Third Avenue Funds
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International Value
Objective
Third Avenue's International Value Equity strategy seeks to achieve absolute returns over the long term, while minimizing investment risk, by primarily investing in foreign securities.
Investment Philosophy
We believe that capital appreciation in our portfolios is best achieved by identifying safe companies that are cheaply priced.
Investment Approach
Third Avenue's international portfolios seek to capitalize on applying the firm's disciplined, bottom-up, value approach to identify suitable investments in foreign securities. The strategy invests opportunistically, paying little regard to market capitalization, sector, country or other benchmark oriented criteria. In keeping with Third Avenue's belief that diversification is a poor surrogate for knowledge, price consciousness and control, portfolios are relatively concentrated.
Third Avenue has a team of six dedicated investment professionals who focus their efforts on non-US securities; they are assisted by the entire Third Avenue team. Our team of investment professionals analyzes companies from the bottom-up in order to identify securities that we believe are safe and cheaply priced. Fundamental research is the foundation of our process, with a focus on balance sheet analysis. We define "safe" to mean the issuer is well-capitalized with a strong balance sheet and high quality assets. The company should not have significant liabilities, whether on or off the balance sheet. The issuer should be run by a competent management team and management's interests should be aligned with those of its shareholders. The stability of a country's system of government plays a significant role in our decision making process. Inadequate regulatory oversight would preclude us from investing in that jurisdiction. Finally, the company must be engaged in a business that we understand, with reliable financial disclosures readily available to serve as objective benchmarks and help us evaluate the business, its values and dynamics. We consider an investment to be "cheap" if the security can be obtained at a market price substantially below a conservative valuation of the business as a private entity or takeover candidate.
