Paul Murray Blake

Provides national banking services

Sky Investment Counsel employs a global value investment approach. The firm invests primarily in the stocks of companies in the finance, communications, consumer durables and energy minerals sectors. They invest across all market-caps. Sky Investment Counsel maintains a medium turnover rate. Sky Investment Counsel takes a long-term, fundamental approach to managing portfolios. Their investment approach focuses on quality and value. They look for opportunities to capitalize on the mispricing of assets in the equity market, purchasing companies in which there is a major discrepancy between the company's investment value and the valuation of its shares. Sky Investment Counsel's security selection process begins with a valuation screen and then applies rigorous fundamental research to confirm investment opportunities. The firm's valuation analysis involves assessing companies on a variety of criteria including those both absolute and relative in nature. They seek to invest in companies that are selling at a deep discount to what they are worth. Stocks are also examined relative to their historical valuation, their industry group and the market in general. The firm's fundamental research involves an assessment of a company's business model and the nature of the industry in which it operates. They also analyze the company's record of growth and profitability and its financial strength. Each potential company is assigned an investment grade rating from 1 to 5 that is based on six quantitative factors: business fundamentals, growth, profitability, balance sheet strength, quality of management and trading liquidity. Portfolios are constructed with a minimum of 75% of the assets invested in groups rated 1 to 3. The firm applies risk controls at the security level, industry level and country level to ensure that the portfolios are well-diversified. Portfolio construction also reflects a margin of safety analysis in which higher quality companies are weighted more heavily than those in lower grades. Portfolios typically contain 60 to 90 holdings. Sky Investment Counsel's sell decisions are based on several factors including (1) whether the stock has reached its full valuation (2) whether there has been a deterioration in the company's fundamentals or (3) whether more attractive investment opportunities have been identified due to stock price fluctuations, which reveal better quality at the same valuation or the same quality at a better valuation.

Functions as a College/University