Mike Choe, CEO of Charlesbank Capital Partners, discusses finding asymmetric risk-return investment opportunities in professional services rather than traditional software buyouts.
0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.2s
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“In this decade, we think there are classes of companies out there that offer human capital services that are highly specialized, that have pricing power, that have the ability to generate very attractive margins, that are incredibly asset light and very capital efficient. That would the right ownership model generate similar types of returns on capital as software and are fairly misunderstood?”
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More from Mike Choe
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Choe: Management stability shows little correlation with private equity investment success
“Another one would be that we used to think that management stability would be very correlated with investment success, and we looked at changes in C-suite management, and there was really not a ton of correlation there, so I'd say that's been an insight that h…”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 38:17Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Choe: Charlesbank found lower entry multiples correlate with weaker private equity returns
“And in our case, and we really had the data just to look at the hundred or so transactions in our history as a private equity firm, there was really no correlation. If there was one, it was a very weak negative correlation. So lower multiple investments tended…”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 38:41Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Choe: 2021 leverage excesses will cause restructurings over coming years
“We think a lot of the leverage excesses of 21 are likely to result in first liability management exercises, LMEs, that will then involve some amount of restructuring over the next few years or so.”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 52:23Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
Insight
Choe: Standard 5-Year LBO Models Promote Anchoring and Familiarity Biases
“We're using a highly flawed tool that actually promotes all kinds of predictable human biases. There's anchoring bias, there's familiarity bias, to make a decision that is inherently very difficult to make. Because what we're really doing is we are underwriter…”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 22:34Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
Disclosure
Charlesbank Models Investments Using 10,000-Simulation 2-Year Monte Carlo Analysis
“We have, as a result, shifted all of our modeling to a homegrown proprietary tool that we call our two-year fan of outcomes. It's basically a fairly simplified Monte Carlo analysis. It runs 10,000 simulations of the two year forward future of any given investm…”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 23:32Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Choe: Two-Year Pre-Tax Earnings Growth Strongly Predicts PE Investment Success
“When we ran our regression analysis, our ability to grow the pre-tax earnings of a company within the first two years of our ownership was highly correlated and very predictive of ultimate investment success, no matter how long the hold period was.”
Mike ChoeFeb 17, 2025▶ 24:25Michael Choe - Atomization of Private Equity Decisions at Charlesbank (EP.432)
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