Towle & Co. seeks to capitalize on market inefficiencies in the public equity market. The firm specializes in a long-term, deep-value investment discipline that seeks to uncover significant discrepancies between stock market prices and underlying company values. This search for value typically leads to smaller capitalization stocks, a market segment overlooked by many portfolio managers. For investors with a long-term investment horizon seeking capital appreciation in excess of stock market returns, the Towle Deep Value strategy may diversify their scope of investment and complement core allocations.
Background on the firm – Fifty shares of Ford Motor gifted to him in the 1950’s, triggered a life-long attraction to equity investing for J. Ellwood (Woody) Towle. In 1981, following several years as Manager of Corporate Development for Brown Shoe Company in St. Louis, Woody started Towle & Co. with $1 million under management. Through a combination of his business valuation experience at Brown and a keen interest in the dynamics of equity investing, Woody refined and fully developed the Towle Deep Value discipline. To a substantial degree, the Towle approach hinges on the body of knowledge provided by three illustrious pioneers of value investing: Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, and John Templeton. With a focused search for unrecognized, absolute value, the Towle philosophy offers a specialized form of “pure” value investing. Patient and persistent in nature, the Towle strategy has generated favorable absolute and relative historical returns for its long term investors. Past performance is no guarantee of future outcome. Click here for performance figures and disclosures.