Investment Advisor
David Adler
Adler Asset Management, LLC
David Adler worked as an Investment Banker specializing in advising on merger & acquisition transactions. He spent approximately eighteen years at J.P. Morgan where he was a Managing Director in the Mergers & Acquisitions Department, and subsequently spent six years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was a Managing Director in the Financial Institutions Investment Banking Department.
Areas of Expertise:
- Assessment of management teams and business plans
- Valuation of companies and their securities
- Financial analysis of companies and capital structures
His investment banking advisory experience informs his approach as a portfolio manager.
Fund Principles
Investment Philosophy
The Adler Value Fund (the “Fund”) seeks to achieve long-term growth of capital. Adler Asset Management, LLC (the “Adviser”) serves as the investment adviser to the Fund. The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing principally in equity securities of U.S. and non-U.S. issuers, including common stocks, depositary receipts evidencing ownership of common stocks (“ADRs”), preferred stocks, securities convertible into common stocks, and securities that carry the right to buy common stocks (e.g., rights, warrants, and options) in companies the Adviser believes are undervalued by the equity market based on the Adviser’s assessment of the company. The Fund may invest in companies of any capitalization size, including large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap companies.
In selecting investments for the Fund, the Adviser uses a focused-value strategy to invest in companies that, in its opinion, appear to be undervalued by the equity market but where catalysts exist, in the opinion of the Adviser, to close these valuation gaps. The Adviser seeks to exploit perceived market misjudgments in pricing by buying equity securities that appear to be undervalued because of a temporary aversion to these out-of-favor issuers.
Fund Approach
Investment Process
The Adviser maintains a watch list of companies, and reviews each company’s financial condition and prospects, including: expected future earnings; cash flow; the ability and willingness to return capital to shareholders; competitive position; quality of the business franchise; and the reputation, experience, and competence of a company’s management and board of directors. The Adviser considers these factors both while the company is on the watch list and also at the time of purchase. Not all companies, at the time of purchase, are on the Adviser’s watch list, and a company may be added to the Fund’s portfolio following a precipitating event.
When added to the Fund’s portfolio, a company will generally be trading at a significant discount to its 52-week or all-time high at time of purchase. The Adviser’s contrarian approach, buying what it believes are fundamentally sound companies that are out-of-favor with the market, is industry, sector and market capitalization agnostic and typically involves the securities of fewer than thirty issuers. The Adviser may purchase call options on securities in the Fund’s portfolio when the Adviser believes that this will allow it to increase the Fund’s position size in that security at a lower cost.
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