YouSaid · the spoken record

Anthony Kingsley

lines on the record: 84
first: 2023-11-12
most recent: 2023-11-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, you build up a picture over time. You cover a company and you meet management, you meet different levels of management. Obviously, glass door and in her site, there's other ways of getting data these days on employee feedback and satisfactions where some of the issues are. And if you're in the top, I mean, there is a correlation, in my opinion, between satisfies employees and shareholder returns. And if you're of the 500th company in the S&P 500 on the glass door scores, you're probably going to be challenged to deliver really great returns. So there's some outside data. We can use, we can interview managements. We can also use expert networks to access employees, former employees, competitors to get a sense of that. We're very focused on the leadership. Anytime the leadership changes.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably underestimated in the past. And that's why we've sort of double scored it. A few questions we double score, like culture, like pricing power and returns without leverage. A few things that we think are kind of super factors.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've got pricing power, but because the customers have got no choice of nowhere else to go, ultimately we don't think that leads to a very inevitable outcome. Whereas if you, you know, if you're like a Costco and you are permanently delighted customers, you look after employees, you pay them well, you put all these things together, you can deliver super normal returns over time by considering all the stakeholders and building a good culture. I think we try to do that at Finley Park. I think it's I think one of the reasons for the success of Finley Park is frankly a very focused purpose to generate great returns for our clients and a culture of creating environment for employees to do their best work to have fun and to deliver for our stakeholders. So I think culture and purpose, I believe we've”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I think when you look back and you look at certain companies and why they've been successful, it's not always the case, but often culture is something that's been underestimated. And so, you know, companies that obviously look after shareholders are important. We're trying to make a profit here and a shareholder return. But I believe that companies that look after their employees that have good glass door scores where you've got satisfied employees, companies that look after their customers and have a strong customer value proposition, you know, are well placed to succeed. So yeah, culture and purpose. I mean, one of the things that we look at is, you know, we don't like businesses where they have a product that customers have to have, but customers hate, hate the company.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The questions themselves are, again, it's common sense. More than half of them relate to the business. So a business quality and business competitive advantage. And ultimately, we're trying to get to what is that quality. We want to invest in quality business that have enduring competitive advantage so that we can feel confident about the inevitability of the outcome. And then a number of the other questions are around, you know, finance. financials, free cash flow and leverage and management incentives and confidence in management, culture purpose. But the big chunk of them are related to business quality and competitive advantage. We're trying to invest in high quality businesses that generate good returns where you can just hold them and let them compound.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not many people are like Charlie Oga. I mean, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a person with very average intelligence. I simply can't remember all of these things. And so you put them down a list.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea that a pilot has a checklist and before they take off, they run through the checklist, even though they know what to do, they run through the checklist. A surgeon in operating room has a checklist, even though they know what to do, you run through a checklist. And fund managers tend not to have that. They think they can keep everything in their head and they can remember everything in an A-page document. And I know that I'm just not smart enough to do that. So I said, well, I said to the team, why don't we try and put this checklist into sorry, put this document into a checklist? And so it was really a team effort. And we distilled it into 29 points. And seven or eight years on, we're still using it. We've tweaked it a little bit over the years and tweaked a few questions. But essentially, it is the investment philosophy that's been tried and tested since the early 90s. And it's proved that.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, I've been working with James for 20 years in sort of 2015 on and off. But since the start of my career, as I mentioned, and then rejoined Finlay Park in 2002. And we'd always looked at this document on the website, which was James's investment philosophy from the 1987 experience. And it was pretty, pretty timeless document. But I think the thing when I became CIO, I mean, he handed over to me in sort of 2015, 16 and said, the kid's grown up. Let the kid, you know, let the kid have a go. And so we were sort of joint CIO for a while and then he sort of handed it to me. And I said, well, look, it's great to have this investment philosophy, but why don't how do we know we're implementing it? And I didn't feel in all cases all the time we were implementing it. And especially as you bring new people in, I'd read this Atal Gawande book, you know, the Czechist Manifesto. I think at around that time or maybe a few years before. And, you know.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But on valuation of this avoiding mistakes, one of the things there that we remind ourselves on is don't sell too early when it's a fantastic business, when you've got a good business that's growing, that's got high returns on capital, where there's a high degree of inevitability of outcome just because the stock gets a little bit expensive. Sometimes those other things can justify a high valuation. And that is on our avoiding mistakes. And I can tell you, you know, our return would have been meaningfully higher than 12% compound if we'd paid more attention to that. We're quite, what I'd say Finley Parker quite good at, have been quite good at over time is identifying good companies that meet the checklist. What we've not been so good at always is execution, which means that sometimes we've just sold stocks. We've been quite pleased with ourselves. We made three times our money.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who are selling stock or giving aggressive guidance? Be careful about managements who are too smooth talking be careful about managements who are running the business with consistently levered balance sheets and rolling up acquisitions. Look at it to your point about incentives. Be careful of management whose incentives are not aligned with those of shareholders. So those would be just a handful just on the management side and we can go into the business side or the process side, but it's just lessons that over time that we have learned that help us avoid permanent capital loss.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so obviously we focus on this checklist of things that we're trying to find. But over the years, we've produced a laminate of where we've consistently got things wrong. And just to remind ourselves. And so those can be grouped under the business, financial management process, valuation. I mean, I can go into sort of, you know, it's probably about 30 or 40 points in total. And they're all sort of just reminders. I encourage everyone to just look at this laminated sheet that they have on their desks every now and then. Again, just to avoid sort of stupidity. But, you know, a lot of it is just incredibly common sense. You know, on management, look for management that you can trust. You know, look for CEOs who've got a track record in the industry. You know, be careful about management.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is so true. And to use another Charlie mungerism, he always says, you know, I've always thought the power of incentives were important and yet I consistently underestimated the power of incentives in my lifetime. And show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And if you just incentivize people purely on performance, you'd get a bunch of fighter pilots doing their own thing. And if you incentivize people on performance and attitude or collaboration or how are you helping the team, how are you involved in the debate? Are you giving feedback? Are you critically appraising an idea? Are you suggesting? It helps reinforce that culture. And ultimately, I think, you know, in our system, it leads to better decisions.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm very open to listening to others. No one's shouted at each other in 15 years, but equally, we do kick the tires pretty hard. We have a very open and honest conversation about what we think. I mean, ultimately, we're just trying to get to the right answer. I mean, the ultimate decision lies with me in terms of the stock going into the fund. But, you know, very often I'm in agreement with the team and the portfolio managers recommending it. And we have a very open debate.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, we had this coverage model, which is perhaps a little unusual. So when an idea is being researched or reviewed to the team or indeed, you know, just ongoing coverage, you've always got a couple of people who are sort of experts looking at that. And that means that they can have a healthy debate about it and you don't get individual sort of confirmation bias perhaps. But ultimately every stock that goes into the portfolio is reviewed to the whole team. We review existing stocks. We'll do re-reviews. We'll review new stocks. And that co-coverage team will bring them to the team. And ultimately, we're just trying to get to the right answer. Culture is important and we might probably talk about culture, but we've got an open culture where we trust, where ideas, we want to hear from other people. Ideas are encouraged. I certainly don't have all the answers or ideas.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without getting too stressed. We like to sleep at night and we want to deliver, we try and deliver a consistent return for our clients over time. So it's not to say that others don't do it well with 10 stocks. So it's just what's worked for us.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Top 15, you know, low 40s. You're making bets, but you can also just live with that volatility and let the compounding do the work. And so, you know, take text instruments we've owned for more than a decade. I mean, it's a cyclical business in analog semiconductors. I mean, it's a growth business over time, the electronic content of communication devices, of industrial products, of cars, of consumer products goes up and they sell more analog products. they gain a little share. But boy, do you have semiconductor cycles? And so, you know, it's been an amazing stock over 10 years, but it's volatile. And for us and the Finlay Park temperament and what we're trying to deliver, we would just like to have 60 stocks with, you know, 2%, 2, 3% positions, you know, 3% plus positions. And with things that we can live with. So we can live and let the compounding of those businesses do the work.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's a wonderful question. I think it's to some extent to do with temperament. It's not to say that Nick and Zach or some other folks who have a 10-stock portfolio aren't brilliant at it. But usually invariably the high low in a stock in any one year, even if the fundamentals haven't changed that much, is quite wide. And you get tested. And if you've got what we have found, certainly for the Finley Park and our temperament, if you've got too much in a position, it's difficult sometimes to add to it. You just, you know, investing is, you know, you need to be on the right, on the front foot in terms of psychology. And if you're just on the back foot a little bit and you've got a bit too much, there's something you go, yeah, but I've got a bit too much, so I can't add it. If you've got a diversified portfolio with some degree of concentration, you know, top 10, 30% plus of the fund, as you mentioned, top.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you did with Tom Gayner some months ago, and he was talking about even the person that doesn't do the luge can still get down there. It's not like you're sort of luging uphill. You've got some nice tailwind. So being to use a phrase, your phrase by being consistently not stupid, avoiding downside risk, you can produce a really good compound rate of return over time. And that's sort of what we did, what we've done.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Down at a third in a stop, you've got to go up 50% just to get back to where you started. If you're down 50%, you've got to double your money. And so if you can avoid that downside capture, you can produce a really good compound rate of return by, as you, to use your words, by being consistently not stupid, you know, being, there are so many opportunities to get carried away by, you know, the latest fad or fashion or meme stock or IPO frenzy or there's the latest AI thing or whatever it is. Over 25 years has been no end to things that you could have got sucked into. So by having a investment philosophy, which you don't just pay lip service to, but you stick to, you use rigorously when selecting your companies. You can build this track record over time. And of course, over time, companies grow and they have nice tailwinds. And I think I was listening to a podcast.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, it's absolutely key. And as you pointed out, we've built the record by going down less than the benchmark that we've been measured against in most of those quarters. And what we try and do is keep up. We try and keep up in a good market, go down less in a bad market. And if you understand the power of compounding that we're trying to avoid permanent capital loss in any individual stock. Now, you can't always get that right, but we're trying to Our starting point is how much can we lose if we're wrong rather than how much can we make of it right? And I think that is probably contrary to a lot of investors. Investors look at some shiny object or stock and they go, this looks very exciting. And they look about, they think about how much they can make if they're right. Our starting point is, obviously we want to make good returns and compound over time, but our starting point is, yeah, but if we're wrong, how much are we going to lose? And, you know, understanding that if you...”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's always been this understanding of compounding. You've got to stay in the game. You know, you cannot, of course, we've had some good years. We've had some tough years, but we've never blown ourselves up. We stayed in the game on this compounding journey. And that's really been the focus from the beginning for James, Charlie, myself, is just produce a great return. And hopefully we'll have enough clients to run a successful business.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In America and compounding is just, as I said, it's like the eighth wonder of the world, as Charlie Munger says, never interrupt it unnecessarily. I mean, we've been going now for 25 years. We've compounded at 12% after fees. So that's about 17 or 18x. But really what we want to do is we want to keep that going. I mean, James is not here, you know, James on the board, but he's not running the fund. We've got a different team running the fund today. I'm involved at some stage, hopefully in the long time from now, there'll be another team that's running this. But we want to keep that compounding. And if you can keep that compounding record going, as you know, you better than most know, you can produce extraordinary results over time. I mean, if we're able to generate another 12% over the next 25 years, then you have a 300x return approximately over two generations. And that's sort of pretty extraordinary. So I think.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much so. I mean, James and I know Nick and Zach well, and what they were doing in those early years. And we used to have some good conversations. And many ways, it was similar. I mean, one of the reasons we were talking about the newsletter, one of the reasons that James Rowe that newsletter was he was the marketing department. And, you know, it was a great way to, while James and Charlie invested in stocks to stay focused on investing in stocks, visiting companies, going to America, meeting the managements, and just keeping up the investors up to date. And we always sort of said in those days, we said, you know, we'll send the newsletter out, but if investors want to see us, give us a call, we'll come and see you. Many of our clients are here in the UK just easy to access them. But many of them were quite happy with the newsletter. So it was really a focus, as I said, to produce a really attractive compound rate of return by investing in a diversified portfolio.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so he's very level headed to use a sort of Charlie Munger word. He's very rational. Yeah, he's just got a very, very good temperament. When things are going really well, you know, he's not strong on self-congratulation. But equally, when things are going badly, often the truth is it's not when the stock market is penalizing something. It's not quite as bad as it may seem when you look at the share price. And so I think he's got a good temperament. He's rational. He focuses on the fundamentals. He's a fundamental, you know, bottom-up stock picker. So I think those would be some of the things in terms of temperament that give him an advantage, perhaps, than versus, you know, some others.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find a technology fund, or shouldn't have all your money, American money in this fund. He was incredibly open and honest. And that stuck with me. So, yeah, no, it's been kind of a powerful force in my life, actually.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely. I mean, James taught me so much we could be here for hours just discussing all the things that I've learned from him. And one thing I will say is she's a very sort of humble, low-key guy. But in my opinion, and I've come across many great investors, one of the greatest investors I've ever come across who has a very, very low profile but extraordinarily successful. And a super guy, you know, in terms of kind of morals, I'd say AAA character who taught me early on that the good news can wait, but if you've got bad news, you must share that with the client. You must always be honest and open with the client and share, you know, if you made a change in the portfolio or something's not going right. I mean, it's so much so that in those newsletters in the early years, certainly he used to almost sort of negatively market the fund in the newsletters. We're not quite sure how well we're going to do. And so if you want a bit of technology, what's probably going to go.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a net of fees number. And the reason we can quote that, unlike maybe some other asset management firms, is, you know, we only have one fee. And whereas, you know, they have to quote it gross because they've got a lot of different fee structures for different clients. So it's part of that, just keeping it simple. And you can then focus on what you do best. And in our case, we think, you know, investing.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think keeping it simple just has a lot of advantages. And so if you have different fee structures for different clients, you know, you sort of forget, what did you give that client or what did you give that client? The next one comes along and you end up spending hours and hours negotiating on fees and your head starts spinning. As I say, we've never really focused on asset gathering hasn't been key to our business. If we can deliver a really good rate of compound performance, hopefully we can have a fee that's competitive enough that people will feel that they're getting value in terms of the return that we're able to deliver. So yeah, we've just got one fund, no separate accounts, one fee structure. We all think, well, you know, if our clients are paying that fee, why shouldn't we pay the same fee? And so when we quote in our newsletter or in our reports, the performance of the fund, 12% compound for 25%.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really attractive compound rate of return for our clients. And so we've never really seen any need to launch lots of different funds and flavors and growth and value and long and short and small cap and large cap or whatever, you know, different geographies or different approaches. It's not to say that that doesn't work for other businesses, but ultimately what we've been very, very focused on from the start is trying to deliver this great compound rate of return through a single fund. and just keeping it simple you know helps focus the mind i mean we're very aligned with our we think with our clients we've got one fund and uh we better we better do pretty well because uh you know we've got you know other funds to fall back on if that one doesn't do well we're all very aligned with our clients and you know it helps it helps focus the mind on um you know what not to do often as much as as much as what one should do”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. So keep it simple was an important philosophy of James. And I think a really probably underestimated mantra. Simplicity, if you look at Finlay Park today as a business, it's quite unusual because after 25 years of investing in American American companies, we just have one fund. We have one strategy, one investment philosophy. We have one team here based in London. And we have focused group of clients, many of whom have been with us since the start. That's quite unusual. Normally when fund management companies get a bit of success, I've certainly found is they say, well, what else can we do? What other strategies can we launch? And they diversify. They try and asset gather. They're in the asset gathering business. Our focus from the beginning, our purpose has always been to generate”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a pretty seminal one for him. At that stage, he, as a mentor to me, you know, he told me to go and read all these books and whether it was William O'Neill or Reminiscences of a stock operator or all the Berkshire Hathaway biographies have been written on Buffett or Munga. And so, you know, I voraciously consumed these things. And he put together a seven or eight-page investment philosophy, which was really around the learnings from the 87 stock market correction and how to apply a new philosophy, which I say at the heart of it was around.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, he had a rough experience in the late 80s, as I say, the 87 stock market crash. And I think sort of decided at that stage to read all the investment books he could and come up with a new philosophy, which was really more about managing downside risk. And so that by the time I joined F&C in the early 90s, he was already well on his way to building a new track record in US smaller companies using this philosophy. But certainly that experience had...”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Finley Park, but I'd gone off to do something slightly different in fund management. But we kept in touch. And he said, you know, four years into the business in 2002, he said, would you like to come and join? And I mentioned his importance as a mentor to me. And I think I always thought, you know, if I don't join, if I don't come, I might spend the rest of my life regretting that decision. And so I joined as a third partner and the fourth employee in the early 2000s. And James and Charlie had both independently developed a really good track record of investing in US smaller companies. And so I joined the team and off I went.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I worked with James Finley in the early 90s. That was my first job as a graduate trainee in a fund management company, foreign and colonial, and they specialized in investment trust. Frankly, I knew nothing about investing, but it was a great place to learn. And I was put on the American desk as a graduate. And James was making his way in US smaller companies. He had an investment trust and he had an open-ended fund. And frankly, he was sort of the first mentor I probably ever had in life. And he's probably been the most important mentor that I've ever had. And he just taught me so much in those early years about investing, about managing downside risk, about trying to produce a good compound rate of return, the importance of compounding, you know, the eighth wonder of the world. And so, you know, I knew James pretty well. I didn't, you know, I wasn't one of the founders.”
2023-11-12 · We Study Billionaires · RWH036: The Power Of Simplicity w/ Anthony Kingsley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT