104 Kim Shannon: Inflation, Value Investing & Canada Now

Kim Shannon, CFA, Founder & Co-CIO, Sionna Investment Managers joined us for deep dive of a fireside chat on her career and perspective as a value manager, investing, inflation, the reflation trade, and why the current leg in the economic cycle is a favourable backdrop for Canadian equities.

Kim reflects on her career history – her beginnings as a value manager under the wing of her early mentor at Royal and Sun Alliance, investing legend, John Di Tomasso, in the early 80s. She describes her investing journey, the application of her knowledge and her own proprietary take on value investing, and how she and her associates subsequently turned an old then $40-million AUM fund into Canada's largest equity mutual fund, which earned her the reputation as one of Canada's pre-eminent market wizards.

The last ten years however have seen the hollowing out of value fund AUMs against growth and momentum, and Kim Shannon, no stranger to the challenges of competing against the market, candidly admits that it's been a tough go, maintaining her integrity and conviction through the period. Until last year, that is, when value stocks, in the context of a comeback in inflation, began to show the meaningful glimmer of reverting back to historical trend. That glimmer of a reversion to mean in investing styles emerged during last year's re-opening in the context of reflation following the COVID-19 growth shock of 2020.

She points out that, "The last 12 years have been the longest period of underperformance of Value, and when Value failed to outperform following the March 2020 bear market, that really affected the psyche of investors about Value." Kim Shannon goes on to add that, "So that really affected client psyche about value because a lot of clients had held in with value because it always defended at a down market."

We then discuss valuations on several the last decade's market leaders, and even with a reversion in P/E multiples, Shannon points out that even if P/Es come down to 150 times earnings, their valuations imply that it will take 150 years for those stocks to pay investors back. Most of the darlings of the 1990s run up no longer exist, such as Sun Microsystems, and companies like Cisco and Intel have failed to inspire investors.

"The average tenure of stocks today is 20 years," explains Shannon. That means that investors are paying up for valuations that will take, in some cases many generations to collect on for companies, that, in most cases, won't be around in 20 years.

Our conversation winds through the topics of inflation, value as a reflation trade, value investing, and culminates with her bull case for Canadian stocks. There is also strong likelihood that if if there is a sustained inflation, it will be supportive of Canadian equity valuations.

We discuss some of her favoured areas of opportunity and get into some of the names she likes. Her over-arching thesis is that she believes and expects that Canadian stocks are set to outperform U.S. stocks in the period ahead, and we discuss her pro-Canada investment case.

Notes:

Kim Shannon's reference to George Athanassakos' (Professor at Ivey School of Business - Benjamin Graham School of Value Investing) research findings from last year:

What if inflation is here to stay? Think value stocks

"We also examined the annual inflation rate above which the value premium became decidedly positive. This inflation rate was approximately 2.5 per cent. Once inflation started to exceed 2.5 per cent, value stocks started to outperform, while growth stocks, in general, did better when inflation was below 2.5 per cent. Between 1930 and 2020, there were 50 years when annual inflation was at or above 2.5 per cent and 40 years when it was below 2.5 per cent. The median value premium in the first period was 11.04 per cent and in the second 2.34 per cent. It’s worth noting that it is primarily small-cap value stocks that drive these relationships."

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Where to find Kim Shannon, Founder & Co-CIO, Sionna Investments:

Kim Shannon on Linkedin

Sionna Investments

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