Quick disclaimer before I start.

Just to tell you that this presentation is not investment advice or recommendation.

So I assume most people know me by now, but if you don't, I'm the portfolio manager of the Remount Microcap Fund.

I'm also the author of Stucks and Stones.

It's a newsletter on Substack.

I'm mostly known for my Good, Bad and Ugly.

give me some good, give me some bad, give me some ugly, you know.

Yeah, you know, on the good side, I think one that was really interesting to me was Thinkific, THNC on the TSX.

It's a software company.

They have a platform for creators or businesses to sell online courses.

And, you know, it's been a deep value opportunity for quite some time.

because they don't have a lot of revenue growth.

So there are two sides to their business.

Hopefully, we'll get them one

But, you know, if you could, you know, narrow it down, what would you say for you? What worked? What hasn't?

Yeah, well, you know, I think just to go back to Tim's point about the breakdown in the industries and the Russell index, I think in Canada we have a bit of the same, similar challenge in that we're really exposed to natural resources, the broader market.

Like if If you look at my benchmark, which is the TSX small cap index, it's like over 60% of the index is in natural resources, mining or oil and gas.

And for me as a micro cap investor, with a manager with a value tilt, it's pretty challenging.

Like I won't invest in natural, like mining exploration companies, for example, junior mining companies.

So it's been a bit frustrating because that index is up about 20% year to date.

And it's been just frustrating to watch that.

But how would you grade this earnings season for microcaps overall? And maybe what's one report that genuinely either changed the thesis for the better and one that maybe that was ugly enough to totally kill it or force a full re-underwrite for you?

Maybe you can start now by outlining the key pillars of your investing process and then we can pick away at some of this.

Yeah, sure.

So, well, there are essentially three big things that I look at when I look at a new investment opportunity.

So the first one is the business quality.

Then you have the management team and then you have the valuation.

So, you know, business in that order, by the way, of importance.

So first of all, I want to find a quality business with a moat.

Mm-hmm.

Is it, is it repeatable? Do you see a specific formula, um, in, in the last couple of years in which you have been managing money that is a winning formula?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, um, you know, I got inspired by a few different people i- in my early years, uh, when I was learning about how to invest, and one of these people was Paul Andriola at Small Cap Discoveries, uh, in, in...

He's based in Vancouver.

And I learned a lot from him about the discovery process of microcap stocks.

So essentially, the idea is if you look for companies that are below 100 million in market cap, typically there's no institutional ownership.

There's no analyst coverage.

Mm-hmm.