Our Philosophy and Process
At the heart of Mazama's investment philosophy is the belief that people are the most important factor in determining a company's success. We watch key personnel changes and employee ownership and often interview new and former employees to give us an edge in evaluating a company. Understanding people is a critical part of our research process.
Our fundamental, bottom-up approach to security selection includes detailed analysis of company financials, ongoing discussion with company executives and key employees, and timely visits to evaluate company operations first hand. We gather information from vendors, suppliers and competitors to properly determine a company's competency and ranking within its industry. We evaluate management and key employees, review the company's business plan, prepare estimates of future results, conduct financial trend analysis and evaluate the company's ability to exceed Wall Street's expectations.
Our Price Performance Model helps us track, analyze and rank outstanding growth companies with the following characteristics:
- Attracting and retaining talented, dedicated and passionate employees, which leads to low employee turnover
- Strong management team
- Recognizable and 'brandable' products or services
- Products positioned to increase market share today and into the future
- Expanding addressable market for products or services
- Positioned to grow regardless of the economic environments
- Positioned to take advantage of growth in emerging economies
- Significant insider ownership
We believe that if you can buy these quality, timely companies at a good valuation relative to their expected ROE and EPS growth rate, you have enhanced your opportunity for attractive gains and minimized your risk of downside price movements. We call this "The Winning Strategy".