Investor Insights

We like small companies with strong growth potential, especially if they are relatively undiscovered. In this article, we share the four segments we use to classify the small-cap universe. The Montgomery Small Companies Fund has the Australian Small Ordinaries Accumulation Index as its benchmark, and currently this represents companies ranked 101 to 295 in S&P’s index size ranking system.

Reliance Worldwide (ASX:RWC) has been a recent introduction to the portfolio. The company sells innovative and simple plumbing fixtures to enhance productivity and efficiency for end users. Reliance’s core product is the “Push-to-Connect” (PTC) fitting to connect two ends of a pipe, marketed under the Sharkbite brand.

The smaller end of the stock market delivered a mixed bag during the recent reporting season. But if you sift through the company reports, you’ll find five themes common to those that provided positive reports and/or outlook statements. These are the companies to put on your watchlist.

Healius Limited (ASX:HLS) (formerly Primary Health Care) operates a suite of health care businesses including pathology, medical centres, diagnostic imaging and day hospitals. These are businesses that should enjoy reliable long-term growth in demand, and Healius generally has good market positions in the markets it operates in.

Investors in NIB Holdings (ASX:NHF) and Medibank Private (ASX:MPL) would have enjoyed the past six months, with the share price of both companies rising by over 20 per cent. And there may be more good news to come.

With reporting season sprinting to the end, on a fundamental level it is not all doom and gloom, there are winners (and losers). We notice a clear winner in companies with direct consumer exposure. What are our observations on the cyclical winners and those companies with structural growth tailwinds?

Earlier this month I wrote that Alphabet, owner of Google, had a Fortune 500 size business hidden away in its “Other” reported revenues: Google Cloud. But did you know that Alibaba, the Chinese owner of the world’s largest e-commerce platform, also has a massive cloud business? Alibaba operates both Taobao and Tmall.

An important part of investment management is portfolio construction. Gary Rollo and Dominic Rose – two seasoned and dedicated small cap specialists – lift the lid on their investment process and how they go about weighting individual holdings in the portfolio to share insights ahead of the commencement of the new Montgomery Small Companies Fund.

  In this week’s video insight Joseph provides an update on Steadfast’s FY2019 results. Steadfast reported underlying earnings before interest, tax and amortisation of $193 million, which was a 17 per cent increase on 2018.

A lot is being written about the low interest rate environment in which we find ourselves. And rightly so: we would rank this as the number one most powerful force affecting asset prices today. As for the reasons behind the interest rate dynamics we are seeing, there are many – including those related to demographics, technology and globalization.

As the reporting season avalanche gathers pace, a few company reports have really caught our eye.  Here’s our take on reports by BHP, a2 Milk, Beacon Lighting and Worley Parsons, and what each firm is saying about their near-term prospects. BHP (ASX:BHP) BHP posted its largest annual profit in five years along with a record dividend.

Technology once presented a major barrier to entry and often stifled competition. So what changed? We see the explosion in the cloud as a catalyst for why we believe small companies represent an attractive area of investor opportunity.