Enterprise Tier Offering

Our Enterprise Tier offers a new format of investment research built upon our internal primary research process.

Put simply, we source and interview executives to understand the value chain and durability of the companies we cover. From our own scuttlebutt and internal research, we curate the insights and publish our learnings in a qualitative research report for long-term fundamental investors.

Why we think it's unique

We believe curation and signal matter more than ever. The increased short-term focus and embedded bias of the sell-side combined with the explosion of executive interview transcripts leaves a gap for quality, curated qualitative research from a trusted source.

IP exists to fill this gap: we have over 2,600+ hours of experience conducting primary research interviews and the internal capabilities to source executives from any company globally.

Unlike other research shops, we will never cross-sell or earn commissions from broking or trading services. We will not receive any fee from any company we cover. We're focused on producing the best qualitative research globally on great businesses for long-term investors.

Ultimately, it's our mission to help investors and ourselves understand and build conviction to invest in the best companies globally.

Team

Each piece of research is led by Co Founder William Barnes and supported by our internal team of analysts. We are a team of generalists.

We're not experts in any one sector, but we do have the collective expertise of all executives in our network to learn from. Our team is structured and focused on utilizing our network to gather and share insights on quality companies globally.

Our approach to coverage

We have a small rolling list of large and mid-cap businesses (below) that we choose from. Exactly what and when we cover a company depends on the quality of executives available and the insight gathered from our research. We constantly remove and add companies to each list as our research progresses.

Our focus is on quality, not volume of output. We cater to the highest denominator: each piece of research aims to offer incremental insight to existing long-term shareholders of every business we cover.

Content Formats

For each company, we source multiple executives to interview privately or publicly and curate insights to produce a research in three format types:

IP Research Analysis

Reports built upon internal primary research conducted privately with executives within our network. We aim to focus on 1-2 specific questions that drive the thesis of a large cap, quality company. All our work is built from internal scuttlebutt research.

Value Chain Analysis

Aim to help investors understand the mechanics of value chains in industries where structurally advantaged businesses compete. We explore how units flow from suppliers to customers, the bargaining power across value chains, and the durability of structural advantages of large cap, quality companies.

Midcap Company Profiles

Help investors get up to speed on the core drivers of a company as effectively as possible. Profiles focus on global quality companies less than <$10bn in market value and less covered by other research institutions.

Upcoming Coverage

Upcoming Large Cap Coverage

Transdigm & Aerospace Aftermarket Value Chain
Danaher Business System: a case study on how DHR improve assets post-acquisition
Markel vs early Berkshire: decoupling underwriting, public and private investment returns
Costco: UK & European Market Case Study
Constellation Software: post-acquisition improvements on large acquisitions like Altera
Google Display Network & The Trade Desk: Open-internet Value Chain Analysis
Progressive vs GEICO: history of Snapshot and impact on pricing risk
HEICO & PMA Value Chain Analysis
Spotify: Audio Ad Economics
Brown & Brown & Insurance Broker Value Chain
Spirax Sarco: Steam to Electric Transition and Risk
Amazon Robotics: long-run potential labour cost savings
Fastenal
Eurofins Scientific
Roper
POOL Corp
Sherwin-Williams
Watsco
Microsoft
Floor & Decor
Netflix
LVMH, Hermes, Brunello Cucinelli
Ametek
Sartorius Stedim Biotech
Copart
Ashtead vs United Rentals

Midcap Profiles

Bergman & Beving
Diploma PLC: Management Succession, new M&A strategy and economics
Dino Polska
Surgical Science
Mainfreight
ASOS Operational Plan
Fever Tree
Admiral Insurance
Howden Joinery
Keyword Studios
Basic Fit
Kinsale Capital Group
Wayfair
Verra Mobility
Lumine
Interpump
Terravest
Essentra PLC
Wingstop
CarMax, Carvana, legacy dealers

Subscription Tiers

We have two subscription offerings:

Core Subscription: access to our interview library and historical backlog of analysis on quality companies. $400 per year.
Enterprise Subscription: access to the full interview library + all Enterprise research content formats.

Primary research will always be at the heart of our business and investment process. Over the next 3 years, we plan to ~4x the number of interviews published annually on our platform.

Access to the Interview Library will remain affordable and is currently available via our Core Subscription Tier at $400 per year. All Core Subscribers will maintain access to the backlog of our research analysis content and all future interviews published. Periodically, we will also release IP Research pieces on the Core Tier.

All existing Core and Enterprise subscribers need to upgrade to access the New Enterprise Tier. Please contact us if you're interested to discuss access.

FAQs

Why should we pay extra for Enterprise Research?

An answer is best explained using an example: our recently published Competitive Analysis on Constellation Software. We privately interviewed 10+ executives from private competitors of CSU.TO to understand two things:

Private VMS acquirers' strategy: what they are buying, multiples, sectors, deal structure, etc
How this may impact CSU's ROIIC and FCF deployment runway

These interviews were conducted privately by our team and weren't published in our library. Insights from the interviews and our own research were published in a research report for Enterprise Subscribers.

We believe such research not only helps investors build an understanding and conviction on CSU.TO, but it saves significant time and research cost. If a client were to conduct such research internally, it would cost ~$7.5k - 15k in primary research expense (15 executive interviews at ~$500 or $1000 depending if it's published or private) and 50+ hours of analyst time.

This is the time and cost for just one report. We aim to publish 10-20 publish multiple such pieces throughout the year.

What is your process for producing Enterprise Research?

All Enterprise Research is built upon our primary research process that we've refined over the last 8 years and 2,500+ executive interviews.

For each company in our coverage, we have 1-2 specific questions we think are important to the long-term investment case. Such questions don't have obvious answers or much information in the public domain. We aim to use executive knowledge in our network to help us handicap potential answers to such questions.

For example, we're working on the following questions:

Costco's European Opportunity: we're interviewing Country Managers for each EMEA country to understand COST's potential growth opportunity
TransDigm: How much of post-acquisition EBITDA improvement is from price vs operational improvement?

We will source and interview executives from our network to explore both questions. Depending on the executive, some interviews are published in our interview library and some will be privately conducted by us internally. On average, we estimate ~70% will be private (not published to our library) and 30% will be published to all core and enterprise subscribers.

How many pieces of research do you produce per year?

We are currently publishing 2-3 pieces per month. The cadence of publication may be somewhat irregular on a month to month basis as our focus is on publishing quality over quantity.

How do you choose companies to cover?

We have a small internal coverage list of companies we're interested in across large and midcaps. We constantly add and remove companies from our coverage list throughout our research process.

What we cover and when we cover certain companies depends on the availability of executives and the quality of insights we collect from our scuttlebutt.

Who writes the final research report?

All final research reports are written and approved by Co-Founder, Will Barnes. Our team of analysts also conduct executive interviews to support the research process.