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Himanshu Gulati

lines on the record: 49
first: 2021-11-11
most recent: 2021-11-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So it's perspective. My wife is a doctor who works on the front line. She's been a doctor here in New York working on the front line since COVID started. And when I think about a perspective, and again, it comes into kind of what we're doing, not just her, but any doctor, their compensation is a small fraction of what people in our industry make, where I could easily say I think their job is as important as ours. And because of that, I think I have a different perspective on how we go about investing, how we go about our process. And that, for me, is why I think we have such a protective attitude, why everything we look at, we look at as an opportunity as opposed to this is just a job. It is a privilege for us to work and to be partners with people like Corbin. And we know that. And Humble Pie is what keeps us going and what I think will make us hopefully better than our peers in the long run.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard work and humility. We came. My parents worked, I think it was like 70 hours, 80 hours a week. We didn't come to this country a lot. We didn't have a lot growing up. And they worked really hard in order for me to have the opportunity. So from that perspective, I know how important it is to work hard. And as I mentioned, you can probably put all together in terms of when somebody rides coattails. That's not working hard. And the humility factor. I really do think we're privileged. Everyone should realize that in this industry.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's position sizing, and we learned that it's very important when you size a position really to understand the downside and hedging. So it's correlated. And this is why I think Antara is what we talk about structuring and risk management is so critical. I think there was a lesson learned for me in terms of making sure you're always re-underwriting your thesis, understanding the downside, and sizing positions correctly. And that's why I think mentioned earlier, it's so important for us to not fall in love with our names, to re-ender our thesis, and understand if you get something wrong to cut risk and move on.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That didn't work out, unfortunately, but it was, I think it was the biggest, largest launch at the time in Europe's history. And he was the CIO of GLG. And first, he took me under his wing day one. I learned a ton from him from the different investment styles, whether it be quant, long short, credit, how he looked at the world. But I think most importantly, don't get above your skis. Don't get too excited. Don't get too upset when things go wrong. And he was very balanced. And that is something for me that I learned from him over my three years total in man. And those are lessons that I still look back to today.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, they were both actually at Mangrove. Many Roman was the CEO of Man when I joined. Currently he's the CEO of Pimpco. And he was just a great mentor from a professional perspective for many years post that I think when things were tough, you asked about conviction. He's a person who had conviction and he realized he's like, this is when you roll up your sleeves and you do even twice as much work. And he taught me a lot about that. We launched in a very difficult time at man group. And then he also, I think for me, he was instrumental when I was ready to and when I was out of man and I had other opportunities to go run distressed or event driven at large shops. It's like, I think it's time for you to be your own person and go run your own business. And he was actually very instrumental. The person was also man was a person named Pyrrh Henri Flamont. I believe he ran special situations at Goldman in Europe. And then he started a fund called the Doma Partner.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question. For me, what I really dislike is when people write coattails and they don't do the work or their own work, I think we see that in an industry a lot, an analyst of ours, I'll say X. I'm not worried about XYZ. I'm worried about what is your diligence, what edge do we have, and I don't want to know about other funds and other investors. I believe we're supposed to be as good, if not better than other funds. So I'm more focused on our process and not everybody else. So when somebody brings in all these extraneous factors about this person and that person, that is something that really does bother me.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentioned it earlier, it's entitlement. Again, my background is we came to this country with nothing, I went to public school, I went to a public college, a state university, was a walk-on on the tennis team and ended up being one of the best tennis players at that school. We're all lucky to have the roles we have. We're as competitive as anybody. We want to be the best in terms of performance and best for our partners and LPs, but not at the expense of a sense of entitlement. For me, that's really important”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have two young girls. One is four and a half and one's a little over two and a half. Every morning I get them and cook breakfast with them. And that's really important to me because in a world working in the hedge fund space, it's clearly very rigorous. It's stressful. This is my time with them and being engaging with them, they are very important to me. And at first, I never want to elect them. But it's also a time where we get to spend together and it's separate from everything else on the crazy day that's about to ensue. And it sets me in a good place as I start every day.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think of two things that are really important mind and body. So from the body perspective, as I mentioned, I played tennis. That's something I try to do on a regular basis. Tennis and working out regularly. I think it's really important to have that time where you're not working and you can just put your phone in the side and whether it's go for a run or lift weights, get on the tennis court. It really does help me a lot in my days. And then on mind. So as I mentioned to you, I'm very competitive. I like to play poker. I think there's a couple things to play. Some people use poker as a way to gamble. I look at it as a way to be strategic and to be able to read people to stay sharp. And it's very important because I think it is, there is obviously some similarities to the market and how you think about reading a management team and whatnot. So for me, that is something I love to do. And it's something I'm very passionate about. Both are things I'm very passionate about.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One doesn't always equal two, it might equal 11, and that's what we feel like we have. And we've seen that. We've had a lot of companies that have contacted us. We've passed on a lot of deals. We are going to focus on something in the sports media sector, ideally technology-based, but it could be something more akin to just pure sports and media. We're not going to be buying a sports team. But we feel confident we'll be able to get a good deal done. But one thing very important, we're not willing to just do a deal to do a deal, and we'd rather find the right deal and take a little bit more time if needed.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So we've been investing successfully in SPACs for the last three years. It's a space we know. We've done well in, even in a difficult year like this. We were going to raise our own spec. But my thought is if you're going to do something, how do you make it great? Antar is very good from the diligence perspective, the fundamental perspective. Alex brings a different angle. He's got social media. He's made companies more valuable because of his involvement. And he's got just a great amount of relationships and networks in both the sports and media areas of the world. We were introduced by a colleague of both of ours. We met one night and we realized how much we had in common. Alex came from a family where his mother was waiting tables. My mom worked as a cashier and I think we came from very humble beginnings and worked really hard. That was something that was needed for him and resonated for me. And that's one of the reasons I think we decided to partner together. We thought there's a saying he has one plus.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To 5% move in the markets. We're worried about that big move and that big tail risk. And in this case, people were worried about the casino shutting down. Stocks were down 70, 80, 90 percent. We did monetize the options in this trade and then went long. I think this is a really interesting example because of our bankruptcy experience, because of our understanding of legal know-how, we were able to restructure this without having to file for bankruptcy as the casino was shut and take a material equity stake as well. All in all, we ended up having the loan take it out at a large premium and the equity taken out at a large premium to what we paid.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think this is one looking back that we structured well for ourselves and for you guys. It was a first lien loan where you were secured by the IP of the name of a casino. Again, as you mentioned, you were earning a revenue stream off the top line as opposed to bottom line, which is really important because historically, if you had a revenue drop, the drop, you know what the drop is at the top line, the drop to the bottom line was going to be significantly in excess. So a 10% drop in revenues could have been a 30% drop in EBITDA. So we thought we were in a good position from that perspective regardless. Fortunately, it was a public company. So we did structure it with very out of the money puts on that company. And the thought process was the only way we would lose money on this, from our view, was if the casino shut down. Did we envision COVID happening at the time when we put this on? No, but we were trying to mitigate that tail risk. And we think about the world in tails. We're not as worried about a three.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a combination. Most of these companies would not have cut costs had they not needed to. It was obviously very difficult and something that hopefully we never have to live through again. But from a corporate perspective, it did make companies more efficient and better for the long run. So I do think this was a more of a survival. And if they hadn't done this, there's nothing they could have done. And then the other thing is a lot of these companies really benefited from the supply chain issues. So they have like a tailwind in earnings that's going to be long-lasting. It's almost kind of like the perfect storm for certain companies. And that's why we see some opportunity where I think the market's missing, at least this way of thinking about it. And we could see some real alpha generation next year through these.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“those situations where you think companies took advantage of COVID to make the right choice that was painful and they would have struggled to do in normal times as opposed to just responding strictly to the revenue drops.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unbelievably next year, and you're investing in a where a lot of, I think where perfections priced in or a lot of good news is priced in for certain names, this is an area where we think that there's actually a lot to do.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love to talk about kind of more on the thematic and what we're seeing in the market. I think everybody talks about the reopening trade as it's going to work. It's going to continue to work as hopefully we're seeing the other side of the Delta variant and we're seeing robust demand from the consumer side. And hopefully some of the supply constraints will start to subside in Q1 and then into next year. Not all of them. Some of them are going to be lasting for a long period of time. What we've been focused on, when you look at a lot of companies that are benefiting from the reopening and COVID recovery, it's a lot of things in hospitality, entertainment. Those companies generally were able to reduce their cost structures materially during COVID and because they had to in order to survive. Will some of those costs come back sure, but a lot of them are gone forever? So these companies have significantly higher earnings power because their margins are going to be better. And in reality, right now that supply demand constraint where demand's high, supply is low, so they can actually”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From the market and what happens. Over the long run, for me, this is one of the greatest educations you can have to be able to invest in the markets on a daily basis. That is very critical to us that you have that sense of humility and wanting to work hard and lack of entitlement.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, a lot. I think over the years, you're not going to always get it right. And I think you should be able to understand. Look at it as an investment to some degree. You want to be able to groom the person, you want them to strive. But you also need to understand if it's not working, that it is an investment for you, your firm, and you need to cut loose. I think the biggest lesson learned is not to just keep somebody because you should keep them. It's not good for them either. They can do something better if it's not the right environment or the right fit. Important to move on. In terms of the type of person, really important because my background, I think I come from a humble beginning, is somebody who doesn't have a sense of entitlement. We're in an industry where I think it's one of the most competitive industries, some of the smartest people in the world. When you have that sense of entitlement, that is a material negative to us because you're not as hungry as the next person. This is my humble opinion. I don't think anybody smarter than the market. I think every day we...”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when you take that all into consideration, that gets you to somewhere in that 35 to 40. And then the junior analyst may end up having a little more than five. It just depends on where we are. So it could be five to seven. But it's very important not to have one or two people on the team having responsibility for all the investments because they'll never be able to know the detail and be able to follow it as closely as they should.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so on the long side, we're going to have somewhere in the 30 to 35 names outside of maybe a distressed cycle where it becomes a little more concentrated. And on the short side, it's about 10 names. So let's just call it 40 names total. You don't want to have one person looking at too many names because then they won't give the time and attention needed for each one. And I have to be able to manage all of them to a full degree because I have to own all those investments. So from that perspective, the way we're set up is we have three very senior individuals, each of them has over 15 years of buy side experience. And then we have four investment analysts. And those guys are each kind of a pole. Each investment analyst has about four to five names that I'd say solely theirs, which flow into each of the individual three senior investment professionals. And then the investment professionals on top of the teams are managing, the junior teams managing, also have somewhere between three to five names as well.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My thought process is if we have 35 names and each is, let's say, somewhere between two and a half and four percent, you're able to manage those and understand those and actually, in theory, have edge versus having 100 1% positions. At that point, you're more of a proxy to whatever those underlying positions are in, whether it be an S&P, whether it be Hyield, depending on the asset class. And that's fine, but that's not what we are looking to do. That's not the type of return profile that we're aiming to strive for.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a fair amount of laziness in the industry and using number of positions as a proxy for risk and concentration just because it's easier when really it needs to be about sort of the sizing of those positions and the upside downside potential in them.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think this is another lesson learned over the years. Having a lot of small 25, 50, and 1% positions is usually a way to not generate returns and also you end up losing. I feel like it's death by a million paper cuts. And that's what happens, especially on the losses. What we prefer to do is have more three to five percent type investments in positions where we do have high conviction. And then we can structure around the downside in those.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Co ran an event equity business historically. I've been doing equities for now 10 years. And it's a big part of what we do. The way we think about it is you really want to actually look at everything holistically as opposed to just a point in time, which is very important as well.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we do everything capped. So, as an example, this is not just because of what's happened in the retail markets and ME and whatnot this year. Since our inception example, if we have a short stock position, we buy calls against it because we don't want to be short squeezed out. If we are doing something, the options market, everything is always capped so we can make sure we understand what our downside is. To that point, we may get something wrong, but we know exactly how much we can lose as opposed to being an endless bottomless pit if you get it wrong. And that's how we, even from structuring on an equity position, we'll buy puts against that name because inevitably we are going to get stuff wrong. But being able to know that I'm capped out at a certain loss is really important. And we look at it from a whole portfolio perspective. And I also think the one thing is people like to do things that they're comfortable with. And a lot of credit investors invest in equity when there's nothing to do in equity. My background is credit background.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, do we, why don't we look at the Val? Why don't we look at the options? Look at the options markets. Let's look at other parts of the cap structure. So we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can, and this gets back to the sizing point, we don't want to just put a trade on to have a 1, 2% position. We'd rather size it to have a more meaningful impact, but you need to structure downside protection and have that hopefully asymmetric upside as well. So that's a big part of what we do. And I think a differentiating factor.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it actually comes from let's talk a little bit about the background and how you get to that point. I feel like I almost had two careers prior to launching Antara. I worked at Perry, which was very fundamental in training. And then I worked at Man Group where it was a lot more rigorous in terms of risk management and structuring. And that's where I think when you combine the two of those, it can be very powerful in terms of generating returns and alpha. So for me, structuring is one of the most important things about what we do at Antarct. And the reason is everybody can look at the same information. Everybody can look at the same trade. It could be a spin. It could be a takeout. But what we've done very well is take the same information about an investment and really generate outsized returns and mitigate downside. So the way we think about it is when you look at a company, the first thing most people do is, for example, is a spin on a stock. You go long one and short the other. That's it. We take it to the next step and we say,”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's an interesting segue to sort of how we got to know each other as a firm, which I think is interesting and worth talking about a little bit. The big driver of our conviction and investing with you was following individual trades with you. It wasn't just that the trade was right. One of the things I saw there was that trade construction was a really important part of what you do. You want to talk about how you think about structuring those?”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really interesting. I have a little anecdote on that historically, I'd been told by senior people in the industry, you need to be right 90% of the time. And to me, when you're right 90% of the time, you're probably not taking the right risk because your very correlator tied to the market, unless that's what you're looking to do. Our view is you need to be right a little more than 50%. I think it's in the 65 to 70% range, and you size the positions that you have the highest conviction in because they will outweigh the ones that are wrong. And that's how we look at it. We know we're not going to be right all the time. But that gets into if you're wrong, you need to be able to cut. And that's critical, whatever the size position is. You got to be able to move on and get to the next investment. But I'm a true believer that it's all about position sizing and getting that correct. And that's how you generate alpha.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that my father taught me is that even some of the best investors in the world might only be right fifty one, fifty two percent of the time. So I'm certainly sympathetic to that thought. How do you also think about contribution sizing of kind of winners and losers? What do you look for for upside and downside?”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's actually you learn from your mistakes, and I think that's the most important thing. I think early on in my career, we didn't do that. And there were times where we held on to things. I also think at previous employers, I saw that when I was junior, when senior people continued to make that mistake. And it's the, you re-underwrite your thesis. You figure out another reason why it works. There's always some excuse to effectively, I don't think people like to own up till they made a mistake or they got it wrong because you can delay the inevitable and it gets kind of lost in the shuffle. I don't look at the world that way. We have a belief that we can get things wrong, but then on an overall basis we'll be right and we can generate strong risk-adjusted returns for the long run. But the key is to making sure you understand when you're wrong and cut and move on. And that's been instilled in my team as well.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's all about process. We've built a process over time that has been tested in upmarkets, down markets. And it's really, I think you're exactly right. You don't want to lose conviction just because things are moving and trading at certain prices. And that really comes down to being tested over time and battle tested. And for us, that's the most important thing. And from the other side of it, I think that being able to cut risk and move on is one of those traits that's often talked about, but lacking in a lot of our industry. And that's something that's been instilled in me. And you get something wrong, you move on. When you get something right and it's at a price, you don't hold on. You move on. And that's something that's very different about Antara and what we're doing than some of the others out there.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a protective mindset for investors. And for me, I feel gratitude for having the opportunity today. So everything we do from here is for our partners. And that's very important to me.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We really, really don't want to be like our peers. That's the key. We want to be different both from a return stream in terms of names, in terms of sourcing. And I think the most important terms is in terms of how we structure and risk management our portfolio. We just came up on our three-year anniversary, and fortunately so far we've been able to do that about philosophy and strategy. I take a very different approach than I see in a lot of other managers and the markets and whatnot. Humility, hard work, and lack of complacency are the first principles and most important principles in my investment philosophy. Having come from, I'd say, nothing effectively and being in a great position that I am today, I do feel privileged to have this opportunity to be able to invest and invest on behalf of institutions, endowments, foundations. And that, for me, is very different where I can look at it having had nothing and realize how important it is to preserve capital, how important it is.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different than Perry. It was a lot more focused on risk management. And I think when you think about working at a place that's more fundamental, like Perry, and then a place that's more akin to a platform, you really do learn different skill sets that I think can be long-lasting. Ones that I think are really important in the market, especially if you're going to do both credit and equities from an investment perspective. And that, yeah, my time at Mann was great. We built a strong track.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started at Perry in April of 2006 as an analyst. I was there for nine years. I left as one of the managing partners. I was responsible for credit and a venture-driven equities at the firm. I think Perry was one of the best firms from a fundamental perspective. I learned a ton, very differential to the founder and the co-founder there. And they gave me an opportunity. And fortunately, I was able to make the best of it. There invested across the cap structure, both credit and equities, mostly focus on corporate credit, distress credit, and event-driven credit. I was there for nine years, and then I decided the one thing Perry was a team-based approach. And I do think it's important to run risk on your own, be the sole trigger puller or the portfolio manager. It's very different than running capital within a large organization from my perspective. I was asked to run distress in special situations for man group under the GLG brand. And that, for me, was a great experience. I think the very”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My uncle moved to this country to study medicine. And one of the reasons he moved here, he is getting a great education in India, was to help our whole family move here. He sponsored every single person in our family to get to this country, and we wouldn't be here without him. And that was something he had taught me, was it's really important to understand your role and be grateful for what you have and be able to give to others in that way. And that's something that's lasted with me kind of my whole life. And it's one of the reasons that I'm here in this country today.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty much. That's exactly right. One of the thing that was important for me growing up, in addition to running my own business in the baseball card world or sports card world, I played tennis. And tennis was one, I think great from time management, but also from a competitive perspective. I played in high school. I played in college. We were nationally ranked. And that really, for me, is important as part of what we do in our industry. We want to be the best and having that competitive edge is important. between school, tennis, and work, you really learn time management. And that was something that was critical for me for my career.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And over the years, I was actually able to earn enough money to pay for college with this over about a three and a half year span. And it's where I actually learned and really knew that I wanted to be an investor day one.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Showcases and displays and make money on it. And I was like, huh, why can't I do that? And so I started doing that. I took all my cards, which was about $500 worth of total inventory, went to a card show, actually sold about 10% of my inventory, so $50, had about a 40% gross margin on it. So made $20. The problem was it cost me $50 to get the table plus the food and transportation of getting there. So I lost like $40 on it at an early age. I was like, this sucks. So I realized that there was something I needed to change. And then I realized a couple things that I was missing. One was scale. One was I didn't actually know which cards people wanted, who the best, in theory, investments would have been. So what I started to do at an early age was I studied each sport, figured out the players that I thought would do well based on an example in baseball who would hit the most home runs, most RBIs who had the best ERA. And so that was akin to picking stocks and then picking sports was akin to picking in.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, Craig. Let me give you a little bit about myself and my background. So I'm actually immigrant born. We came to this country when I was three and a half years old. When we moved here, we had less than $86 to our day, moved to the country and lived in a 400 square foot apartment. My parents, my sister and I. And that was the beginnings of who I was as a person. It actually is where the Antar started. My dad said to me, we're going to move from India to the US. We're going to give you an opportunity. From here on in, create your own opportunity. Antara actually means opportunity in Sanskrit. And going a little bit further into my younger life, I started investing in a different way pretty early on, as most kids did. I collected baseball cards. But I did a very differently. So I'll give you a little bit of an anecdote of how it all started. I took my allowance money, any money that I made doing odds and end jobs and bought cards. And I used to go to these baseball card shows and saw these older men called dealers set up.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything that we do has a pretty strong look through to underlying position sizing. So we are willing to take 100 basis point look through security level risk. We certainly routinely want to carry 40 or 50 basis point look through single security risk. In this case, there's also sort of a conviction element which drives our sizing and is a little bit offset by sort of where people are in the life cycle and what fund level looks like. So this is sized as a medium sized position for us. Not as big as someone who runs a somewhat more diversified portfolio or someone who is much more orthogonal to the rest of our portfolio, but certainly sized reflecting significant investment conviction for us.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“are very often bad months for our overall portfolio, and almost all of the bad months for our overall portfolio are bad months for that sort of strategy. So we don't own a ton of it as a result of that. And that, in a sense, made it easier for us to find a space here, but it was certainly conviction driven. So it's a strategy that we think of as having a decent amount of hedge fund beta, some downside beta, and we certainly want someone who owns a differentiated portfolio to the extent that's possible, either names or trade construction. This is true across a lot of what we do. We want someone who swings pretty hard on their best ideas.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So it's a strategy that we actually regard broadly with some skepticism. I remember when I started in this business about twenty years ago, the idea of event driven and special situation equity and credit was very appealing, right? You see, okay, the regular way investors and the mutual funds don't want to be involved as these companies undergo transitions. And I would say the real life observed experience for a lot of these strategies has unfortunately been pretty poor nonetheless. And I think that's because you end up in a lot of hedge fund hotels. It's a relatively small number of positions with quite high hedge fund ownership and overlap, and that produces a lot of downside air pockets. So when you look at the strategy, the bad months for the strategy”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can think of some of them. There are so many years ago. It's a little hard to say. We always laugh about that. Don't tell us what you did in 2015. Like that's kind of ancient history, right? But I do remember a squeeze out in a publicly traded casino name where the person on the other side was someone that we regard as a pretty fearsome investor. Not something that you take lightly being on the other side of. And nonetheless, the thesis played out about on the timeline and about along the path that Himanchu had outlined. And that was pretty powerful to see it unfold live time.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was there an example of one of these co-investments that you said you saw he did great work, you saw his thesis played out as he espoused that it would. What does that actually look like? Maybe a specific example or just some ideas of when someone is really good within an idea, you see so many different managers, what does someone who rises to the top look like?”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that great work at the individual security level is arguably a harder thing for us to find, a more differentiated skill set. And then we got a chance to observe sizing and hedging and trade construction as well. So those things together, I would say, make up 80 or 90 percent of what we need. To be honest, I think it's really hard to ex ante judge portfolio management and risk management skills with any great degree of confidence. But we had a lot of the important inputs and we felt like that combined with experience and philosophy left us pretty comfortable with that portfolio construction and portfolio management question.”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So sometimes when you understand an idea and do a deep dive on idea, that's a little bit of a different skill set from someone being a great portfolio manager. So how'd you go about underwriting the process of Himantu as a portfolio manager already coming with a bias that he does good work on individual ideas?”
2021-11-11 · Capital Allocators · Himanshu Gulati – Antara Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.19) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source