Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Wells Capital PMV equity team visited the AIM program on November 18th

Krause, D’Souza and Gunderson

Students in the AIM program were treated to a presentation by veteran money managers Kurt Gunderson and Trevor D’Souza.

Mr. Gunderson is an Associate Portfolio Manager of the Wells Capital PMV team. He came to Wells Capital Management from Strong Capital Management where he was an analyst. Kurt joined Strong in 2001 as director of information technology in retirement plan services. Prior to this, he was a program manager with Ameritech. He holds a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He also holds a master’s degree in business administration–finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Trevor D’Souza, a senior portfolio specialist for the PMV Equity team at Wells Capital Management, also attended Mr. Gunderson’s presentation. He joined WellsCap in 2014 from Great Lakes Ventures, where he served as managing director. He was responsible for strategic advisory, consulting, and transaction services to high growth technology companies as well as portfolio management for investors in private companies. Earlier in his career, he served as managing director and co-founder of Mason Wells Venture Capital Funds.

The PMV Equity team has used the same time-tested decision-making process for more than 20 years. The team believes that a company is just a stream of future cash flows—a company's worth is determined by its competitive position and the ability of its management to fully exploit the business model, resulting in a sustainable cash-flow stream. This is the company's private market valuation (PMV) philosophy:
Kurt Gunderson
  • It is important to identify trends as potential headwinds or tailwinds to individual company performance. Specifically, we examine secular, cyclical, and/or internal trends.
  • Due to the inherent efficiency of the markets, value and growth are not viewed as opposing strategies but rather are used in combination to uncover relative mispricing opportunities. Performance is further enhanced by effectively leveraging market emotion.
  • An inherent lack of fully disclosed information dictates that public market securities typically trade in a range between 50% and 80% of their PMV—this discount exists due to the lack of transparency in the public markets.

Mr. Gunderson discussed the philosophy, strategy, and process behind their fund and provided valuable valuation and analysis insights – and he and Trevor engaged the AIM students in investment-related discussions during and after class.