Bristol Capital Advisors, LLC ("BCA") believes that an investment approach focused on smaller capitalized companies, early stage companies or larger private companies is the best way to identify and seek to profit from undiscovered or untapped deep value investment opportunities. We find these opportunities among companies we believe to be "under-valued," "under-resourced" or poorly governed, such as early stage development companies with growth potential, where the various stages of the company’s evolution provide a range of investment opportunities, or in larger private companies with valuable intellectual property, strong brand recognition, assets or products that generate significant revenue but have lacked fiscal discipline, governance, strategy, or become mired in debt. The value of these companies may significantly appreciate as a result of changes in management, governance, strategy or corporate and/or financial restructuring.
BCA favors opportunities to work with companies in a mutually beneficial and cooperative environment but will pursue aggressive activist investing in particular cases. In situations where management has repeatedly failed to execute on a business plan or make the desired improvements to the company's corporate governance, or there are signs that management may have internal conflicts of interest or are taking actions that have a detrimental impact on the company's operations or performance, BCA shall seek to implement the desired improvements through ongoing discussions with management. At times, when progress is not made through these discussions, BCA may often seek to take other actions, such as seeking board representation or calling a special shareholder meeting.
Late stage pre-IPO private equity allocations or bridge loans are made with the intention of profiting from a post-IPO sale of the holding, rather than planning for it to be a buy and hold long-term (i.e. 2 years+) investment. Private investments in public companies are made in cases where there are catalysts or the potential for catalysts (i.e. completion of later phases of drug trials) occurring in the near future (i.e. 6 to 12 months) to propel the stock forward and the pricing of securities is at a discount to market value at the time of investment. Investments in distressed companies can be made through stalking horse bids, DIP loans, or asset purchases, which enable a company to reorganize, revitalize its balance sheet, improve relations with vendors, and better position itself to capitalize on its future and turnaround strategy. These transactions are often structured to include provisions designed to protect against loss of principal and minimize risk.
We believe that the depth of experience and expertise of our portfolio managers as active investors in private and public equity, distressed companies (as either the stalking horse bidder, DIP lender, or purchaser of assets), and structured transactions, supplemented by the efforts of an investment team which has worked together for over two decades, is both a competitive advantage and a requisite for properly evaluating and pursuing deep value opportunities in a variety of companies, whether private, public or distressed.