2017 - Letter to Clients

2017 has been a good year for Indian long term investors. The Nifty started the year at 8179 and ended it at 10,531, recording an impressive annual gain of 28.8% in the process. Equity remained the preferred asset class for investors this year, partly due to the continuing subdued mood in the real estate and bullion markets. 2017 has also been an impressive year for me and for all our Clients at Attainix Consulting. The average annual return of client portfolios under our advice clocked in at 53.6% this year. This is almost twice as much as the benchmark itself and is admirable by any yardstick. More importantly, all our client advised portfolios beat the benchmark Nifty by a significant margin. This is a matter of immense satisfaction for me, because it implies that our stock picking methodology generated healthy alpha (excess return above and beyond the benchmark) for the benefit of all our Clients, justifying our advisory fees! Further, it endorses our investment thesis that businesses with high degree of knowledge assets will always outperform the competition and continue to find favor with investors. The fact that we are the first and only firm that has quantified this investment thesis into programming logic that enables us to pick stocks free of human bias, only gives us an added edge!.

Which begs the question - what is the basis for our investment thesis anyway? Why do we believe in businesses with high Knowledge assets? And what are Knowledge assets? Why do businesses with high degree of Knowledge assets

have a competitive advantage in the marketplace? We will have to go back in time to answer these questions. Take a look at the graphic alongside. It shows that for the longest time in our history and until the turn of the last century agriculture was the main source of income for a majority of the population. Scale was achieved during this era simply by expanding into additional land. But land is a limited commodity and businesses had to find a way to get more from the land under their control. The invention of the steam engine and electricity enabled this need, ushering in the Industrial era. This era led to the creation of scale enabling businesses that achieved scale simply by replacing human and animal labor with machines. In this era the focus shifted from the production of agricultural produce to industrial products. This era lasted for the next 150 years or so which is when the Information era kicked in, with the invention of the computer. Just as machines in the Industrial era fastened the production of goods, computers in the Information era hastened the processing of Information. Thus in this era the focus shifted from the production of industrial goods to the processing of Information. Those businesses that could process Information quickly, efficiently and continuously were able to convert this information into Knowledge. And Knowledge is Power. This Knowledge gave such businesses a leg up over their rivals. It also gave them pricing power and enhanced their profitability beyond bounds. But it also attracted competitors who tried to replicate this process. Businesses that are able to encapsulate and institutionalize their information processing and knowledge generation process and shield it from their competitors have effectively developed an asset, which we classify as a Knowledge asset. Knowledge assets are intangible in nature – they are formed from a fluid combination of human knowledge and skills, business processes, databases, brands and supplier/customer relationships. Such is their beauty that Knowledge assets are hard to develop, maintain and replicate, but their impact is eminently visible and measurable! 

Having understood the nature of Knowledge assets, the only question left now is how do we discover such assets? That is where our icTracker software comes in – it calculates and reports the Knowledge assets (a.k.a. Intellectual Capital) of leading Indian and US businesses continuously. It provides us the basis for our simple three step stock picking process which, although described on our website, is worth repeating here.

STEP 1 – EVA check: We start by first checking whether the business is generating more money than its cost of capital. This is done by calculating the EVA (Economic Value Added) of the business. Ideally, we want to select businesses that have a positive EVA. The rationale for this check is that if the business is not able to generate at the least even its cost of capital, then it is actually eroding shareholder value. Alternately, if the business is generating more than its cost of capital, it will be in a position to fund its future expansion from internal resources, which will further decrease its cost of capital. Note that, this check will eliminate startup and fledgling businesses by design. It does not mean that such businesses are not good investments. It only means that these businesses have to prove their business model before they can be considered worthy of investing for retail investors.

STEP 2 – Knowledge assets check: This is the asset quality test. Here, we check whether the business is generating profits from traditional assets (such as land, building, machinery, cash) or from Knowledge assets. We look for businesses that have at least 50% of their total assets in the form of Knowledge assets. The rationale for this check is our belief that businesses that are generating profits from traditional assets will come under competitive pressure sooner or later, simply because such assets are not defensible. Anyone with sufficient cash can buy land and machinery. Knowledge assets on the other hand take years to build and develop and once in place, they provide sustainable competitive advantage to the business. In other words, such businesses develop a moat, which is difficult to surmount.

STEP 3 – Affordability check: In the above two steps, we have shortlisted businesses that are generating value through the use of Knowledge assets. As investors, these are highly desirable businesses because in all probability they will continue to generate sustainable profits for years to come. All that remains to do now is to find whether the stock underlying the business is affordable. For that we compare the market value of the stock to the intrinsic value of the business. Those stocks that have a low ratio of market value to intrinsic value are the ones that have not yet been recognized by the stock markets and hence worthy of our attention as investors.

This simple three step stock pricking process has not only proved its mettle during our back-testing but also provided above-benchmark returns to real Clients. Our icAdvisor service uses this exact stock picking process. In addition, when designing Client portfolios using the icAdvisor service we strive to reduce risk for our Clients by the following three actions: 

• Taking risk profile of the Client into consideration. This ensures that the stocks that we recommend match the risk taking ability of our Client. For instance, a Client who has low risk appetite and interested primarily in capital preservation will benefit from investing in established mature businesses that have a high dividend yield than from investing in emerging smaller sized businesses, which are considerably riskier.
• Selecting stocks from different sectors. This ensures that we do not put all our eggs in one basket. Rather, we divest the portfolio into multiple sectors, picking no more than one or two stocks from each sector. Sectoral impact on the portfolio, if any, is thus limited to the specific stock.
• Striving to build a perfectly diversified portfolio. All our Client portfolios are designed at the efficient frontier – it means that the quantum of each stock in the portfolio is such that it has minimum correlation with any other stock in the portfolio. This gives each stock the chance to perform independently of each other in the portfolio.

Despite all the above steps, sometimes one or two stocks in the portfolio fail to perform due to the vagaries of the market. This is the reason why we provide a free rebalance option in our icAdvisor service. Many of our Clients opted for the free rebalance this year and saw the benefit of doing so. Others chose to skip it because of satisfactory performance of their portfolios. Remember, even though the rebalance is free from our side, there is still a cost that you have to incur in terms of brokerage fees, transaction fees and government taxes.

In passing, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for putting your faith in our investment thesis and in our icAdvisor service for generating above average returns for your hard earned money. Your continued trust makes us stay committed to the vision encapsulated in our tagline – ‘Growth through Knowledge’. I believe that we can grow only when you see value in our service and growth in your own portfolios. I am available to address client queries at all times and am approachable via email or whatsapp. I am also open to feedback and suggestions and welcome you to provide the same. I also hope that if you have benefitted from our service, you will spread the word to your own friends, family and colleagues and have them share the benefit as well. 

Finally, let me wish you and your family a very happy and prosperous Happy New Year and hope that the relationship that we have built this year will continue to grow for many years to come!

Abhijit Talukdar
Founder, Attainix Consulting
SEBI Registered Investment Adviser