Ben Claremon: How To Evaluate Management & Capital Allocation

Hey Guys! This week is a clash of podcast hosts: Me vs Ben Claremon. 

Ben is Partner and Portfolio Manger at Cove Street Capital and the Podcast Host of The Compounders Podcast. Ben conducts great interviews with founders/CEO of public companies. Today he shares his findings, favorite CEOs, his Management Assessment Framework, what makes for great capital allocation, and Ben's greatest business of all time.

If you like what you heard, check out Ben on Twitter here and Cove Street's Management Presentation.

• [0:00] Who is the most impressive CEO?
• [2:00] Element Solutions ($ESI)
• [4:00] Joey Levin ($IAC)
• [7:00] Upsides from Knowing the CEO
• [12:00] The Compounders Podcast Lessons
• [18:00] Charismatic CEOs
• [25:20] Proprietary Management Assessment Framework
• [40:00] Insider Transactions
• [50:00] Capital Allocation is the Golden Goose.
• [1:00:00] Profitability vs Growth
• [1:10:00] Ben’s Ultimate Team
• [1:27:00] More from Ben Claremon and Closing Questions

Finally, a big thanks to the following sponsors for making the podcast a reality.

Mitimco

This episode is brought to you by MITIMCo, the investment office of MIT. Each year, MITIMCo invests in a handful of new emerging managers who it believes can earn exceptional long-term returns in support of MIT's mission. To help the emerging manager community more broadly, they created emergingmanagers.org, a website for emerging manager stockpickers.

For those looking to start a stock-picking fund or just looking to learn about how others have done it, I highly recommend the site. You'll find essays and interviews by successful emerging managers, service providers used by MIT's own managers, essays MITIMCo has written for emerging managers and more!

Quartr

Quartr is revolutionizing the way investors interact with IR departments, listen to conference calls, and engage in investment research. The best way to think of Quartr is like Spotify for investor conference calls. Quartr is 100% free and includes markets from 12+ countries (with plans to expand in the future!). Investors can easily request new companies, and Quartr is quick to add them. You can learn more about Quartr by visiting their site, Quartr.se

If you're interested in changing the way you research companies, download the app today and give it a try on Apple and Android.

Tegus

Tegus has the world’s largest collection of instantly available interviews on all the public and private companies you care about. Tegus actually makes primary research fun and effortless, too. Instead of weeks and months, you can learn a new industry or company in hours, and all from those that know it best.

I spend nearly all my time reading Tegus calls on existing holdings and new ideas. And I know you will too. So if you’re interested, head on over to tegus.co/valuehive for a free trial to see for yourself.

TIKR

TIKR is THE BEST resource for all stock market data, I use TIKR every day in my process, and I know you will too. Make sure to check them out at TIKR.com/hive.