Jonathan Boyar is Managing Director at Boyar Asset Management in New York and Principal Advisor to the MAPFRE AM US Forgotten Value Fund. He is also President of Boyar’s Intrinsic Value Research LLC., an independent research boutique established in 1975 that counts some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, mutual funds and family offices as subscribers. Mr. Boyar has been interviewed by Barron’s, Welling on Wall Street and GuruFocus and is a frequent guest on both CNBC and Yahoo Finance. He spoke at the 2022, 2021 & 2017 London Value Investor Conference, the 2017 GuruFocus Value Conference and the 2017 International Value Investing Conference. He is also a contributor to the latest edition of Harriman’s Book of Investing Rules: The Do’s & Don’ts of the World’s Best Investors. He is a senior contributor to Forbes as well as the host of The World According to Boyar podcast.
TWST: Please introduce your firm with some brief history, and your role there — anything that differentiates your organization from its peers?
Mr. Boyar: We’re quite unique. We actually have two businesses. The firm was started in 1975 by my father, Mark, who’s still involved in the business. And we started it as a research boutique, where we were coming up with value-oriented investment ideas for hedge funds, mutual funds, family offices, and endowments. In 1983, due to client demand, we formed Boyar Asset Management, which manages money utilizing the same value-oriented strategy as our institutional research service. So the two businesses are very much related, and they are ongoing. What really sets us apart is our deep fundamental research which is to take a private equity approach to stock market investing. And we leverage that research to help advise our money management clients. While many money managers claim they do their own research, we can prove it.
TWST: Which type of market has shown to be most hospitable to small cap value? Currently, do you see this as a good environment for this cap size?
Mr. Boyar: It’s a good environment if you’re starting today, but it’s been a terrible ride. It’s interesting, if you look at the Russell 2000 performance over the last five years, it’s returned 2.93%. If you look at the QQQ, the NASDAQ 100 basically, it’s had an annualized return of 16.49%. However, if you took a much longer time horizon, the Russell 2000, and investing in small cap companies, has done significantly better than 2.93% per year. Over the last 10-year period it compounded at over 7%, while the last 15-year, 20-year, and 30-year periods have all averaged around 8%. So, we think small caps will be playing catch-up in the coming years. So, if you are able to take a long-term view, if history is any guide it’s the best of times.
TWST: What were the challenges small cap value faced over the first half of 2023?
Mr. Boyar: It had a lot to do with the banks, because if you’re going through a potential banking crisis, or any sort of real estate crisis, people generally stay away from what are considered more speculative investments. You have to be very careful with small caps. About 45% of the companies in the Russell 2000 are unprofitable. So, while things are cheap, good stock selection is key. That is where deep fundamental research comes in.
TWST: Give us a closer look at the MAPFRE AM US Forgotten Value Fund, its structure and your strategy.
Mr. Boyar: The MAPFRE AM US Forgotten Value Fund is something we’re very excited about. We’ve partnered with MAPFRE now for a few years and MAPFRE is the largest ...
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