The Inside Adviser · June 2024
Getting a good business in a good market with good people is just the start for this highly connected Brisbane funds management team. The next step involves a network of specialist operating partners that know how to scale.
What’s really charging the firm’s success, according to partner and co-founder Nick Miller, is the ability to lean on a tight-knit network of 130 industry experts that specialise in the handful of sectors and geographies Fortitude invests in. Their job isn’t to provide internal management, but to advise on the initial acquisition and the best way to scale.
“I always think about it as stacking the deck in your favour. That is, getting a good business in a good market that already has good people. We back the existing management teams and then bring in high-quality people around that to help scale it.”
Fortitude focuses on companies with an enterprise value of between $10 million and $80 million, investing $10 million to $50 million, in healthcare, technology, food and industrial sectors, particularly those related to the energy transition. That mix has seen the team deploy $439 million in capital in ten years, with realised investments including Shopper, Better Medical, GM Hotels, Hospital Pharmacy Services, Birch & Waite and Readify.
Instead of a typical unit trust, investors access each investee company as a single investment vehicle, choosing the companies they believe in. That concentrated cohort of repeat investors has benefited from an annualised return of 25.1 per cent net of fees.