Company updates in the last few weeks continue to de-risk the Fund’s growth profile at the same time as our broader risk models suggest the market risk-reward remains skewed higher. In summary, we believe that new capital allocations to the Fund will be well rewarded.    

Apart from ACE, we saw the broad S&P/TSX Composite (“TSX”) continue its resource-driven surge in April.  As we’ve noted in the past, we’ll never hold anything near an index weight to energy or materials in our portfolio.  Call us crazy, but we’d rather own operating companies with tangible assets, reasonably predictable cash flows and business plans that are more detailed than “borrow, drill, pump, repeat.”  Besides, through the combination of ETF holdings and strategies offered by mega-cap investment firms, most Canadian investors already have more than enough resource exposure. 
 

We thought that FirstService Corp’s (FSV-T, +5.7% gain) first quarter report was excellent and we were really impressed in particular with the quality and tone of management’s commentary and outlook.  Many readers may recall this name as one we wrote about extensively last year during the spinoff of its Colliers (CIG-T) commercial real estate subsidiary.  While we exited our position in Colliers earlier this year we have actually been adding to our position in FirstService.  Between their property management division (recurring revenue, growth market) and their portfolio of real estate services brands (California Closets, Paul Davis Restoration, CertaPro Painters) FirstService can pursue a combination of organic and acquisitive growth across several verticals.  Some commentary from the call that stood out for us touched on their recent acquisition of Century Fire Protection, an end-to-end fire protection solutions provider for commercial, multi-family, education and healthcare.  We view this as the perfect type of complementary business platform that FirstService can build upon to deliver growth in coming years.

Diverging from FirstService was Winpak (WPK-T, -13.5%) which traded heavy (a euphemism for “lost money”) even though we were very encouraged by their earnings report.  We don’t expect many Canadians to be familiar with the name Winpak although you likely use their products every day.  Based in Winnipeg they produce rigid and flexible packaging for food, healthcare and industrial uses.  Despite what you might think about the sleepy business of food packaging Winpak has delivered one of the most impressive track records of shareholder value creation in Canada over the last 30 years (see total return stock performance chart below).  Their focus on smart capital allocation programs that support growth at a sustainable rate has enabled Winpak to gradually evolve into a preferred supplier for some of the largest food manufacturers in the world such as Hormel and Tyson Foods.  When shares fell subsequent to the earnings report we took the opportunity to increase our position size.  We were not alone as recent insider filings show that CFO Ken Kuchma was also “on the bid” and increased his position by over 7% last month.  Winpak generates significant cash flow and while they pay sizeable special dividends from time to time, they prefer to reinvest capital in the business – something we are very supportive of given their track record.  To this point, Winpak spent $25 million last quarter to expand their facilities on aggregate by over 435,000 square feet, a strong sign that growth will continue.
 

We consider both FirstService and Winpak to be world class Canadian success stories that have generated compound shareholder returns in excess of 15% per annum for the past 20 years.  Like a good value investor we will trim our positions of these companies if their stock prices trade materially above reasonable valuation multiples, but we are also going to be opportunistic acquirers of shares should we find them to trade at deep discounts to our estimates of intrinsic value.

Clearly we continue to be very comfortable with our “bottom up” positioning in the portfolio as the current valuation and other fundamental metrics are very attractive for the basket of wide moat businesses we own.  From a top down perspective, we are encouraged by trends in credit, volatility and equities generally.  Importantly, we see that certain key market stressors over the past year – the US Dollar, Chinese Yuan, global financial system and oil – have relaxed.  So long as these threats remain cooperative and global financial conditions don’t tighten unexpectedly our positioning bias will approximate full investment.   

We encourage potential and existing investors to reach out to learn more about how Aventine can assist with your broader capital allocation and risk management objectives.  Based on the preceding letter, it probably goes without saying that it is a particularly attractive time to add to your ACE Fund investment based on the current setup for the TSX and our specific holdings.  As partners, we continue to add new capital of our own to the ACE Fund on a monthly basis.