors that can actually take advantage of those who try to exploit them while you can.

Chris Hentemann: (12:53)
And you look for the opportunities that actually going to take longer to emerge, evolve. We felt that commercial real estate some early, it's a long process. These are very long duration assets. Tenants are very long leases. They're longer commitments. So, the credit cycles are just longer. So, it's going to take a much longer period of time to actually see the recovery play out.

Chris Hentemann: (13:17)
Some of that that's actually, correcting as we speak. And then, there's going to be sub-sectors that are just harder. Some parts of office are a little bit more challenging. It's hard to predict the timing of recovery. Hospitality is the same. Retails got structural issues on top of fundamental issues that came up on the backside of COVID.

Chris Hentemann: (13:33)
So, there's a lot of complexity in that market. There's a need for capital. Clearly, capital has been destroyed in that sector. So, we look at that. It's actually, one of the fundamental places that we're focusing on now. That's interesting, and still has a lot of opportunity.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (13:53)
Great. So, it sounds like everyone had to be pretty nimble. And I think that's true across our personal and professional lives. Dave, I think it would be helpful if you can speak specifically about the flexibility of credit as an instrument and how that played out through the pandemic.

Dave Trucano: (14:07)
Sure. Again, maybe, just setting the frame. So, we're a corporate credit shop. We focus on companies across not just private markets, but also traded markets. And so, I think when we look at what happened during 2020, the flexibility of mandates, it's absolutely critical. And, frankly, a lot of what we saw coming over the private market where companies that couldn't access the public markets.

Dave Trucano: (14:29)
So, having that vehicle or having the kind of the two legs, if you will, to that stool is absolutely, critically, important. So, if we go back into kind of the depths of March and April of last year, the number of companies that, frankly, were investment grade that add issue at effectively sub-investment grade levels was significant, and the amount of collateral they historically, never used to pledge, that all of a sudden became available for stepping down the credit spectrum when they went to the issue market.

Dave Trucano: (14:57)
And so, we actively participated in that end up going to the credit opportunity when you think about the classic Carnival Cruise when they came to the market and issued with $35 billion of unencumbered collateral, you can assign whatever value you want to it, but that's historically something they never had to pledge in order to actually raise capital.

Dave Trucano: (15:14)
So, I think that's, one of the benefits of the credit market is, last year really demonstrated the power of credit to help companies through a pretty uncertain time. And I think, where we are, at least sitting here today, a lot of that benefit is continuing to be harvested. And so, when we think about a lot of how we invest, the flexibility of credit markets, what we focus on events.

Dave Trucano: (15:39)
And so, the credit market opening and closing creates volatility, we invest into that. A lot of what I would say is, financial technology that's been created into and out of the crisis is something we're continuing to harvest today. And we've an active participant in sponsoring SPAC managers, which is something that a lot of people talk in credit, it's got a lot of attributes to historical credit, investing, and we've been an active participant sponsoring backs that are now looking to buy stress, distressed assets, as they look to deploy capital into the public market.

Dave Trucano: (16:10)
So, I think there's a technology there, that is really kind of, I think, evolving. We'll see whether or not that's an institutionalized product or not, that's a question that I think is open. But, when we look at the interplay between credit, and the flexibility of credit to allow companies to finance themselves, we think the trend is going to continue to moving from liquid traded markets to liquid non-traded markets, as companies have problems.

Dave Trucano: (16:35)
And we've seen that evolution in our business. We have our private strategy. We have a capital solution approach. The number of companies that historically would have issued in syndicated markets, just are not looking for private solutions. They want to partner with companies that can help them finance themselves over time and not be subject to the market windows, opening and closing. And I think that 2020 demonstrated the benefit of having that ability to pivot across not just traded, but private for companies as much as frankly, financing sources.

Dave Trucano: (17:04)
So, I think that's an evolution that's obviously, the long tail as Jeff referenced. It's been developing over years. But, I think, it's only going to accelerate as companies obviously, have to figure out ways to creatively finance their businesses, given uncertain demand environment can pop up pretty quickly.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (17:20)
Right. So, I purvey we're a little bit different. We're a little bit market agnostic some of the things you guys have described because we structure and originate our own loans directly to our borrowers and partner with governments. But, I think, one of the tools that we all have in our Arsenals are the use of different types of vehicles to deploy our capital.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (17:35)
And Sreeni, you and I were talking before about some of the ideas and how you deployed capital through different vehicles, pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. So, can you speak a little bit of how you use vehicles to deploy capital throughout the pandemic? And why?

Sreeni Prabhu: (17:49)
Yup. So, as the teams have been... Liquid markets continue to be tight, the Fed in play reduces the amount of assets and really creates a need to do originate source, illiquid assets. And so, that needs the change liquidity spectrum of the vehicles that you deploy.

Sreeni Prabhu: (18:08)
So, one of the themes that we did at Angel, we launched a long-term private strategies with institutional investors to invest over a long period of time, where we can take advantage of some of the nuances of the non-qm mortgage market. And in pre-COVID, one of the vehicles that we looked at was to launch a public REIT, which obviously, up to COVID, there was no such thing as launching a public REIT. We had to wait for the rich to come back. But, we eventually officially launched REIT like a couple of months ago.

Sreeni Prabhu: (18:40)
And, again, we have to deploy and that's our way of facing public markets to execute our illiquid strategies. But, I think, as Angel Oak has evolved, and I think everybody on this table can say that is, the investors also are learning the thought about extending the term of the capital in terms of how we deploy. And that allows everybody at this table to take advantage of the opportunities.

Sreeni Prabhu: (19:07)
We're doing it to the mortgage market, especially non-qualified mortgage market. And, obviously, commercial real estate is something that we are also involved in. So, a lot of our strategies are now focused on deploying long-term capital, including the public REIT.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (19:23)
So, COVID, and the pandemic changed how we do a lot of things in life. For the whole panel, did the pandemic impact how you evaluate things, even from an operational or underwriting perspective? And did it make you think of credit as a tool differently on a go forward basis? And Jeffrey, maybe, we'll start with you.

Jeffrey Sherman: (19:43)
Yeah, there was more uncertainty in the equation. I mean, I think we all became epidemiologist. We all become macro experts all of a sudden overnight. And so, I think what you had to do is just plug a lot more uncertainty into the variables. And a perfect example, was something like the CLO market, where you have this corporate... America was borrowing heavily. You had this big engine there. And people were pricing these securities to where they were going to have unprecedent defaults, and they still were money good. And these things were trading at 50 cents of the dollar.

Jeffrey Sherman: (20:14)
So, there was some really good opportunities in that area where you can essentially take the default vectors, sorry to speak, bond jargon. But, you can stress the portfolio, you can say that's going to be two times worse the crisis, recoveries are going to be half what they were in the past. And these are money, good securities.

Jeffrey Sherman: (20:30)
So, investors scratch their head while you're buying them as they go down. That's what all of our clients do. But, you're saying these are money good through these very stressful areas. And so, there still are ways just to stress that. Sending with the residential mortgage market, how did you figure it out, when the president tells you that you don't have to pay your mortgage?

Jeffrey Sherman: (20:49)
And, by the way, don't pay your car bill, don't pay your student loan. That's like 90% of our securitized markets right there. So, we're just like, "Okay, thanks. Thanks for buying ETFs and telling people don't pay our securities back." So, you had to really just throw a lot of the traditional analysis out. And, look, we use hurricane recoveries as a way to model the mortgage market because if people cure and come back from moratorium, what does it look like?

Jeffrey Sherman: (21:13)
So, I think, really just saying, how can we stress this? How can we stress the cash flows? And what's going to happen? Because we didn't know what would happen. But, the one thing we know is, we know the cash flows. We don't know if we're going to get them or not. But, how sensitive to them are we? And so, that was really the way to really just get down and analyze securities that point in time.

Jeffrey Sherman: (21:32)
And like I said, we don't have any epidemiologists on staff. We've never seen a pandemic, none of us are over 100. So, we didn't know how to react. But, we said, "Okay, what are parallels out here?" And we thought, if some of these kind of geological events were very similar. We took the airline industry and said, "Look at what happened 9/11?" We just had the anniversary there.

Jeffrey Sherman: (21:52)
But, if you think about it, like what happened for airline travel to recover? And right on pace for that right now. Yeah, there's been some curtailment there the last month or so. But, it won't recover until business travel comes back. So, you have to really think teams the lens and not say, "Okay, this is a typical recession," because there was nothing typical about it.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (22:11)
Chris?

Chris Hentemann: (22:12)
I mean, I'd add to that. I mean, I think there's really, I would bifurcated into two different ways of doing the analysis. There's the crisis model, which I think applies. If you're around long enough, and do this for 30 years, you can mark all the... I think I was called rings in the tree, where you had a fire. You can see them, and you know how that model applies.

Chris Hentemann: (22:34)
And then, this was a little different, because we never seen a pandemic. And then, the next thing is, we're going to get aliens that invade from space, and we're all going to say, "How does this model work?" And it's going to be different. And you see, you have to think in the context of something will show up that we haven't necessarily planned for, and I think that's what COVID did. And it had the... That's the model we have to recalibrate, and you have to think about it differently.

Chris Hentemann: (22:54)
And I would say, we have the same... A lot of the same exposures and to consumer, and in ways that we had to think differently. And so, when you look at like default curves, you can't apply universally a default curve, you have to think about, what is COVID impact? You have to think about the hospitality industry. You have to think about the people that are in the service industry.

Chris Hentemann: (23:16)
So, there's a stratification of consumers that you got to think about in terms of who are going to be affected with regards to the employment picture, because it didn't universally hit everybody the same way. And so, those models all had to be changed. And so, and then, that actually does a couple of things. It actually highlights risks, but it also highlights opportunities.

Chris Hentemann: (23:37)
I think the other thing, too, which, to a large degree, we've been a beneficiary, because all of us have been active since the great financial crisis is, you have to think about regulation. You have to think about policy initiatives. And so, one of the things you got out of the great financial crisis is that, the government has tools that they aggressively will use.

Chris Hentemann: (23:58)
And so, yes, some of them, we thought the same thing like, "Oh, my gosh, we're just going to tell everybody as a holiday, don't pay your debts back, how's this going to work out? Probably, not so great. And then, you look at and you say, but there's certain backstops and some of the some of the structures and some of the sub sectors that were quite frankly, really helpful. I mean, Fannie Freddie being a conservative ship, I would say it was helpful that they were in conservatorship.

Chris Hentemann: (24:22)
The way the securities and the risks and the policy was deployed in that subset of the mortgage market was really different than the private market. The private markets, quite frankly, are free almost to do whatever they wanted. They can interpret the CARES Act, however, they wanted. So, we were thinking how are they going to interpret that? Let's get on the phone. Let's talk to lenders. Let's talk to servicers. Sreeni, you probably could speak to this, ad nauseum.

Chris Hentemann: (24:43)
But, it was a different world and mortgage credit than it was in the government sponsored. The government sponsored had a lot of the tools in the toolbox when the great financial crisis. So, just completely two different opportunities sets that behave differently, presented different ways that we could actually, look at the opportunity.

Chris Hentemann: (25:03)
So, if you've got the standard, crisis model, then you you've got to apply new models to this particular environment. And like, I joke, I mean, we kind of think out of our imagination, what's the next one going to be? We're going to get tech from space, or, frankly, I think, cybersecurity is something we think about.

Chris Hentemann: (25:20)
I think, that's something that's emerging that we have to pay attention to, and how can that change the financial infrastructure, and how do you prepare for things like that? Then, we will just present a brand new set of analysis that we're going to have to deploy as well. So, but, again, risks and opportunities always.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (25:41)
So, Sreeni, maybe you can piggyback and dive into what Chris was alluding to in terms of the mortgage market?

Sreeni Prabhu: (25:45)
Yeah. So, when we go back to... We learn a lot of lessons, but when you go back to that event, as you said, the first step was the liquidity side of it. I think, we can all agree that nobody... There was no standard deviation move that we wrote up COVID in that. And so, I am... But, in all our strategies, when we show the scenario analysis, that was not the scenario analysis that we ever had in any of our presentation.

Sreeni Prabhu: (26:11)
So, we learned that and I think what we what you saw was the first step was if you have proper liquidity makers and proper structures, you survive to get to the next point when the Fed came in playing, and the market became more liquid. But, the next step was, I can speak from our perspective is now, you have mortgages in a nongovernment mortgage that we are underwritten with 75% loan to value.

Sreeni Prabhu: (26:35)
People putting money down 700 plus micro score, and you're seeing now 30% of loans and forbearances. And the first step was, we had to call people that like, you just don't get a forbearance, but we had to forbear anyway. And so, now, you have to go to the servicing as we talked about, as Chris talked about. And we got tremendous...

Sreeni Prabhu: (26:54)
The one thing that we don't realize in adding, you know, everybody on this panel, but it's residential, or commercial mortgages, or any consumer assets. The amount of data that we have today is significantly greater. It used to be a lot in corporate credit, but not in consumer credit. And, the amount of data that we capture on each of our mortgage borrowers is tremendous. And that allows us to really, think about how we service these assets, how we talk to the servicer.

Sreeni Prabhu: (27:20)
And as we look back now, I mean, 30% forbearance has led to pretty much no defaults in the system, which tells you the strength of the consumer, the strength of the housing market, but also learning lessons in terms of the fact that if you underwrite something properly, how does that work out? So, it was a great lesson for us in terms of understanding the behavior of the borrowers.

Sreeni Prabhu: (27:43)
And a lot of our borrowers, actually, small business owners, which also talks about the small balance commercial and that market... They're pretty well, you'd have thought there were certain sectors that struggled in that, but generally, it's the small balance commercial did pretty well coming out of it. So...

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (28:01)
Great. So, we're seeing a lot of spikes, and potential new variants, how are you positioning your portfolios for potential shutdowns? Or are you not? Dave, maybe, you can start off since you are event driven.

Dave Trucano: (28:12)
Yeah, I think, as an event orientation, really allows us to focus on just discrete outcomes. And I think it's just about pricing risk to that outcome occurring. So, I think when we look at least how we invest, it tends to be over a shorter period of time, at least at this point in time in the cycle.

Dave Trucano: (28:30)
So, you're really pricing companies' access to capital, that's a function of capital markets being open or close to certain companies. I think that the amount of corporate activity is significant. So, we tend to think that that volatility is an area of the trade credit market, you can drive up performance if you have that event orientation.

Dave Trucano: (28:47)
So, I think, at least in the market, we're not forecasting a shutdown to occur as we go into the winter months. And that's how we're positioned, but we tend to focus to discrete events, and then we price abd return we're looking for. And I think, that's just naturally at the stage of the cycle, how we can generate returns. I mean, if you look across corporate credit, I mean, for all intents and purposes, there is no convexity.

Dave Trucano: (29:11)
So, you're effectively buying a yield to two a call. You're buying a yield to maturity, and I think there were at historical lows from convexity default, experience is going to be back at 07 levels. And I think, the reality is, that's the environment we're operating in.

Dave Trucano: (29:25)
So, the only way to generate excess return, we believe across traded credit is through that event orientation. And, I think, away from that, in our private market, investing strategies, we looked at the potential for shutdown where we're invested, we're effectively the sole lender. So, from our viewpoint, we can obviously provide companies with additional liquidity to the extent that justified.

Dave Trucano: (29:50)
We sit on 14 boards of the 25 companies we have in that portfolio and the express purpose of doing that not as a voting member, but as an observer is to save the company's got a problem, how can we help solve it? Can we do it with liquidity? Can we do with covenant? Do we have to do it by actually, sitting down and restructuring debts because the company just can't service those liabilities?

Dave Trucano: (30:09)
And I think that's really the area from our perspective where you're more focused on a potential shutdown, how it's going to affect those companies. And, by sitting in the boardroom, and also, frankly, being the largely the sole lender to those companies, they're going to be a pretty advantageous position, if that were to occur to make sure that they're going to take incremental rescue to get paid for it.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (30:31)
Right. So, I just want to spend a minute on investor mindset and appetite. And maybe, Chris, you can start off by telling us if you notice any shift in terms of mindset, or appetite from your investors as a result of the pandemic, and what are you hearing from them now?

Chris Hentemann: (30:48)
I think from our investors, clearly, I mean, I'm going to hold back real quiet, red hot, but it seems like everybody wants to basically find a private credit opportunity. I think people have learned that liquidity premiums are very difficult to capture if you don't have patient capital.

Chris Hentemann: (31:06)
So, from our experience, we've seen just so much more demand for more patient capital type strategies, solutions. And so, that, if you want to roll that into the private credit, because most of the structures that feed into that market are of that nature. So, we definitely see a lot of that.

Chris Hentemann: (31:26)
The other thing, too, is I think that there is definitely a focus, a sensitivity to liquidity, how are you positioned around liquidity? How do you manage your liabilities? I mean, that was the Achilles heel. If you've mismanaged it, you probably wouldn't be sitting here today. It's just, you can see it, you get these events, and they wash out strategies that are probably pushed a little bit too far in the margin with regards to liability management.

Chris Hentemann: (31:50)
So, liability management's a big focus on that. I would say, the structure of funds, that private credit team is also on the right hand side of the balance sheet, it happens to do with your capital, as your capital patient. And so, those are real assets or real advantages, their focal points, I think of investors that we see today, because they see the dark side of it, when you go through an event, like March and April.

Chris Hentemann: (32:16)
And they also see the pleasant side of it, if you're well-positioned to get through it, in May and June and July last year, you can take advantage of it. So, there's definitely a focus on the right hand side of the balance sheet, structure capital. Is it well-positioned and is it appropriately aligned with the opportunity set that the manager can execute in?

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (32:37)
Right. So, can each of you take a moment and describe what you see as the major risks heading into 2022? Jeffrey, maybe you can start?

Jeffrey Sherman: (32:47)
The inflation? Pretty simple. Everybody talks about it. It's detrimental to the bond business. A lot of people have never seen inflation that work in a fixed income trading desks. So, I think that's one of the bigger risks you see out there. I think, we've seen the liquidity, the amount of credit being supplied to the markets. It's not 2022 issue. I think, you said 18, 24 months. I think that's the earliest we'll see kind of credit events, if we see them at this point in the cycle.

Jeffrey Sherman: (33:15)
But, we're still in the boom here. And so, it's strange that, if you'd asked me six months ago, and this will show you how good I'm not at predicting things, I've just said, you get a five handle inflation grant, tenure is going to get smoked. And here it is rallying because of technical effects, liquidity supply, treasury general account drawdown. I mean, you can go into the multitude of factors.

Jeffrey Sherman: (33:36)
So, I think that there's just a lot of complacency out there where people are waiting for the next thing. And, I mean, what is the tenure trade like a 10 basis point range for the last like two months? I mean, you talk about boring. And what's happening is, inflation keeps printing with five handles. So, it's a very strange environment from that perspective. And, something's got to give. And I really think the catalyst is when the global economy reopens.

Jeffrey Sherman: (34:01)
You're starting to see the European economy start to try to reopen. Your previous question was on, "What happens if we shut down?" We're not going to. The American spirit is not going to allow it, and people just aren't going to do it. So, the bullheadedness, the stubbornness, it work, sometimes.

Jeffrey Sherman: (34:16)
And so, I would say that, as you think about it, it's what happens with this power of labor. And we haven't seen this in many decades. And I think labor starting to get power, whether it's demanding a hybrid work environment, demanding better pay, not going back to that job that doesn't pay you a living wage. And these are things we all have to deal with.

Jeffrey Sherman: (34:35)
And so, we see it in hiring trends. I mean, we're still closed in our office, it's voluntary. And, we get about, 7% of the population show up on the first day as voluntary, and now it's down to 1%. So, there's no bid for it right now. And so, I think what you have to do is think about those dynamics, and there is inflation in the system and I think we have to live with it. But, I think we go to like a three handle and I think that's the new level.

Jeffrey Sherman: (34:59)
What we've seen in the last 50 years, there's a great piece out by Deutsche Bank, they probably report yesterday talking about what's happened since the invention of the fiat currency. And, this has been the lowest inflationary environment that we've seen in the last like 12, 13 years. But, that's not the norm.

Jeffrey Sherman: (35:15)
And so, I think that's the thing we all got to think about because who's excited about buying a 130 for tenure today? Are you guys all running out? That's what you're here to hear about, how great that trade is? No, you're investing in crypto, your vices stuff that has one minute returns that are what we're going to get in the bond market in those areas, right? Yeah.

Jeffrey Sherman: (35:33)
So, and at the end of the day, you have purchasing power risk. People forget about that. So, I think inflation, it should be on a discussion, it should be on your mind. And you got to figure out a way to protect parts of your portfolio against it. But, don't look to the bond market to do it right now. Unless, it's deep down in credit, things like that, that have high cash flow, because it's not going to save you.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (35:52)
Dave?

Dave Trucano: (35:53)
Yeah, I mean, I was joking. I mean, looking forward into 2022, maybe the biggest risk is we all come back to the office, and we look at each other, and we start interacting with ways we have in the past. And we've been out of the office for really the last 18 months, and we've had our best two year performance over the course of the nine years. We've been running the fund inside of BlackRock.

Dave Trucano: (36:11)
And so, I think we've adapted to a new normal. I guess, and that's kind of the joke we make around the office. Maybe, we should all not see each other over the computer, because we'll continue to outperform. But, I think, in Jeff's comments are right. I mean, there isn't a company we talked to that isn't talking about inflation in their business.

Dave Trucano: (36:27)
You can look at what's going on in the commodity complex. You can look at what's happening with transportation costs. You can see the power the employee is gaining. You can try to go hire somebody and try to offer what you thought was the homework [inaudible 00:36:40] wage. And the reality is, it's really hard to find people.

Dave Trucano: (36:42)
So, that's not coming through the numbers right now. But, the reality is, I think that is the biggest risk going into 2022. And there isn't a company we talked to that isn't talking about that as the biggest concern they have in their business, finding people, input costs, and actually having pricing power so that they can raise the cost what they sell their products for.

Dave Trucano: (37:00)
And so, I think if you look at the bond market, you look at the high yield market, and I think 85% of the high yield markets trading, the negative real rates of return. I mean, it's just not sustainable, and something's got to adjust.

Jeffrey Sherman: (37:12)
Globally.

Dave Trucano: (37:13)
That's globally. That's right. So, I don't know, we're not macro investors. We tend to focus on the micro that would create volatility, if that ultimately rears its head and investor sentiment ships. I think that's actually good for our business, but it won't feel good.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (37:27)
Great. So, unfortunately, we have to pivot because time has flown. So, I think there are two last important things I would like to talk about, and one is the biggest learning over the past 12 months, or 18 months and biggest opportunities that we're seeing. And so, for us, it purvey our biggest learning was relationships are important. And that's our employees, but when across the spectrum to our investors, borrowers, government, partner, service providers, et cetera.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (37:52)
And then, in terms of opportunity set, what we're saying is obviously, people getting back out there. And so, revitalization of society and what the government's doing to help that in terms of infrastructure and economic development.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (38:04)
So, each of you could take that, and one, give us your biggest learning over that past 18 months. And what you're seeing is the biggest opportunity for the next six to 12 months. And Sreeni, we'll start with you again.

Sreeni Prabhu: (38:15)
Yeah, the past 18 months taught us a lot about where the markets are. And obviously, the markets became more liquid over a period of time. As you said, we went up in credit from a strategy perspective, and then as the market calibrated back, we went down in credit in terms of more focus on residential credit, over the next 18 months, and even where the government is, and even we have shutdowns and so forth.

Sreeni Prabhu: (38:42)
I feel, we feel that the consumer credit mortgage credit will continue to do better. We feel there's a lot of population in the US that does not have access to mortgage credit, and these are self-employed borrowers. Big economy borrowers, there's a lot more of those that are entering the system that are going to need mortgage credit. And so, that presents a tremendous opportunity to get some returns for investors.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (39:09)
Dave?

Dave Trucano: (39:10)
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we've realized is how easily people are adapting to different environments and I think it's very simple. I think that you've demonstrated. You can actually work, I think people are mobile. So, I think, the reality is that's the new norm, but we have to adapt to it.

Dave Trucano: (39:26)
From my perspective, I think that's going to be how we're going to have to operate our business go forward even as we move back to office. And I think as it relates to the opportunity set, from my perspective, as long as there's corporate activity and as long as companies continue to access the credit markets and pivoting across public and private, there's going to be lots of opportunities and credit. I mean, I don't accept the fact that people would always look back and say there's nothing to do in credit.

Dave Trucano: (39:50)
I would agree with the fact that beta is no longer cheap. It isn't active management and credit, I think, is the way you outperform and I'm as biased, but that's my general view. So, I think, if you fast forward 18 months, I think, actively managed credit strategies are going to outperform beta strategies, which is obviously a hell of a lot of people have decided to shift their capital.

Dave Trucano: (40:13)
And I think the last point I'd make is, I'm always surprised and we talked to our investors about this, how many people try to time credit? You don't really hear that in equities. You don't hear it, a lot of other strategies, they get to mistake, you have to be able to catch points in time and you have to be able to be deployed over time in order to do so.

Dave Trucano: (40:29)
So, that's one of the biggest things that I've learned from the last 18 months talking to our investors, how often people try to time markets. And, ultimately, miss out on... It's the outperformance across credit.

Mei-li Da Silva Vint: (40:40)
So, unfortunately, we're out of time, but I'd like to thank the panelists. I think we're all a little bit more intelligent, at least from the credit perspective. And thank you to the audience. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.