Value as a Philosophy

First Eagle’s value-oriented investment philosophy is rooted in the belief that the greatest risk investors face is the permanent impairment of capital, which is caused by overpaying for assets. We seek to avoid this hazard through identifying and investing in businesses we believe possess scarce, durable assets that provide long-term operational advantages and are highly difficult to replicate.

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Value as a Philosophy

First Eagle’s value-oriented investment philosophy is rooted in the belief that the greatest risk investors face is the permanent impairment of capital, which is caused by overpaying for assets. We seek to avoid this hazard through identifying and investing in businesses we believe possess scarce, durable assets that provide long-term operational advantages and are highly difficult to replicate.

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First Eagle takes an atypical approach to identifying value. Rather than dogmatically limiting our investment universe to only stocks deemed cheap by some statistical measure, the Global Value team lets the character of each business dictate its potential appeal as an investment. By making the quantification of price conditional to our fundamental appraisal of an organization’s specific tangible and intangible attributes, “value” becomes a big tent rather than an artificial constraint.

Selectivity is at the heart of what we do. In this video, Matt McLennan, co-head of the Global Value team, explains how we distinguish between value and valuation within the global opportunity set by seeking cash-flow generative businesses with compelling risk/return profiles.