The fund managers focus on the historic cash flows generated and invested by companies to support their forecast profits growth. As forecasts are often unreliable, the scale of cash invested to support forecasts is key.
The fund managers seek to own companies that generate significantly more cash than they need to sustain their planned growth, yet are lowly valued by investors on that measure. They sell short stocks that are expensive, are struggling to generate any cash and are run by management investing heavily for future growth.
To identify companies’ annual cash flow, balance sheet development and valuation efficiently across all equity markets the fund managers have developed a simple screen as a starting point for further qualitative analysis. The investment screen consists of two cash flow ratios that are combined equally to highlight the process characteristics that they seek.