Our Investment Philosophy

Equity Partners of Atlanta Investment Philosophy & Investment Strategies:

PHILOSOPHY

We are value investors and as such we invest in companies that we believe trade at a substantial discount to what we consider to be their true business value. This concept we be maintained throughout both our ventures in Commercial Real Estate and Securities. We are patient investors, not market timers.

In Real Estate, we endeavor to acquire prosperities significantly below market value with the potential to generate large equity and yield spreads. With regards to Securities, we believe that, over time, the price of a stock will rise to reflect the value of the underlying company. Every stock purchase is viewed as if we were buying a piece of a business, not just a stock certificate. We believe that this approach to investing allows for significant investment returns while reducing risk.

As value investors we believe that financial markets are efficient in the long run but can be inefficient in the short and medium term. The investment process that we employ focuses on identifying mispriced securities to create diversified client portfolios that will outperform over time. Our goal is to identify securities that trade at a discount to our appraisal of their intrinsic or true economic value. This approach acts as a buffer from further price decline and offers the potential for greater capital appreciation.

We invest with a long-term focus, we perform our own research and we follow a strict price discipline when purchasing and selling securities. Performing our own research gives us the conviction to construct focused portfolios of our best ideas.

STRATEGY
We seeks to identify undervalued companies, whereas the investment process is not based on macro-economic factors, such as the performance of the economy or the direction of interest rates. Nor is it based solely on technical factors, such as the performance of the stock market itself. Instead, we employ an intensive, in-house research process to identify companies that meet our value criteria.
While some value investors may search only for stocks with low price-earnings ratios irrespective of the companies' underlying worth, EPA takes a more in-depth approach. In evaluating potential investments, we focus on the following characteristics:
• A company's stock price and whether it is a significant discount to our estimate of underlying business value
• Free cash flows & intelligent investment of excess cash
• High level of manager ownership