Interview: Nick Cregan, Fairlight Asset Management – Quality & Discipline

Nick Cregan is a partner of Fairlight Asset Management, serving as a senior portfolio manager in the investment team since the inception of the Global Small & Mid Cap Fund in 2018. He joins Raymond Jang on The Australian Investors Podcast to share his journey, the investing process and philosophy of Fairlight Asset Management.

Nick provides an incredibly detailed overview of the investment process at Fairlight and illustrates this through excellent business case studies.

I gained a lot of valuable insights from listening to Nick and look forward to incorporating a lot of his wisdom into our investing process at Rask.

Listen to Part 1 on The Australian Investors Podcast right now

Listen to Part 2 on The Australian Investors Podcast coming soon

FULL VERSION available now on Rask’s YouTube channel

Talking points

Part 1

00:00 – Intro – Nick Cregan explains the story behind the name of the fund and his early exposure to business and investing.

05:00 – The three key career stepping stones and mentors that shaped Nick’s investing career.

35:00 – Why Fairlight Asset Management’s pool of investable companies is only around 200 companies in four key industries.

40:00– Nick walks us through the investing filtering process in extensive detail.

48:05  – Why cash return on invested capital is an important element of businesses that Nick and his team invest in.

53:00 – Nick runs through why certain companies are able to generate high returns on invested capital and mentions ASX darling, REA Group Limited (ASX: REA).

59:40 – An overview of the key qualitative factors that Fairlight value when assessing the defensibility of a company’s competitive advantage or moat.

1:08:25 – Nick shares how he and his team have used software to maintain their thoughts and notes on companies.

1:13:00 – The valuation methods applied by Fairlight Asset Management.

Part 2

1:17:30 – Nick discusses a high-quality business that has been underappreciated for some time.

1:29:30 – Nick kindly provides insights into a German software business that possesses a lot of the characteristics that Fairlight looks for but is on the expensive side.

1:37:00 – Nick highlights the key lessons he and his team learnt from a poor investment.

1:44:00 – The psychological traits that Nick believes is really integral in investing and the culture he has instilled at Fairlight.

1:54:20 – Nick’s piece of advice to aspiring analysts.

1:57:35 – The names of the most influential people in Nick’s personal and investing career are revealed.

Date recorded: March 23rd, 2022