Our Services

The team at Willow Group will involve you in extensive discussions that will lead to a mutual understanding of your desires, needs and risk tolerance, resulting in an investment program that will receive the sort of attention you will not get from a large financial institutions or most competitors.

Each client at Willow Group is assigned an advisor or portfolio manager who will work closely with you to determine the right mix of strategies to meet your individual circumstances.

You can expect regular communication from us, with direct access when you need it. We put substantial time aside to speak on the telephone. Expect regular valuation reviews with historical costs to help you gain a clear perspective. Expect extensive notes from our investment team that will offer our perspective on the equity and fixed-income markets, the economy – both local and international, current market valuations, deep analysis, performance and other prime factors that affect your capital and our management of it. We communicate with ideas that are easy to understand and integrate.

Willow Group offers you a professional team dedicated to fully develop your portfolio, now and into the years ahead. Our primary investment principles of always considering the long term, managing risk, remaining dynamic and flexible, reducing asset turnover and transaction charges, maintaining a prudent sell strategy, married to our dedication to a customised service, allow us to offer you, in our opinion, a unique value unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

Every client relationship is unique and so every portfolio is customised using our private in house methods. Additionally, we can look deep to determine if a client needs a specific strategy to complement their existing holdings.

Below is an overview of some of the solutions that we utilise.

Small Cap

Large Cap

Fixed Income

Balanced Portfolio

The investment objective of our Small Cap portfolio is to seek long-term growth of capital by investing in securities that our firm believes have excellent business strength and prospects for growth, which are trading significantly below our estimate of their current worth.

Wiilow Group’s Small Cap process begins by screening stocks traded on major markets to highlight outstanding businesses. Companies are usually limited to those with market capitalizations of less than $4 billion at the time of investment. We further narrow the universe of publicly traded stocks to a list of potential candidates with rankings based on the fundamental factors we emphasize:

QUANTATATIVE:

Significant profitability as measured by high returns on equity and assets
Sustainable profitability as reflected by continuing earnings growth
Solid balance sheet
Attractive valuations relative to their peer group and the overall market

QUALITATIVE:

Niche business
Solid management team
Covered by only a few, if any, sell-side analysts and low institutional ownership
Debt-to-capital employed must not be leveraged beyond conservative standards
Level of insider ownership

While we are predominantly a bottom-up manager of Small Cap, we do believe certain market sectors perform better than others at distinct points in each business cycle. As a result, specific sectors may be overweighted or underweighted but usually will not exceed two times the benchmark sector weighting. The maximum exposure to any individual security is generally a 5% position. Portfolios tend to be fully invested.

A sell discipline is equally important in the management of a client’s portfolio. Essentially, when a company falls outside the parameters that made it a buy candidate, the stock will be considered for sale from the portfolio.

The investment objective of our Large Cap portfolio is to seek a positive total return by investing in solid companies priced at attractive levels, both to the underlying companies’ fundamentals and to the industry and overall market as a whole.

Wiilow Group’s Large Cap process begins by screening stocks traded on major markets to highlight outstanding businesses. Companies are limited to those with a market capitalization of $5 billion or higher. We further narrow the universe of publicly traded stocks to a list of potential candidates with rankings based on the fundamental factors we emphasize:

QUANTATATIVE:

Significant profitability as measured by high returns on equity and assets
Sustainable profitability as reflected by continuing earnings growth
Solid balance sheet
Attractive valuations relative to their peer group and the overall market

QUALITATIVE:

Solid management team
Strong business model
Conservative debt-to-capital ratios
Level of management ownership

In order to protect against wide fluctuations in account value, we work to construct portfolios that are well diversified across approximately 30 positions. However, we believe certain market sectors perform better than others at distinct points in each business cycle. As a result, specific sectors may be over- or underweighted but usually will not exceed two times the benchmark sector weighting. The maximum exposure to any individual security is generally a 5% position. Portfolios tend to be fully invested.

The investment objective for our Active Fixed Income portfolio is to maximize total return within the intermediate investment grade area of the fixed income markets. A low exposure to market and credit risk will be maintained in seeking this goal.

Our fixed income philosophy is based upon the belief that forces in the fixed income markets create the opportunity for active bond management that will improve total returns beyond what can be achieved by a buy-and-hold-until-maturity strategy. We focus on areas of the fixed income market where our securities’ research can produce positive relative returns, and at the same time maintain a low exposure to market and credit risk. By assessing risk in relationship to interest rate trend, market sector, yield curve, and coupon analysis, we can achieve these goals over a full market cycle.

Wiilow Group’s fixed income process focuses on identifying the current trend in interest rates. We will lengthen or shorten a portfolio’s average maturity within a narrow range of one to ten years, only after we receive confirmation of a change in the interest rate trend. The maturity adjustment, in turn, is done on a “gradual move” basis. Furthermore, we only utilize U.S. Government/Agency or investment-quality corporate, mortgage-backed or municipal securities. Value is added to our fixed income portfolios by analyzing and monitoring, at all times, five decisions. These decisions are:

What is the trend in interest rates?
Based upon the trend, what average maturity or duration do we want to have?
What market sector offers the most value based on the rate trend?
What specific maturities should be purchased based on the rate trend and the shape of the yield curve?
What coupons should be utilized in maximizing total return and/or income needs?

The net effect of our fixed income philosophy and process, over a complete interest rate cycle, will be positive relative returns combined with a low-risk profile.

Based upon our ongoing analysis of the trend in interest rates, securities will be purchased or sold in making adjustments for duration changes. Buy and sell decisions will also be made upon the outlook for various economic sectors, as well as the shape of the yield curve.

The investment objective of our Balanced portfolio is to seek a positive total return by investing in solid companies priced at attractive levels, both to the underlying companies’ fundamentals and to the industry and overall market as a whole and to maximize total return within the intermediate investment grade area of the fixed income markets.

Wiilow Group’s Balanced process combines client asset allocation objectives with our Equity and Fixed Income expertise to create an optimal allocation of capital to stocks, fixed income and cash. Individual investments are then made following our Large Cap, Small Cap and Active Fixed Income strategies.